Scientific Exchange on Energy Transition and Climate Change
Conferences
24.05.2024
Twelfth Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment at ZEW
On 13 and 14 May 2024, around 85 energy and environmental economists from Germany and abroad participated in the twelfth Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment at ZEW Mannheim. For two days, international researchers discussed various topics of energy, climate and environmental economics. This year, the conference focused on climate policies decreasing private and firm emissions, air pollution, energy conservation and behavioural aspects of decarbonization.
Professor Sebastian Rausch, head of ZEW’s Research Unit “Environmental and Climate Economics”, opened the conference. With Lucija Muehlenbachs from the University of Calgary, Rob Williams from the University of Maryland and Kyle Meng from UC Santa Barbara, ZEW was once again able to welcome renowned international environmental economists as keynote speakers. In her keynote, Lucija Muehlenbachs discussed the role of indigenous issues in the gas and oil sector in Canada, focussing especially on the extraction from and close to First Nations land.
The second keynote, by Rob Williams, described the labour market effects of climate policy. His research shows that aggregate labour market effects are relatively small, but distributional impacts can be substantial. The conference closed with Kyle Meng’s keynote, in which he presented Cape Town’s regulatory reactions to severe municipal water shortages. His research shows that wealthier households were able to adapt easily, while imposing negative externalities on low-income households. All three keynotes highlighted the distributional effects of climate policies and showed the relevance of these discussions.
International speakers and audience
In addition to the three keynote lectures, the scientific programme of the conference consisted of 67 contributions selected from around 200 conference submissions. The presentations were organised in six blocks with four parallel sessions each. The conference attracted many international guests: 48 per cent of the speakers came from other European countries, 45 per cent from Germany and about seven per cent came from universities in the USA, Canada and Australia.
In its twelfth year, the Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment, as one of the most important and renowned international conferences for energy and environmental economists, was able to maintain the high quality of contributions from previous years. Next year, ZEW will again invite researchers to discuss the key aspects of energy and environmental economics.
