ALBERT

Description: North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is the industrial center of Germany and one of the most important industrial locations in Europe. It is a key location for the energy-intensive basic materials industry like the production of steel and non-ferrous metals, (petro)chemicals, cement and lime, bricks, glass and ceramics, and paper. Around 20 % of NRW's total greenhouse emissions derive from industrial processes. By 2045, industry must achieve climate-neutrality, which requires a massive transformation effort. Technologically, this needs large-scale utilization of green hydrogen, carbon management, consequent circular economy, and climate-neutral production of process heat. Furthermore, various adjustments to the policy framework are essential.

Description: The goal of this dissertation is to facilitate the assessment of impacts from sustainable measures and projects with an emphasis on impact reporting for Green, Social or Sustainability Bonds in the Sustainable Finance market. It does so by providing analysts with the means to develop, depict, formulate, and assess a causal hypothesis between an intervention and its subsequent effects in an impact-chain, represented by desired environmental (E), social (S) or governance (G) changes. This is achieved by developing a methodology for so-called ESG Logic Models or ESG-LM, that combine heuristic Theories-of-Change with propositional logic and Bayesian Reasoning. Three research questions are investigated and responded to. Research Question 1 asks how such Theories-of-Change can be developed for any type of ESG-related issue and how the different process steps in a causal chain can be classified, hierarchised, and prioritised regarding their efficacy towards overarching sustainability goals and their plausibility. Research Question 2 studies (a) the means by which the analyst or any other interested third party might be warranted in believing the causal claims from an ESG-LM, and (b) how an ESG-LM can be improved if this credence is low. Research Question 3 then looks at the reporting of impacts themselves regarding indicator selection, indicator assessment and indicator quantification as well as the provision of information on the contributions and attributions by different actors. The dissertation draws on a variety of theories and adapts existing methods to achieve that. It operationalises concepts from empirical Sustainable Finance research and already existing impact assessment methodologies. It adapts scholarly and practitioner approaches for theory-based evaluation and applies a qualitative social science perspective towards theory-building and evaluation, while some of the assessment tools in the dissertation are grounded in Logic, Set Theory and Bayesian Epistemology. Examples for such tools include rules for the Attribution by actors, heuristics for the abduction of plausible outcome pathways, or a four-stage Argument and Decision-Tree to assess the credibility of ESG-LM claims (based on Bayes Theorem). My assessment of the entire methodology is positive overall, as it provides solutions to each of the three research areas. Limitations of the approach, and thus opportunities for further research, are the additional expertise and time required by analysts compared to the existing, and somewhat more pragmatic, solutions in the current market. However, this is outweighed in my opinion by the ability of the framework to strongly mitigate impact washing by actors in the financial markets as well as biases by analysts. Its overall methodology also provides opportunities for new research angles in the area of sustainability indicators and assessments.

Description: Energy performance contracting (EPC) as a market instrument has been effective in promoting energy efficiency worldwide, but it has encountered many insurmountable obstacles in rural energy management. In this study, based on the characteristics of energy management in rural areas, three EPC modes are designed and tested in 24,000 rural households. The test results show that two adapted EPC modes of local government involvement and energy payment directly from the national grid can effectively overcome the barriers encountered in the traditional EPC modes and work well under the economic and social environmental conditions in rural areas. The key to the adaptation of the traditional EPC modes is the introduction of the local government as the third party. Participation of the third party can effectively reduce and remove the barriers and risks and increase the mutual trust between the clients (households) and the energy service companies (ESCOs). Based on the testing results, this study suggests that governmental departments should formulate relevant EPC policies and technical guidelines within the rural context. This research recommends that farmers should not manage their energy services by themselves and it is suggested to out-contracting ESCOs by applying the modes developed and tested by this paper.

