Description: The goal of this dissertation is to facilitate the assessment of impacts from sustainable measures and projects with an emphasis on impact reporting for Green, Social or Sustainability Bonds in the Sustainable Finance market. It does so by providing analysts with the means to develop, depict, formulate, and assess a causal hypothesis between an intervention and its subsequent effects in an impact-chain, represented by desired environmental (E), social (S) or governance (G) changes. This is achieved by developing a methodology for so-called ESG Logic Models or ESG-LM, that combine heuristic Theories-of-Change with propositional logic and Bayesian Reasoning. Three research questions are investigated and responded to. Research Question 1 asks how such Theories-of-Change can be developed for any type of ESG-related issue and how the different process steps in a causal chain can be classified, hierarchised, and prioritised regarding their efficacy towards overarching sustainability goals and their plausibility. Research Question 2 studies (a) the means by which the analyst or any other interested third party might be warranted in believing the causal claims from an ESG-LM, and (b) how an ESG-LM can be improved if this credence is low. Research Question 3 then looks at the reporting of impacts themselves regarding indicator selection, indicator assessment and indicator quantification as well as the provision of information on the contributions and attributions by different actors. The dissertation draws on a variety of theories and adapts existing methods to achieve that. It operationalises concepts from empirical Sustainable Finance research and already existing impact assessment methodologies. It adapts scholarly and practitioner approaches for theory-based evaluation and applies a qualitative social science perspective towards theory-building and evaluation, while some of the assessment tools in the dissertation are grounded in Logic, Set Theory and Bayesian Epistemology. Examples for such tools include rules for the Attribution by actors, heuristics for the abduction of plausible outcome pathways, or a four-stage Argument and Decision-Tree to assess the credibility of ESG-LM claims (based on Bayes Theorem). My assessment of the entire methodology is positive overall, as it provides solutions to each of the three research areas. Limitations of the approach, and thus opportunities for further research, are the additional expertise and time required by analysts compared to the existing, and somewhat more pragmatic, solutions in the current market. However, this is outweighed in my opinion by the ability of the framework to strongly mitigate impact washing by actors in the financial markets as well as biases by analysts. Its overall methodology also provides opportunities for new research angles in the area of sustainability indicators and assessments.

Description: The food and agricultural sector will face numerous challenges in the next decades, arising from changing global production and consumption patterns, which currently go along with high resource use, causing ecological and socio-economic impacts. The aim of this paper is to illustrate and evaluate the practical applicability of the Hot Spot Analysis methodology in the context of supply chain management in companies. The HSA is a method to identify social and ecological problems along the entire life cycle of a product. Special emphasis is put on a customized implementation in the value chain beef of McDonald's Germany. The HSA of McDonald's beef value chain shows that the main ecological problems arise in the phase of raw material extraction, whereas the main social problems can be identified in the phase of slaughtering. Finally, the paper shows potentials and shortcomings of such a customized application and how the results can be implemented in the sustainability management of a company.

Description: The project "Plastic Credits - Financing the Transition to the Global Circular Economy" supports the implementation of a waste management structure in India's rural regions. By that it aims to improve the current waste collection and treatment structures in the pilot regions Goa, Maharashtra, and Kerala. Herein, the project focuses on low value plastics (LVP), and especially multi-layer plastics (MLP), that have no market value. In order to analyze the environmental impacts of the project, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was conducted. The considered environmental components comprise: greenhouse gas emissions, usage of primary resources, impacts on marine and terrestrial wildlife, standard of living, and economic costs.

Description: Energy performance contracting (EPC) as a market instrument has been effective in promoting energy efficiency worldwide, but it has encountered many insurmountable obstacles in rural energy management. In this study, based on the characteristics of energy management in rural areas, three EPC modes are designed and tested in 24,000 rural households. The test results show that two adapted EPC modes of local government involvement and energy payment directly from the national grid can effectively overcome the barriers encountered in the traditional EPC modes and work well under the economic and social environmental conditions in rural areas. The key to the adaptation of the traditional EPC modes is the introduction of the local government as the third party. Participation of the third party can effectively reduce and remove the barriers and risks and increase the mutual trust between the clients (households) and the energy service companies (ESCOs). Based on the testing results, this study suggests that governmental departments should formulate relevant EPC policies and technical guidelines within the rural context. This research recommends that farmers should not manage their energy services by themselves and it is suggested to out-contracting ESCOs by applying the modes developed and tested by this paper.

