Suchergebnisse

Environmental policies are often considered as burden to firms as these face additional costs in order to comply with the regulations. However, by adapting to new regulatory frameworks, firms might reconsider their previous production processes and thereby reap additional gains, e.g. in terms of productivity through resource reallocation within the firm, or enhanced innovation activity. In four chapters, the present thesis examines whether environmental policy is able to create incentives for innovation and how appropriate measures could be designed. In the framework of the innovation concept of technology-push and demand-pull instruments, the potential of different environmental policies to create innovation incentives is assessed. The first chapter takes a bird's eye view of the topic by examining the relationship between an aggregated indicator of environmental policy stringency and the productivity of firms. The analysis confirms that a tightening of environmental policy is able to provide benefits in terms of productivity gains – but only for already highly productive firms. Less productive firms are experiencing productivity losses as environmental policy becomes more stringent. The second chapter deals with public innovation funding for low-carbon demonstration plants as an example of a technology-push policy and identifies learning, knowledge dissemination, gradual upscaling, financial engagement of the private sector, and the generation of a robust demand-pull for low-carbon technologies as key design aspects for the success of public innovation funding. The third chapter looks at green public procurement as an example of a demand-side policy. The analysis shows that the inclusion of environmental criteria in the selection phase of the procurement process is associated with an increased innovation activity in form of product innovations for firms that have been able to win such procurement contracts. The fourth chapter investigates design aspects of another demand-side policy instrument - namely the pricing of environmental externalities from production processes. The analysis characterises general principles for the design of the benchmark-based free allowance allocation mechanism in the European Emissions Trading System and underlines the importance of including indirect emissions in such a system. ; Umweltpolitikmaßnahmen werden häufig als Belastung für Unternehmen angesehen, da sich die betroffenen Unternehmen mit zusätzlichen Kosten konfrontiert sehen, um neue Vorschriften einzuhalten. Durch die Anpassung an neue regulatorische Rahmenbedingungen können jedoch auch Produktivitätsgewinne für Unternehmen entstehen, da bisherige Produktionsprozesse überdacht werden müssen, und dadurch eine Ressourcenumschichtung innerhalb des Unternehmens oder verstärkte Innovationstätigkeiten entstehen können. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht in vier Kapiteln, ob Umweltpolitik in der Lage ist, Innovationsanreize für Unternehmen zu schaffen und wie geeignete Maßnahmen gestaltet werden können. Im Kontext des Innovationskonzepts von Technologie-Push und Nachfrage-Pull-Instrumenten wird das Potenzial verschiedener Umweltpolitikmaßnahmen zur Schaffung von Innovationsanreizen bewertet. Das erste Kapitel nimmt eine Vogelperspektive auf das Thema ein, indem es den Zusammenhang zwischen einem aggregierten Indikator für die Stringenz von Umweltpolitik und der Produktivität von Unternehmen untersucht. Die Analyse zeigt, dass eine Verschärfung der allgemeinen Umweltpolitik Vorteile in Form von Produktivitätssteigerungen für ohnehin bereits sehr produktive Unternehmen mit sich bringt. Weniger produktive Unternehmen verzeichnen Produktivitätsverluste mit zunehmender Stringenz der Umweltpolitik. Das zweite Kapitel befasst sich mit öffentlicher Innovationsförderung für kohlenstoffarme Pilotanlagen als Beispiel für eine Technologie-Push-Politik und identifiziert Lernerfahrungen, Wissensweitergabe, schrittweise Hochskalierung, finanzielle Beteiligungen privater Unternehmen, sowie die Erzeugung von anhaltender Nachfrage nach kohlenstoffarmen Technologien als erfolgsentscheidende Designaspekte der Innovationsfinanzierung. Das dritte Kapitel befasst sich mit nachhaltiger, öffentlicher Auftragsvergabe als Beispiel für eine nachfrageseitige Politikmaßnahme. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die Einbeziehung von Umweltkriterien in der Auswahlphase des Beschaffungsprozesses mit einer erhöhten Innovationstätigkeit in Form von Produktinnovationen von Unternehmen einhergeht, welche diese Beschaffungsaufträge für sich gewinnen konnten. Das vierte Kapitel befasst sich mit den Gestaltungsaspekten eines weiteren nachfrageseitigen Politikinstruments, der Bepreisung externer Umweltauswirkungen von Produktionsprozessen. Die Analyse charakterisiert Grundsätze für die Ausgestaltung der Referenzwert-basierten, kostenlosen Emissionszertifikatszuteilung im Rahmen des Europäischen Emissionshandelssystems und unterstreicht die Notwendigkeit der Einbeziehung indirekter Emissionen in ein solches System.

Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. Its implementation usually takes the form of environmental award selection criteria in public procurement tenders. However, there is no direct or broad empirical evidence on its innovation impact. There are even doubts about its effectiveness as an innovation policy tool, as it does not require innovations as part of its contracts and might only influence the selection of awardees in public procurement tenders. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning green public procurement awards on firms' introduction of environmental innovations. Employing cross-sectional difference-in-differences methods, we find that winning green public procurement awards increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points. We show that this effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not significant for larger firms. There is no significant effect on the introduction of more environmentally friendly processes.

