ZEW on Board MS Wissenschaft

The exhibition vessel MS Wissenschaft (also known as MS Science) will be on tour through Germany from May 18th until October 7th. ZEW is on board again, this year with a video game about the "dilemma of climate protection".

Thomas Kohl, ZEW Director of Business and Administration, and PD Dr. Andreas Löschel, Head of the Research Department "Environmental and Resource Economics", were present when the ship set sail in Berlin on May 18th.

This year’s exhibition on the remodelled inland vessel MS Wissenschaft provides information about tomorrow’s energy supply, energetic resources, energy conservation, as well as a conscious use of energy. The ZEW research department "Environmental and Resource Economics" seizes the opportunity to inform visitors of this exhibition about the dilemma of climate protection. This dilemma has arisen because clean, environmentally friendly technologies are usually far more expensive than other technologies. Countries are aware of the importance of climate protection but none of them want to spend a high amount of money on it. For this reason, every country hopes that the other will take measures toward climate protection so that it can profit from these expensive undertakings without having to invest anything.

In order to make visitors to the exhibition aware of this dilemma, ZEW research department "Environmental and Resource Economics" has created a video game which puts the player in the position of a country having to establish its climate policy. The player has to decide whether to spend the country’s funds on climate protection, which would benefit all other countries as well, even those who do not invest in climate protection at all. Or should the country keep the money? How does the country react if other countries refuse to invest into measures of climate protection? The Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim is conducting similar tests, thus gaining insights into behaviour and preferences of people in certain situations.

The "energy vessel" will visit 34 cities including Magdeburg, Kiel, Hamburg, Hannover, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Mainz, and Nuremberg. It will go to Austria for the first time, visiting Vienna, Linz, and Krems. The tour will end on October 7th in Würzburg.