For more than a decade, our team has pioneered research on the social acceptance of wind energy and other renewable technologies. Current research examines the dynamics of community acceptance – including the role of emotions – and investigates how citizen co-investment, -involvement, and community benefits influence the social acceptance of renewable energy projects.
The transition from fossil fuels to electric vehicles is a key element of decarbonizing the transport sector. Our research explores consumer preferences and business models for electric vehicles, particularly when combined with renewable energy and storage solutions. We investigate key touchpoints in the purchase process and derive behaviourally informed policy recommendations for accelerating the electric mobility transition.
The decarbonization of the energy sector increasingly depends on innovative business models rather than technological breakthroughs. We investigate how new models can accelerate the deployment of mature technologies like solar, wind, and hydropower. In particular, we explore how distributed renewables, energy storage, and energy community concepts aid in satisfying consumer demand for clean energy.
Energy and climate policies are important drivers of the low-carbon energy transition. Simultaneously, they can introduce risks for investors. Mobilizing sufficient capital for clean energy and transport infrastructure requires policy frameworks that minimize these risks. We use choice experiments and other empirical methods to quantify the price of policy risk and identify policy design that support investment.
Why is it so difficult for countries, firms and consumers to overcome our current attachment to non renewable energies, a phenomenon that former US president George W. Bush, in 2006, called an «addiction to oil»? We investigate mechanisms of path dependence and carbon lock in and explore ways to overcome it on micro, meso and macro levels.