Multiple benefits as incentive for municipal climate mitigation efforts? The case of a German shrinking and aging middle size city

Panel: 3. Local action

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Theresa Weinsziehr, Universität Leipzig, Germany
Maria Gröger, Universität Leipzig, IIRM, Germany
Mart Verhoog, Universität Leipzig, IIRM, Germany
Thomas Bruckner, Universität Leipzig, IIRM, Germany

Abstract

Municipalities are often said to be the protagonists in determining the quality and pace of energy-efficient refurbishment of buildings. At the same time, climate-change mitigation also poses a problem for collective action. This implies the need to understand possible motivations for municipalities to promote energy efficiency measures. Even though the multiple benefits of buildings renovation are increasingly highlighted by major research institutions such as the IPCC and other intergovernmental bodies such as the IEA little work has been done to address the local dimension of the community-wide benefits that result from increasing energy efficiency by refurbishment. Therefore, this paper presents a contextual approach by assessing the macro-economic impacts on municipalities from energy-related renovation measures. It provides a single case study of the shrinking and aging middle-size city of Delitzsch in Saxony, Germany. The analysis is divided into three parts: Firstly this study takes a modeling approach in which renovation scenarios are designed that distinguish between the renovation behavior of landlords and that of home owners. Secondly, the scenario effects on the municipality are evaluated. Factors such as municipal tax revenues, local employment effects, avoided energy imports as well as the ecological impact are analyzed. The investment and ecological effects of energy-related refurbishment are determined through the integrated scenario-based energy modeling tool DESCoM; while welfare effects are estimated on the basis of literature research. The third part takes a qualitative survey approach: it summarizes the results of interviews among mayors of municipalities with decreasing and aging population in Saxony on their perception of benefits from an energy transition. Finally, this study concludes that municipalities confronted by difficult conditions can also expect considerable positive economic impacts when they provide incentives to carry out energy-efficiency renovation. A central result of this research shows that these benefits are not yet identified by decision makers of shrinking and aging middle size cities.

ERRATA

Some of the numbers in Table 6 have been corrected. They have also been corrected in the section "Results of the scenario analysis" and in the summary.