Archive press releases

How can a reform of taxes and surcharges guide the transport sector towards a sustainable future? Higher CO2 prices in combination with the abolition of the surcharge introduced by the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG levy), appropriate…

The foundations of the emerging data economy that are currently being laid must be aligned with environmental and climate protection goals. Yet environmental aspects have not featured substantially in proposals for the regulation of artificial…

The network of independent institutes for environmental and sustainability research marks its tenth anniversary. In 2011, eight non-profit scientific institutions – including Ecologic Institute – joined forces to form the Ecological Research…

The taxation of company cars is increasingly causing a social and environmental misalignment in German transport policy, according to a study by think tank Agora Verkehrswende and the Oeko-Institut. The tax benefits provided for the private use of…

From an environmental perspective, milk that is produced on organic farms is better than conventionally produced milk. The extensive avoidance of pesticides and mineral fertilisers in feed production results in a significantly lower burden on the…

The regulatory requirements on the energy consumption and performance of electrical appliances can be circumvented by manipulating the laboratory tests. This can be done not only by using hidden software that recognises the test situation and…

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) report, produced on behalf of the European Commission to assess whether nuclear energy can cause “significant harm” to human health and the environment, fails to consider in sufficient depth key risks such as the…

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a massive and unprecedented downturn in the aviation sector. Until February 2020, however, there was only one direction of travel in international aviation: upwards. Will the industry bounce back to its…

Germany should campaign for EU-wide taxation of aviation kerosene and increase the aviation tax so that it offsets the absence of VAT on international flights. These and other proposals could end the present preferential treatment of air transport…

With the currently adopted climate protection measures, Germany will neither achieve its previous, nor the more stringent European, climate protection targets in the building sector by 2050. Two roadmaps from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar…

Today sees the release of the first episode of the Oeko-Institut podcast: “All change, please! The science and sustainable transformations podcast”. Listeners can expect in-depth information on a variety of issues relating to the energy, transport…

The ZNU – Center for Sustainable Leadership at Witten/Herdecke University and the Oeko-Institut have devised a method to measure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals for companies, products and product policy. It includes an…

The management of forests, cropland and grassland impacts on the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These activities must therefore be taken into account in the EU's Climate Target Plan. The EU Parliament and the European Council are…

The boom in electric vehicles in Germany is currently driven substantially by the larger plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), with company cars accounting for more than three quarters of registrations. In the real world, these vehicles are driven much more…

Just in time for the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the European Council has decided to tighten the EU's climate targets. By 2030, the EU is to reduce its greenhouse gases by at least 55 percent compared to 1990 levels,…

Transport policy needs to become climate-friendly and socially equitable. This can involve making adjustments to existing instruments so that they are fair and help to mitigate climate change. For example, the CO2 component of the motor vehicle tax…

In Germany, industry and government want hydrogen to become a key pillar of the energy transition. Due to the high costs and limited availability of land, however, Germany cannot rely on domestic production to satisfy future hydrogen demand. For…

A 65% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Germany by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050 are achievable and technically feasible. This is shown for the first time in a new study, entitled Towards a Climate-Neutral Germany, whose findings were…

Researchers at the Oeko-Institut and their project partners have developed a methodology for the holistic assessment of the resource efficiency and carbon footprint of data centres. The innovative feature of this methodology is that for the first…

E-mobility is a key component in the shift towards a sustainable transport sector for the future. However, lithium-ion batteries – the main source of power for electric drive systems – will need to be manufactured and recycled responsibly in…