Publications

The KCG has various series of publications to provide research findings and policy implications to different interested groups, e.g., students, academics, policy makers and the public.

Integrating Carbon Dioxide Removal into European Emissions Trading

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Alexander Proelß, Oliver Geden, Julian Burhenne, Mathias Fridahl (Frontiers in Climate, 2021, 3: 690023)

In one of the central scenarios for meeting an European Union-wide net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target by 2050, the emissions cap in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) becomes net negative. Despite this ambition, no mechanism allows for the inclusion of CO2 removal credits (CRCs) in the EU ETS to date[...]

Implications of Temperature Overshoot Dynamics for Climate and Carbon Dioxide Removal Policies in the DICE Model

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Jörg Schwinger (Environmental Research Letters, 2021, 16(10): 104042)

Assessing climate policies that involve temporary overshoot of temperature targets requires an accurate representation of carbon cycle and climate dynamics. Here, we compare temperature overshoot climate policies obtained with the dynamic integrated climate–economy (DICE) integrated assessment model using two different climate-carbon cycle sub-models: first, the original DICE implementation, and second an implementation of the finite amplitude impulse response (FaIR) simple climate model[...]

The Backfire Effect of Sustainable Social Cues. New Evidence on Social Moral Licensing

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: WassiliLasarov, RobertMai, StefanHoffmann (Ecological Economics, 2022, 195 : 107376)

To encourage individuals to consume sustainably, managers and policymakers often highlight positive examples that others have set regarding sustainable consumer behavior (e.g., donations to a good cause). This study shows that under certain circumstances, this strategy provokes a paradoxical effect such that consumers deliberately deviate from these positive examples[...]

Vanishing Boycott Impetus: Why and How Consumer Participation in a Boycott Decreases Over Time

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wassili Lasarov, Stefan Hoffmann, Ulrich Orth (Journal of Business Ethics, forthcoming)

Media reports that a company behaves in a socially nonresponsible manner frequently result in consumer participation in a boycott. As time goes by, however, the number of consumers participating in the boycott starts dwindling. Yet, little is known on why individual participation in a boycott declines and what type of consumer is more likely to stop boycotting earlier rather than later. Integrating research on drivers of individual boycott participation with multi-stage models and the hot/cool cognition system, suggests a “heat-up” phase in which boycott participation is fueled by expressive drivers, and a “cool-down” phase in which instrumental drivers become more influential[...]

When Drivers Become Inhibitors of Organic Consumption: The Need for a Multistage View

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Robert Mai, Stefan Hoffmann, Ingo Balderjahn (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2021, 49: 1151–1174)

The organic market is characterized by remarkable disparities, and confusion persists about which motives drive organic consumption. To understand them, this research introduces the idea that the same consumer motives can exert different and potentially opposite impacts when organic consumption patterns unfold[...]

Stepping up to the Mark? Firms’ Export Activity and Environmental Innovation in 14 European Countries

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Aoife Hanley, Finn Ole Semrau (Industry and Innovation, forthcoming)

We investigate the ability of exports to trigger the adoption of environmental innovation (EI) in firms, shedding light on the determinants of convergence in environmental standards for Europe’s catch-up economies. To analyse this question empirically, we measure the latter as the 1) probability a firm adopts EI and the 2) breadth of EI adoption in firms[...]

Low-carbon Power Technologies and the Stability of International Climate Cooperation

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Vicki Duscha, Jan Kersting, Sonja Peterson, Joachim Schleich, Matthias Weitzel (Climate Change Economics, 2021,12(4): 2150013)

This paper explores the effects of the technological development of key low-carbon power technologies (photovoltaic (PV), wind, and carbon capture and storage (CCS)) on the stability of global climate cooperation under several assumptions about climate-related damage[...]

Climate policies after Paris: Pledge, Trade and Recycle: Insights from the 36th Energy Modeling Forum Study (EMF36)

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Christoph Böhringer, Sonja Peterson, Thomas F. Rutherford, Jan Schneider, Malte Winkler (Energy Economics, 2021, 103: 105471)

This article summarizes insights from the 36th Energy Modeling Forum study (EMF36) on the magnitude and distribution of economic adjustment costs of greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have committed to emission reduction targets – so-called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – in order to combat global warming[...]

The Blue Carbon Wealth of Nations

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Christine Bertram, Martin Quaas, Thorsten B. H. Reusch, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Claudia Wolff, Wilfried Rickels (Nature Climate Change, 2021, 11: 704–709)

Carbon sequestration and storage in mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows is an essential coastal ‘blue carbon’ ecosystem service for climate change mitigation. Here we offer a comprehensive, global and spatially explicit economic assessment of carbon sequestration and storage in three coastal ecosystem types at the global and national levels[...]

Social Science Research to Inform Solar Geoengineering

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Joseph E. Aldy, Tyler Felgenhauer, William A. Pizer, Massimo Tavoni, Mariia Belaia, Mark E. Borsuk, Arunabha Ghosh, Garth Heutel, Daniel Heyen, Joshua Horton, David Keith, Christine Merk, Juan Moreno-Cruz, Jesse L. Reynolds, Katharine Ricke, Wilfried Rickels, Soheil Shayegh, Wake Smith, Simone Tilmes, Gernot Wagner, Jonathan B. Wiener (Science, 2021, 374(6569): 815–818)

As the prospect of average global warming exceeding 1.5°C becomes increasingly likely, interest in supplementing mitigation and adaptation with solar geoengineering (SG) responses will almost certainly rise. For example stratospheric aerosol injection to cool the planet could offset some of the warming for a given accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases (1)[...]