Forests: For climate and biodiversity

The social side of the energy transition

Energy transition for all

The transition to sustainable energy is a major societal venture. Back in 1980 the Oeko-Institut described the challenges of an energy supply “without oil and uranium” in its groundbreaking study that coined the term “energy transition” (Energiewende). The issues today are the phasing out of coal, the further expansion of renewables,... more

Sustainability – An Export Success?

The Oeko-Institut: the international dimension

Much of our current thinking and work on the environment, climate and resource conservation relies on transnational cooperation. The international climate process, the sharing of ideas across borders about the risks associated with nuclear energy and appropriate phase-out strategies, energy efficiency standards at European level,... more

Knowledge and science

A farewell and a fresh start

As you know, the Oeko-Institut is hardly a newcomer to the field of independent environmental research. We recently celebrated our 40th anniversary, and yet in some ways, we are still regarded as a start-up – a place for thinking about new ideas, with radical yet always well-reasoned proposals for a sustainable future, dynamic and... more

Exnovation

Better a fresh horse ...

Handlooms, leaded fuel, cassette recorders, incandescent lightbulbs – a glance back at the last 100 years of industrial history shows that out-of-date technologies have been replaced by new ones time and time again. Today, we call this “exnovation”, but it is not a new phenomenon: industrial societies have always evolved in this way,... more

Final storage

Starter’s orders for final storage

In July 2016, the German Commission on the Storage of High-Level Radioactive Waste presented its final report. I myself was a member of the Commission, which spent a total of two years working to define a procedure for the selection of a final storage site for Germany’s nuclear waste. In summer 2016, the new Federal Office for the... more

Everything under control?

Robust but proportionate regulation

More than three decades have passed since the publication of Chemie im Haushalt, Rainer Griesshammer’s guide to chemicals in the home. It became an instant non-fiction bestseller. Compared with the 1980s and the time before that, we now live in a world with far fewer unregulated hazardous chemicals in the home and – more importantly,... more

40 years of the Oeko-Institut

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Noise

Loud, louder, noise

If like me you live in Hessen, and close to Frankfurt Airport at that, you are bound to be familiar with the subject of noise. But it is not only near airports that people are being subjected to ever-increasing noise pollution. Many of us are finding that traffic noise, the sound of construction work or the noise of loud machinery... more