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DIW Discussion Papers 2118 / 2025
We examine the impact of the war in Ukraine on long-term contracts in energy markets. We find that traded contract volumes fall by 65 percent in the first months of the war. A collapse in bilateral trading contributes most to this decline. To protect themselves from price shocks, firms increasingly turned to long-term contracts already before the war. In sum, our results show that the market continued ...
2025| Mats Kröger, Karsten Neuhoff, Sebastian Schwenen
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DIW Discussion Papers 2114 / 2025
European climate policy was traditionally pursued in the expectation of global policy convergence, ensuring equal opportunities for domestic and foreign firms in achieving climate neutrality. However, increasing geopolitical fragmentation has disrupted this expectation. Across the globe, national strategies increasingly favor economic policies that benefit domestic industries and coercive economic ...
2025| Till Köveker, Fernanda Ballesteros, Franziska Klaucke, Antonia Kurz, Karsten Neuhoff, Paula Niemöller, Sangeeth Selvaraju
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DIW Discussion Papers 2112 / 2025
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was accompanied by a significant reduction of its gas supply to Europe, causing sharp energy price surges and prompting governments to respond with public appeals and programs aimed at reducing consumption. This paper investigates the effects of price increases and non-monetary factors, such as public appeals and saving programs, on residential energy savings during ...
2025| Sophie M. Behr, Till Köveker, Merve Kücük
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DIW Discussion Papers 2093 / 2024
This paper investigates the perspectives of stakeholder groups in the plastic and steel value chains on transitioning toward a circular economy (CE). Through semistructured interviews with 31 business stakeholders, we analyze business strategies, key factors, challenges and opportunities, as well as coordination and regulatory needs for a successful industry-wide CE transition. Our findings highlight ...
2024| Xi Sun, Sophie M. Behr, Merve Kücük
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DIW Discussion Papers 2092 / 2024
Public support systems and private investments in renewable energy are increasingly existing side-by-side and are both emphasized in policy proposals on the European and national levels. This paper assesses the interaction between the two approaches with respect to cream-skimming, i.e., the potential for low-cost projects to sign private contracts that increase the costs of publicly supported renewable ...
2024| Mats Kröger
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DIW Discussion Papers 2083 / 2024
A plethora of sustainable finance taxonomies are emerging worldwide to support shifting trillions for climate action. Employing a qualitative research approach, we use document analysis to assess 26 sustainable finance taxonomy frameworks worldwide that are in the developing phase or have been published and/or adopted. Based on literature and data we build a transition score (TS) to evaluate the framework’s ...
2024| Catherine Marchewitz, Fernanda Ballesteros, Franziska Schütze, Nesrine Hadj Arab
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DIW Discussion Papers 2082 / 2024
The transition of the steel sector to carbon neutrality requires significant investment. In this study, we aim to better understand the scale of investment required for a transition to hydrogen-based steelmaking and the ability of listed steelmakers to finance this investment. First, we analyze how capital expenditures are estimated in the academic literature and compare them with reported investment ...
2024| Alexandra Hüttel, Judith Lehner
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DIW Discussion Papers 2069 / 2024
We investigate policies for increasing recycling to facilitate decarbonization within the basic material sector, including market-based policies, such as carbon pricing, advanced disposal fee and minimum recycled content requirement, and non-market policies, such as product design standard. We develop an analytical model to assess the role of these policy instruments for recycling related choices of ...
2024| Xi Sun, Karsten Neuhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 2062 / 2023
This paper investigates the implications of implementing the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) in South Africa by exploring the factors that are at work when donors and recipients interact with each other. It analyses the JETP using global cooperation theories on climate change and identify mutual trust, based on shared norms; and process legitimacy via institutionalisation as the factors which ...
2023| Heiner von Lüpke
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DIW Discussion Papers 2051 / 2023
Applying universal ownership theory and drawing on multiple-case studies, this article analyzes what drives institutional investors to engage with government entities and what challenges they find in the process. We relied on document analysis and conducted twelve semi-structured interviews with representatives from asset owners, asset managers, investor associations, and academia. We identify a trend ...
2023| Camila Yamahaki, Catherine Marchewitz