The European Dimension of Germany's Energy Transition: Opportunities and Conflicts

This book addresses the interactions between Germany’s energy transition and the EU’s energy policy framework. It seeks to analyze the manifold connections between the prospects of the proclaimed “Energy Union” and the future of Germany’s energy transition, and identifies relevant lessons for the transformation at the EU level that can be learned from the case of Germany, as a first-mover of transforming energy systems towards renewables. The various repercussions (political, economic and systemic) from the national transition are explored within the EU context as it responds to the German transition, taking into account both existing frictions and potential synergies between predominantly national sustainability policies and the EU’s push towards harmonized policies within a common market. The book’s overall aim is to identify the most critical issues, in order to avoid pitfalls and capitalize on opportunities.

Erik Gawel is Full Professor of Economics, esp. Environmental Institutional Economics, and Director of the Institute for Infrastructure and Resources Management at Leipzig University, Germany. He is also heading the Department of Economics at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig. He graduated from Cologne University with diploma and PhD in economics. He was Visiting Professor in the Postgraduate Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) “Risk Regulation and System of Civil Law” (Bremen University) and habilitated at Augsburg University, Germany. He was scholarship-holder of the German National Academic Foundation, the DFG and Max Planck Society. He is, i.a., member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and academic editor of the journal “energies”. His main areas of research are environmental and energy economics, new institutional economics, esp. law and economics, as well as public finance.

Sebastian Strunz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Economics at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig. His main research deals with the politico-economic conditions of sustainability transitions, with a particular focus on Germany’s energy transition in the European context. Before joining the UFZ, he earned a PhD in sustainability economics at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg and a Magister Artium in economics and political science at the University of Heidelberg. His further research areas include the conceptual foundations of sustainability economics and the methodology of transition research.

Paul Lehmann heads a junior research group at the Faculty of Economics and Management Science at the University of Leipzig. He is also a guest researcher at the Department of Economics at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig. Previously, he was a post-doctoral researcher at UFZ and spent research visits at Resources for the Future (RFF), Washington, DC, and the University of Oxford. He holds a Diploma in Business Administration from the University of Leipzig and PhD in Economics from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. He is interested in the economic analysis of policy instruments in the fields of climate, energy and water policy. His junior research group investigates policy strategies to mitigate ecological trade-offs related to the deployment of renewable energies.

Alexandra Purkus is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Economics at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ in Leipzig. Her work focusses on the interplay between climate and energy policy and sustainable land use, particularly in the context of renewable resource und energy use. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Leipzig, a Diploma in Economics with an Environmental Focus from the Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, and a Master of Science by Research in Global Environmental Change from the University of Edinburgh. In her doctoral thesis, she investigated German and European bioenergy policy from a new institutional economics perspective, as part of an interdisciplinary working group on bioenergy systems analysis at the UFZ. Further research interests include environmental, ecological and innovation economics.