Europe faces major challenges regarding climate change. The EU has set itself ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets for the year 2050. The primary objectives of its climate and energy policy are formulated in the EU 2020 Climate and Energy Package as well as the 2030 Climate and Energy Framework. Furthermore, the EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change aims to enhance Europe’s climate resilience. To pursue a successful, comprehensive policy, the EU seeks to increasingly integrate both climate change mitigation and adaptation measures into European sectoral policies and EU funding programs. In order to overcome the challenges associated with these endeavors, policymakers rely on sound knowledge regarding the impacts of their policies. However, assessing and evaluating relevant impacts, as well as weighing different policy options, present substantial challenges in their own right. Diverse benefit categories, temporal variations in the occurrence of effects, and the absence of market prices for values generated by climate policies represent just a few of the many obstacles to a comprehensive impact assessment.

The winter school will present and examine cutting-edge concepts and methodologies for assessing and evaluating the impacts of European climate policy, aiming to enhance the capacity for well-informed decision-making among policymakers. Furthermore, it will raise doctoral students' and postdocs' awareness of the complexities that researchers and policymakers in Europe confront when addressing the consequences of climate policy. The school will also highlight that improving analytical tools is indispensable for making well-informed choices in climate policy. Additionally, spanning over five days, the school aims to equip students with the skills required to utilize and apply relevant concepts and methods for impact assessment. To this end, the school integrates various elements, including lectures, workshops, poster presentations, and an open panel discussion.

To begin, the school will provide a broad overview of the impact side of climate policy in Europe, illustrating that the scope and spatial distribution of primary and secondary benefits typically vary significantly across different environmental policy measures. This will be followed by an introduction for students to cutting-edge concepts, methods, and tools for analyzing the effects of climate policy. In addition to monetary evaluation methods (such as CBA), non-monetary methods (such as MCA) will be presented. Next, the program will analyze behavioral economics approaches that help identify the (material and non-material) "utility" perceived by individuals. Following the discussion of these interdisciplinary approaches to impact assessment, the qualitative aspects of the various impact categories require closer examination, as they may have strategic implications at the international level, which in turn could generate negative repercussions for the EU. Therefore, policymakers should be informed about potential strategic implications. Since policies can entail long-term consequences, decision-makers should also be aware of potential implications for future generations and the associated ethical dimensions. The school will address these dimensions of impact assessment as well.

The winter school took place from February 3 to 7, 2020.

Programm

The program of the winter school can be found here.

Application

All places for this event have already been allocated; therefore, new applications can no longer be considered. Thank you for your understanding.