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The energy transition in the electricity sector is up and running thanks to plummeting prices for electricity generated from renewables. It has also been at the forefront of recent public debates on the coal exit and minimum distance rules for wind turbines. But it is the heating sector that accounts for most of Germany’s energy consumption - So the energy transition in the heating sector is a key arena for successful climate protection. Although the Building Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz) adopted by the German Bundestag on 18 June provides some clear improvements, it falls short of the requirements necessary for a fundamental socio-technical transformation of the heating supply, according to Leonard Frank and Rainer Quitzow.

Please view the full article here on the website of IASS Potsdam.

Chantal Ruppert-Winkel completed her habilitation in the field of "Environmental Governance" successfully with her lecture "The concept of governance on different scales: from the Sustainable Development Goals to the real laboratory" („Das Governancekonzept auf unterschiedlichen Skalen: von den Sustainable Development Goals bis zum Reallabor“). In her framework publication "Regional Sustainability Transition - Development and Dynamics in Practice and Theory" („Regionale Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen –Entstehung und Dynamiken in Praxis und Theorie“) and the associated 11 scientific publications, she systematically synthesizes the processes of regional sustainability transformations and analyzes the underlying drivers and the resulting dynamics. There was also an examination of the question of how sustainability can be grasped in the context of regional sustainability context and whether or how it can be steered towards a corresponding goal. The 11 articles were created especially in the framework of the "Renewable Energy-Regions" research group (EE-Regions (BMBF-Nachwuchsforschungsgruppe „EE-Regionen“) led by Chantal Ruppert-Winkel.

Example articles:

• Hauber, J.; Ruppert-Winkel, C. (2012): Moving towards energy self-sufficiency based on renewables: Comparative case studies on the emergence of regional processes of socio-technical change in Germany. Sustainability 4 (4): 491–530.  -----  Click here for the article.

•  Ruppert-Winkel, C., R. Arlinghaus, S. Deppisch, K. Eisenack, D. Gottschlich, B. Hirschl, B. Matzdorf, T. Mölders, M. Padmanabhan, K. Selbmann, R. Ziegler, T. Plieninger (2015): Characteristics, emerging needs, and challenges of transdisciplinary sustainability science: experiences from the German Social-Ecological Research Program. Ecology and Society 20(3): 13.  -----  Click here for the article.
• Ruppert-Winkel, C. (2018): Leaders, networks and the social context: a relational leadership approach to regional renewable energy self-sufficiency. Journal of Cleaner Production 193: 811–832.  -----  Click here for the article.