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The role of energy sufficiency in the energy transition and society - Sub-project: Impact chains of sufficiency

Germany
EU
Food systems
Climate policy in transport
Consumption and sufficiency
Green transition of the heating sector
Public transport and new mobility solutions
Energy & Climate

Energy system models are established tools for modelling technically feasible and economically advantageous energy transition paths in the interplay of efficiency and sufficiency strategies. Developments that enable a reduction in absolute energy consumption through changes in practices and routines, in the sense of a sufficiency strategy, have hardly been taken into account in the models so far.

The aim of the inter- and transdisciplinary research group is to operationalise sufficiency aspects and strategies for energy system modelling and thus to make action-based parameters and social change representable in energy and climate protection scenarios. The parameters are explicitly backed up with instruments, options for action and changed framework conditions. For this purpose, it is important to better understand societal transformation processes in the context of the energy transition, to sound out the blockades for and potentials of sufficiency policies and, last but not least, to discuss possible externalisation and displacement effects in the sense of global sustainability.

The methods developed for consistent, integrative and qualitative scenario building can be applied and further developed by other researchers. The energy system model, whose programming code and data are made available as open source, also forms a basis for building on the findings on energy sufficiency. In addition, the historical reconstruction and the future-oriented scenarios generate transformation knowledge that can be translated into concrete action. The findings of the junior research group on blockades for and potentials of energy sufficiency policies contribute to political and civil society transformation and social innovation processes.