A glance abroad

Social leasing

Making electric vehicles (EV) affordable for people on low or middle incomes – France’s social leasing scheme makes this possible through low-cost, subsidised EV leasing contracts. The French scheme received 90,000 applications in the first six weeks. A positive side effect of social leasing is that it could boost the second-hand market for EVs and give a positive signal for the production of small and affordable EVs.

Cow tax

What cows release will carry a price tag in Denmark – the country will tax livestock methane emissions from 2030 onwards, thus establishing the first such climate levy on farming worldwide. The tax will initially be set at around 300 Danish kroner, or about 40 euros, per tonne CO2-equivalent (CO2e), to be raised to 750 kroner by 2035. It will be balanced at the same time by specific tax rebates for farmers.

Retrofit without debt

People who don’t have much are often unable to improve efficiency. How should they pay the up-front costs of building energy performance improvements, for instance? In the USA, a Pay As You Save (PAYS) programme is tackling this challenge. It permits building retrofits without debt – the costs are recouped via the electricity bill. What is more, repayment is tied to the property. If someone moves away it is not they who have to continue repaying the retrofit, but those who actually profit from it. Georgia und Missouri have rolled out the programme.

Grow not log

In the 1980s Costa Rica was a place where rainforests were under particular threat. The country had one of the highest deforestation rates worldwide. Every year, some 51,000 hectares were lost. As elsewhere, demand for farmland was the main driver. But the Central American country has managed to turn the trend around – by establishing national parks giving forested areas protected status, and by adopting a new forest law that has created financial incentives for reforestation. A petrol tax has provided the funding.

Private jet surtax

Higher levies on private jets and premium flights: This is an idea being advanced by Kenya – for luxury travel causes much higher carbon emissions than economy class. The extra revenue will in turn be used to benefit climate and development projects. The initiative was presented jointly with Barbados and France at the 2025 Climate Conference and is now being promoted by the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force which further nations have joined.

No imports!

Only electric vehicles on the roads – Ethiopia, a country with no car manufacturing industry of its own, aims to achieve this by means of an import ban on combustion-engine vehicles. For transport is the source of 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, Ethiopia’s power supply is already almost entirely renewable today. Some 90 percent of the electricity consumed in the country comes from hydropower. In parallel, imports of EVs have been promoted by removing tariffs on them.

Efficiency down under

Comparing the energy efficiency of commercial buildings such as offices is a difficult undertaking. Australia has developed an approach that has proved its worth in practice. The NABERS scheme appraises buildings on the basis of their actual energy consumption. The result is presented by an easily understood rating from one to six stars. It has been shown that the improved transparency on the real estate market has indeed reduced the energy consumption of office buildings. NABERS is also a beacon of successful policy export: it has now been introduced in New Zealand and England as well.

100 percent organic

A small state in India has gone all-out organic and has been doing it for ten years with success. Most people in Sikkim in northeast India live in rural regions. Some 65,000 farmers cultivate plots that are often very small. They have been trained in organic farming methods. In addition, all farms are certified to international standards. The agriculture minister of Sikkim announced in 2025 that the state is now ready to market its produce on global markets.

Renewable in China

China’s renewables are booming. In 2024 alone, the country installed 79 gigawatts (GW) of wind and 277 GW of solar capacity, thus already attaining its renewables expansion target for 2030. Furthermore, in the first half of 2025 China installed 212 GW new solar capacity – twice as much as Germany over the past 25 years. Wind and solar power now account for 42 percent of China’s installed power generation capacity. In 2024 the People’s Republic invested almost 625 billion US dollars in low-carbon technologies, efficiency improvements and energy infrastructure – about one-third more than the entire European Union.