Positive employment effects of increasing material efficiency

As raw and processed materials constitute a major share of the cost of inputs to industrial production in all developed countries and since the raw material crisis in 2009 revealed the criticality of the raw material supply worldwide, the increasingly efficient use of material resources has become an important point on the political agenda. One way to promote this increase is funding of research in efficiency-increasing technology innovations. Data describing the physical and economic effects of sixteen such innovations are used to model on the basis of input-output analysis the employment effect of these technologies once their full application potential in Germany would be exploited. It turns out that the employment effect is positive and its strong robustness is based on the combination of three promoting factors, each of which alone increases the likelihood of increasing employment. These factors refer to the profitability of efficiency-increasing technologies and to the import of foreign value added and the change in labour productivity characterizing many instances of material efficiency increase

Politik des langen Atems

Fahrzeuge mit Brennstoffzellenantrieb werden frühestens in zehn Jahren serienreif werden. Aber durch die alleinige technologische Weiterentwicklung wird die Markteinführung nicht von allein geschehen. Um der Technik eine realistische Chance zur Diffusion zu geben, muss die politische Steuerung komplexe ökonomische, institutionelle, politische und soziale Zusammenhänge beachten und in ihr Handeln integrieren

The impact of policy interactions on the recycling of plastic packaging waste in Germany

Due to the environmental challenges associated with the strong growth of plastic waste worldwide, the EU Commission recently published a green paper on a European Strategy on Plastic Waste in the Environment (COM (2013), 123 final), which highlights the challenges and opportunities that arise from improving the management of plastic waste in the EU. The European Waste Directive (2008/98/EC) which was transposed into German law through the Kreislaufwirtschaftsgesetz (KrWG) established the so-called 5-step waste hierarchy, which gives a clear preference to recycling over energy recovery and disposal of waste in landfills. Although waste avoidance and recycling are stated objectives of German waste policy, effectiveness and efficiency of the respective regulations seems to be influenced negatively by interactions with other policy instruments. Both, the internal interaction between different waste management policies as well as the external interaction between waste management policy and climate policy, seem to have a negative impact on the recycling of plastic packaging material. In order to gain insights regarding the impacts of different policy instruments on the recycling of plastic packaging waste, we conducted a case study analysis based on data gained from an online survey among German experts in the field of plastic packaging waste management and from the literature on waste management. Apparently, negative policy interactions originate from conflicting interests between the stakeholders of the different waste treatment options, i. e. recycling, thermal recovery and incineration. In the policy design stage, these conflicting interests have resulted in a regulatory flexibility that has made the recycling objective susceptible to the potentially negative effects of policy interactions. Apart from the requirement to achieve the minimum recycling quota for plastic packaging waste of 36 %, the waste management actors are flexible to choose their preferred waste treatment option once this threshold level has been achieved. In particular with regard to the recovery of low and medium grade plastic waste, economic incentives for thermal recovery and incineration seem to be much stronger than for recycling. This situation can partly be explained by the demand of energy intensive industries for plastic waste as a substitute for conventional energy sources. This trend has resulted in a considerable increase of the thermal recovery of plastic packaging waste between 2003 (2.3%) and 2010 (25.6%). With re-gard to waste incineration, the effect of the TA Siedlungsabfall (TaSi) on the build-up of incineration capacity and the economic imperative to utilize these capacities materialized in low costs for waste incineration. The massive build-up of capacities for waste incineration and RDF power plants decreased the costs for thermal recovery and made recycling less competitive. Structural changes of the packaging waste stream have also had a negative influence in recycling because the use of composite materials can render recycling technologically and economically infeasible

Selbstorganisation als "Missing Link"?

Selbstorganisation ist ein grundlegender Prozeß wirtschaftlicher Entwicklungsdynamik. Mit Hilfe der in den Naturwissenschaften entwickelten Konzepte zur Beschreibung von Selbstorganisationsprozessen lassen sich umweltökonomische Probleme als Effekte interdependenten individuellen Handelns verstehen. Gleichzeitig ist die Selbstorganisation an biophysikalische Bedingungen geknüpft, die auch für das menschliche Wirtschaften gelten. Sie scheint deshalb geeignet, eine Verbindung zwischen Evolutionsökonomik und ökologischer Ökonomik herzustellen

Fenster in die Nachhaltigkeit

Den Erfolg neuer Technologien bedingen eine ganze Reihe von Faktoren. Bei der politischen Unterstützung neuer, umweltfreundlicher Technologien ist ein zen­traler Faktor bislang außer Acht gelassen worden: die Innovationsdynamik am Markt. Wird sie systematisch unter zeitstrategischen Gesichtspunkten analy­siert, so ergeben sich verschiedene Zeitfenster, die je nach Innovationsdynamik politisch unterschiedlich genutzt werden sollten. Werden sie beachtet, wird die Einführung umweltfreundlicher Technologien wesentlich kostengünstiger und konfliktfreier sein als bisher

The dynamic simulation of TIS functions in transitions pathways

[Introduction] This paper has the objective of extending the System of Innovation (Kuhlmann and Arnold 2001; figure 1) and Technological Innovation System (TIS) (Bergek et al. 2008) approaches to include pathways of development over time and to include considerations of interactions between niches and the regime from the Multi-Level perspective framework on sustainability transitions (Grin et al. 2010). This should include consideration of consumers and the demand side, which is less comprehensively discussed in the SSI and TIS literature than in the sustainability transitions literature. The reason for this paper is that the SSI has no explanation of dynamics. It is really a typology of actor types which are assumed to be necessary for innovation. TIS is an application of SSI to individual technologies and a more detailed analysis of how successful the innovation system is, using the concept of functions of the innovation systems. These functions then have to be performed successfully for the technology to be taken up. However, there is still no analysis of the interactions between the functions or how interaction determines the evolution of the innovation system through time and its success or failure. Also, a critical aspect of the evolution of technologies and the associated social systems is missing: the feedbacks between the dominant design or regime and the new, alternative technology. The current institutional and market setting is taken as exogenous to the innovation system analysis in the TIS. The analysis is limited to identifying those innovation functions which are being successfully undertaken and those which are weak, together with barriers to the uptake of the new technology and proposing measures to overcome these barriers. Here, the MLP on transitions offers an explicit treatment of niche-regime interactions. [...

Kiri Karl Morgensternile, Dorpat

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1821750~S1*es

Zur Feier der Krönung Sr. Majestät des Kaisers und Herrn Nikolaus I. Pavlowitsch : Rede, gehalten im grossen Hörsaale der K. Universtät Dorpat, am 12. September 1826, von Dr. Ernst Sartorius, ordentlichem Professor der Theologie

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2112912~S1*es

Predigt in der kirchlichen Generalversammlung der Dorpatschen Bibelgesellschaft am 23. Mai 1833 ...

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2416824~S1*es

4 kirja Karl Morgensternile, Dorpat

http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1815447~S1*es