The book ‘Shaping Digital Transformation for a Sustainable Society’ shows how society can become digitally sustainable. It contains 28 contributions from 68 authors hailing from civil society, research, and practical experience, discussing challenges of digitalisation and how digital politics can and must be designed for sustainabilty.

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is comparable to a comprehensive digital index card or a “digital CV” that the EU seeks to introduce for a wide range of products. It is intended to provide information needed, for example, for more efficient repair and recycling of products. We believe that the DPP has a significant potential to pave the way towards a more circular economy as it can address the information deficit along a circular value chain that often impeded circularity.

While Senegal has had major success in expanding renewable energy – the variable nature of wind and solar energy and the existing electricity system means that further grid integration is starting to become a growing challenge. Moving forward, policy decisions to be taken will have a large influence over the role of fossil fuels in Senegal for the foreseeable future. This paper aims to provide an overview of the opportunities to support Senegal in its transition to a decarbonised, renewable energy system, including a discussion of the challenges associated with this transition and the role that Germany can play in overcoming them.

The environmental and development organisation Germanwatch points out that fossil fuel companies will have to disclose climate risks in their risk reports and have them externally audited. The reason for this is a new study by a team of researchers from the renowned London School of Economics and Political Science, which shows a clear connection between climate litigation and share price losses of affected companies.

More than 50,000 inhabitants of the Andean city of Huaraz are threatened by a flood wave due to global warming. The Andean farmer and mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya decided to take action: On 24 November 2015, he filed a lawsuit against the energy company RWE in a German civil court. One year after the court visit to Huaraz, the expert report will finally be available this summer. A hearing at the Higher Regional Court of Hamm is expected later this year.

In the lead up to this weekend’s G7 Leaders’ Summit in Hiroshima, Germany has been exposed for joining Japan in pushing fellow G7 members to backslide on previous commitments and endorse increased public investments in gas. Contrary to what Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, different studies show that new investments in gas are not necessary to increase energy security but only exacerbate the climate crisis and threaten food security. Chancellor Scholz risks undermining a successful G7 Summit regarding climate for the second year.

Following the release of their ‘Instrument Methods’ for Paris alignment, the World Bank Group published accompanying sector notes for Energy and Extractives; Agriculture and Food; Transport; Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy; Water; as well as Urban, Resilience, Disaster Risk Management, and Land. The notes detail the approach to assess whether different types of projects in these sectors are aligned with the Paris Agreement. The World Bank Group will update the notes, and will publish six more for additional sectors. In this blog we look at whether the approaches in the notes are sufficient to avoid financial flows that conflict with the Paris Agreement.

To take advantage of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) and other financing opportunities, Indonesia must identify key requirements to create the right environment for cooperation without violating existing principles. Our background paper provides a brief overview of the state of the energy transition plan and financing in Indonesia.

In a series of dialogues with Indonesian civil society organisations (CSOs), Germanwatch and the Habibie Center explored how to integrate social justice aspects into the energy transition debate in Indonesia. This policy brief provides the context for how Indonesian CSOs view the JETP and how they relate to other key socio-economic issues.

There are several metrics and possibilities to measure the performance of climate policies and actions, which differ in methodology and indicator choice.
Our Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the climate performance of 59 countries (and the EU) that are collectively responsible for over 90% of global emissions. All major economies and many emerging economies are included.
The CCPI is based on criteria including the country’s emissions levels, energy use, and use of renewable energy, as well as its climate policies (find more about our methodology here). Other indexes place their focus in different areas and this post will examine those, as well, giving credit where due, because all the indexes serve an important role.
This post examines the importance of scientific climate performance indexes, and how you can understand them.