While the economic voting hypothesis is a well-researched approach to explain behavior at the ballot box, a broader perspective of economic, social and environmental issues regarding a government's chances to get re-elected is still missing in the literature. In this context, this paper makes use for the first time of the Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the comprehensive policy framework that all 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve. The objective of our study is therefore to examine the relationship between SDGs' progress and the likelihood of re-election. Our analysis of 124 countries regarding performance on the SDGs over time and voting behavior shows: the chance to get re-elected as a government significantly increases for progress made towards SDG 5 (Gender Equality). Notable differences are also found for high-income vs. low-income countries. The fact that governments are rewarded at the ballot box for successful action towards gender equality is encouraging, while the mechanisms behind other SDG areas deserve more research.

All 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), following the guiding principle to leave no one behind. At the same time, rising populist movements increasingly influence the political debate in many countries by challenging multilateral cooperation and liberal democracy. This paper contains the first empirical study of the relationship between the SDGs and populism. In order to analyse the nexus between these growingly important concepts, we introduce a new "Sustainability-Populism Framework". It allows us to asses how the performance on the 17 SDGs over time relates to electoral support for populist parties, resulting in a classification of 39 countries into four categories. Moreover, in a regression analysis, we find that for each 1-point increase on the aggregate SDG Index (out of 100) over time, the vote share of populist parties on average drops by about 2 percentage points. Our results lend some support to the notion that a strong commitment to the SDGs (overall, as well as in particular to SDGs 1, 2, 11 and 15) could be part of an appropriate and effective answer to populism. We hope to initiate a timely debate on populism and sustainable development with our study, along with more research into this complex relationship.

Die öffentliche Hand gibt große Anteile des Bruttoinlandsprodukts für Waren und Dienstleistungen aus und ist somit für einen erheblichen Anteil der Treibhausgasemissionen verantwortlich. Angesichts dieser beträchtlichen Auswirkungen steht der Staat einerseits in der Verantwortung, möglichst emissionsarm einzukaufen, und verfügt andererseits über das Potenzial, Märkte zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit zu bewegen. Die sogenannte 'umweltfreundliche öffentliche Beschaffung' (Green Public Procurement, GPP) zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass umweltrelevante Kriterien bei der Auftragsvergabe berücksichtigt werden. In Deutschland - Europas größter Volkswirtschaft - machen staatliche Einkäufe 15 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts aus. Trotz steigender Zahlen bleibt GPP in der öffentlichen Auftragsvergabe jedoch weiterhin die Ausnahme. Einer weitergehenden Umsetzung steht vor allem die Wahrnehmung entgegen, dass die Berücksichtigung von Umweltkriterien zu höheren Beschaffungskosten führt. Außerdem fehlt es der Verwaltung an Kapazitäten, um sich die juristische und technische Expertise für GPP anzueignen. Ein klares politisches Mandat zur Finanzierung der durch die Umweltauswirkungen der beschafften Waren und Dienstleistungen entstehenden Mehrkosten sowie spezielle Fortbildungen für das Personal der Beschaffungsstellen können dazu beitragen, dass GPP zukünftig vermehrt zur Anwendung kommt.

Public authorities spend large proportions of their GDP on goods and services and are therefore responsible for a significant share of embedded emissions. Given this large impact, governments have the responsibility of decarbonizing their purchases, as well as the potential to influence markets towards sustainability. So-called 'Green Public Procurement' (GPP) consists in the use of environmental criteria in the procurement process. In Germany, Europe's biggest economy, public purchases account for 15 percent of annual GDP. However, despite a rising trend, the use of GPP in public procurement contracts remains marginal. The main barriers to broader implementation is the perception that including environmental criteria leads to higher procurement costs. Further, administrative capacity faces constraints to acquire legal and technical expertise about GPP. A clear political mandate for financing the incremental costs incurred from the environmental impact of procured goods and services, as well as specific training programs for procurement officials can encourage an increased adoption of GPP in the future.

Moving non-incremental innovations from the pilot scale to full commercial scale raises questions about the need and implementation of public support. Heuristics from the literature put policy makers in a dilemma between addressing a market failure and acknowledging a government failure: incentives for private investments in large scale demonstrations are weak (the valley of death) but the track record of governance in large demonstration projects is poor (the technology pork barrel). We reassess these arguments in the literature, particularly as to how they apply to sup- porting demonstration projects for decarbonizing industry. Conditions for the valley of death exist with: low appropriability, large chunky investments, unproven reliability, and uncertain future markets. We build a data set of 511 demonstration projects in nine technology areas and code characteristics for each project, including timing, motivations, and scale. We argue that the literature and the results from the case studies have five main implications for policy makers in making decisions about demonstration support. Policy makers should consider: 1) prioritizing learning, 2) iterative upscaling, 3) private sector engagement, 4) broad knowledge dissemination, and 5) making demand pull robust.