Germany is commonly seen as a global role model in transforming its electricity system from fossil-based power generation to the “green” electricity production based on renewable energy technologies. As a result of this so-called energy transition (Energiewende in German), the share of green electricity rose from around 6% in 2000 to about 36% in 2017.

By Jon M. Jachimowicz (Columbia Business School) and Oliver P. Hauser (University of Exeter Business School)

You sit down at a bar and order a cocktail, waiting for your blind date to arrive. You scan the restaurant when a guy with a scruffy beard and neon sneakers walks towards you and introduces himself: Alex—your date. You start chatting; you tell him where you grew up, what you do for a living, how much you love your cat. As you talk, you try to read his facial expressions. Does he also love cats? Wait, was that the beginning of a grimace…maybe he hates cats?

By: Jeffrey A. Brooks and Jonathan B. Freeman

“In exchange for political support, the Brazilian government is signaling landholders to increase deforestation, putting the country’s contribution to the Paris Agreement at risk. The President of Brazil has signed provisionary acts and decrees lowering environmental licensing requirements, suspending the ratification of indigenous lands, reducing the size of protected areas and facilitating land grabbers to obtain the deeds of illegally deforested areas2. This could undermine the success of Brazil’s CO2 emission reductions through control of deforestation in the previous decade…”

Nevada and Massachusetts, two of the first adopters of modern-day renewable portfolio standards (RPS), just celebrated their policies’ 20th birthdays.