International Guests Discuss Energy Transition at ZEW
Conferences
05.06.2023
Eleventh Mannheim Conference on Energy and the Environment
On 8 and 9 May 2023, around 90 energy and environmental economists from Germany and abroad participated in the eleventh 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 air pollution, emissions trading, energy conservation and climate policy.
Professor Sebastian Rausch, head of ZEW’s Research Unit “Environmental and Climate Economics”, opened the conference. With Professor Wolfram Schlenker from Columbia University, Professor Shuang Zhang from Imperial College London, Professor Robert Metcalfe from the University of Southern California, and Professor Lint Barrage from ETH Zurich, ZEW was once again able to welcome renowned international environmental economists as keynote speakers. Their keynotes dealt, among other things, with questions of inequality arising due to spatial differences in warming trends and equilibrium effects of climate policies in the broader economy. In addition, the speakers presented on the contribution of the credibility revolution to the design of climate change policy and the scope of market-based instruments to reduce CO2 emissions in China.
International speakers and audience
In addition to the four keynote lectures, the scientific programme of the conference consisted of 55 contributions selected from around 200 conference submissions. The presentations were organised in five blocks with four parallel sessions each. The event attracted many international guests: 45 per cent of the speakers came from other European countries, about half from Germany and about 10 per cent came from universities in the USA and different Asian countries.
Heinz König Young Scholar Award sponsored by MVV
This year, the Heinz König Young Scholar Award was awarded to the most outstanding paper by a young researcher participating in the conference. The award has a long-standing tradition at ZEW and has been awarded annually to young and upcoming economists since 2004. This year’s award was sponsored by MVV Energie AG and awarded to Augusto Ospital from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for his work on “Urban policy and spatial exposure to environmental risk”. In his work, the doctoral student shows that land-use regulations that define the number of homes to be built within a designated area restrict development in safer areas, deteriorate housing affordability, and drive people to live in areas that are more exposed to natural hazard risks such as wildfires.
In its eleventh 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.
