ZEW Environmental Economist Andreas Löschel Appointed to Author Team of IPCC Assessment Report on Climate Change

PD Dr. Andreas Löschel is one of 36 climate researchers from Germany contributing their expertise to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report which is to be published between June 2013 and March 2014. Löschel is head of the research department Environmental and Resource Economics at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). He was appointed as lead author of the Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to the German IPCC-Coordination Office, only about one quarter of researchers nominated by Germany were appointed as authors. The most important selection criterion was the researchers’ scientific expertise. "We are pleased that an excellent researcher like Andreas Löschel was chosen. With his appointment, ZEW is able to contribute its expertise in the field of environmental economics to the most important report worldwide regarding environmental policy," says ZEW President Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Franz.

About 830 authors from all over the world are going to work on the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report. The authors were chosen from more than 3,000 nominees. ZEW expert Andreas Löschel is lead author in the working group III "Mitigation of Climate Change". He is mainly going to contribute to the chapter about the assessment of transformation pathways. "Assessing transformation pathways on climate friendly economic activities is very important," Löschel explains and continues: "Central questions are: How can the pathways be designed? Which role do technological progress and social change play? What are the economic consequences?" When working on the IPCC Assessment Report, Löschel can build on his experience he derived from working on the last study on climate change control scenarios by the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University.

For further information please contact

Prof. Dr. Andreas Löschel, Phone: +49 (0)621/1235-200, E-mail: loeschel@zew.de