Description: Die schnelle und umfassende Emissionsminderung in der Energie- und Kreislaufwirtschaft ist der Schlüssel für die Begrenzung der Erderwärmung auf unter 2 °C. In Deutschland werden entsprechende Politiken seit den 1990er-Jahren verfolgt, allerdings erst in jüngster Vergangenheit mit dem notwendigen Nachdruck und der notwendigen Orientierung hin zu mehr Marktmechanismen. Wesentliche Handlungsfelder sind Energieeinsparung und erhöhte Energieeffizienz, Umstieg auf erneuerbare Energien, Bepreisung von Klimagasen sowie eine Reduzierung und Schließung der Stoffkreisläufe. In allen Handlungsfeldern sind Grundlagen geschaffen, es bleibt jedoch der Großteil des Weges noch zu gehen, um Klimaneutralität zu erreichen. Für einen schnellen Fortschritt spielen neben der Überwindung der technischen, ökonomischen und organisatorischen Herausforderungen auch Verteilungsfragen und die Einbettung in internationale Maßnahmen eine zunehmende Rolle.

Description: Deutschlands Haushalte werden, zu Beheizungszwecken, zu 70 % leitungsgebunden versorgt: 50 % mit Erdgas und 14 % mit Fernwärme; 5 % mit Elektrizität, davon je die Hälfte noch mit Nachtspeicherheizung, die andere Hälfte mit Wärmepumpen. So war es 2021. So wird es in Zukunft nicht sein, denn Erdgas ist ein Energieträger fossiler Herkunft. Dessen Nutzung geht in den nächsten beiden Jahrzehnten gen Null. Die Frage ist, was das für die Erdgasleitungen in Deutschland bedeutet.

Description: The petrochemical industry is among the most relevant sectors from an economic, energetic and climate policy perspective. In Western Europe, production occurs in local chemical parks that form strongly connected and densely integrated regional clusters. This paper analyzes the structural characteristics of the petrochemical system in Germany and investigates three particularly distinct clusters regarding their challenges and chances for a transition towards climate-neutrality. For this, feedstock and energy supply, product portfolios and process integration as well as existing transformation activities are examined. We find that depending on their distinct network characteristics and location, unique and complex strategies are to be mastered for every cluster. Despite the many activities underway, none of them seems to have a strategic network to co-create a tailored defossilization strategy for the cluster - which is the core recommendation of this paper to develop.

Description: Demand-side mitigation strategies have been gaining momentum in climate change mitigation research. Still, the impact of different approaches in passenger transport, one of the largest energy demand sectors, remains unclear. We couple a transport simulation model to an energy system optimisation model, both highly disintegrated in order to compare those impacts. Our scenarios are created for the case of Germany in an interdisciplinary, qualitative-quantitative research design, going beyond techno-economic assumptions, and cover Avoid, Shift, and Improve strategies, as well as their combination. The results show that sufficiency - Avoid and Shift strategies - have the same impact as the improvement of propulsion technologies (i.e. efficiency), which is reduction of generation capacities by one quarter. This lowers energy system transformation cost accordingly, but requires different kinds of investments: Sufficiency measures require public investment for high-quality public services, while efficiency measures require individuals to purchase more expensive vehicles at their own cost. These results raise socio-political questions of system design and well-being. However, all strategies are required to unleash the full potential of climate change mitigation.

Description: Fortschreitende Digitalisierung und zunehmende Internationalisierung von Märkten bergen Herausforderungen für Unternehmen mit traditionell geprägten Arbeits- und Fertigungsstrukturen. Um den steigenden Anforderungen gerecht zu werden, sollten in diesen Unternehmen die digitale Arbeitsfähigkeit und Kompetenzen für Agilität ausgebaut werden. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt die Konzeption einer digitalen Plattform zur Steigerung derartiger Kompetenzen in kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen (KMU). Die digitale Kompetenzplattform soll insbesondere produzierenden KMU strukturschwacher Regionen helfen, ihre Agilität zu steigern und so zur Innovations- und Zukunftsfähigkeit des Unternehmens beitragen.