Description: Transnational corporations' (TNCs) economic operations cover numerous countries and can be diverted between several continents. These units have reached a level of significance, having not only economic, but also social and environmental implications. This justifies that they shall be treated separately as a social phenomenon, when considering strategies for the development towards sustainability. This paper presents the concept of Responsible Corporate Governance (RCG), as a strategy to "govern" TNCs. RCG is suggested as a stakeholder based policy instrument, which aims at allocating responsibilities to societal actors aiming at corporate accountability. RCG recognises that the process of societal change is strongly based on what can be called as bottom up-processes. Learning processes take place through the interaction of the different societal members, which eventually leads to macro changes. Therefore, governing TNCs towards sustainability improvements is considered to be a collective process including all stakeholders. Firstly, the paper places the concept of RCG in the ongoing debate of political modernization based on the fact that society develops overtime and the political system must correspondingly modernize. In this context, political overload developed as a consequence of increased resource interdependencies is explained and as a resolution, network approach is discussed. Secondly, demands on the orientation of the TNCs in terms of accountability and innovative action are brought forward. Here, the paper also lists down corporate elements (stakeholder empowered corporate governance, management and performance evaluation systems, transparency enhancement and accountability verification), which need to be in place to attain an accountable orientation in the society. Following, using an analytical framework, the orientation and capabilities of each societal actor (environmental non-governmental organisations, financial institutions, intergovernmental organisations) to affect improvements in the corporate responsibility elements are investigated and recommendations for their effective orientation are listed.

Description: Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute considerably to Germany's carbon emissions, regional savings and cooperative banks - SMEs' most important financiers - hardly consider this aspect in lending to these businesses. However, given Germany's commitment to climate neutrality by 2045, suitable approaches for injecting climate finance into these SME lending processes are greatly required. Against this background, the paper at hand aims to introduce the specific case of regional banks into the debate on green finance and green banking and suggest future research in this context. In discussing the state of research on the peculiarities of regional savings and cooperative banks, we outline the resulting opportunities and limitations for climate impact assessments in SME lending. We argue that while the dual bottom-line orientation of regional banks in Germany precludes them from applying simple positive or negative screenings, their in-depth knowledge about local clients and circumstances enables them to be active and engaging partners for the green transformation of SMEs. Nonetheless, we explain why developing solutions to utilise this knowledge for climate finance by integrating climate impact assessments into routine lending processes remains a particularly challenging task.

Description: The European electricity market is linked to a carbon market with a fixed cap that limits greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, a number of energy efficiency policy instruments in the EU aim at reducing the electricity consumption. This article explores the interactions between the EU's carbon market on the one hand and instruments specifically targeted towards energy end-use efficiency on the other hand. Our theoretical analysis shows how electricity demand reduction triggered by energy efficiency policy instruments affects the emission trading scheme. Without adjustments of the fixed cap, decreasing electricity demand (relative to business-as-usual) reduces the carbon price without reducing total emissions. With lower carbon prices, costly low emission processes will be substituted by cheaper high emitting processes. Possible electricity and carbon price effects of electricity demand reduction scenarios under various carbon caps are quantified with a long-term electricity market simulation model. The results show that electricity efficiency policies allow for a significant reduction of the carbon cap. Compared to the 2005 emission level, 30% emission reductions can be achieved by 2020 within the emission trading scheme with similar or even lower costs for the industrial sector than were expected when the cap was initially set for a 21% emission reduction.

Description: The optimization of value chains is an important process to promote sustainable development, since value chains are closely linked to the satisfaction of human needs and combine different driving forces for environmental change. This article presents a methodological approach for the participatory development of value-chain wide sustainability indicator sets and their integration into a decision support tool in the specific case study of the chain "construction and refurbishment with wood". There are numerous indicator sets for sustainable development of forests and sustainable forestry available at different levels, ranging from local, regional and national to global scale assessments. Some efforts were also made to integrate later production stages of forest value chains (such as wood processing) in the assessment scope (e.g. for chain-of-custody certification). However, no indicator set has so far been available covering environmental, social and economic aspects for the entire value chain of building with timber. This gap was closed through applied sustainability research in the project "Holzwende 2020: Sustainable future markets for wood in the building sector".

Description: The paper sketches out a theoretical framework for analysing the interplay between eco-efficiency, cognition and institutions. It derives from analytical shortfalls of the prevailing literature, which features strongly engineering and business economics, by using insights from New Institutional Economics, from Cognitive Science and, partly, from Evolutionary Economics. It emphasises the role cognition and institutions play in the adoption of "green" technologies by firms. A cognitive perspective derives from recent research on simple heuristics and context-based rationality; it is proposed that those findings can serve to analyse decision-making of individual actors respectively firms and, thus, should complement economic analysis. A second proposition is that eco-efficiency and normative rules such as a Factor Four strongly rely upon institutions, i.e. the ability of institutions to evolve over time and the development of those institutions that are most appropriate to enhance technological change. In this regard, business institutions and competition are crucial, but regulatory needs remain in order to safeguard continuity of knowledge creation. The framework allows for an analysis why overall adoption of eco-efficiency still can be considered relatively slow and why some markets and firms are far ahead. As a brief case study the article reflects upon German waste law's ability to enhance eco-efficiency.

Description: The paper sketches out a theoretical framework for analysing the interplay between eco-efficiency, cognition and institutions. It derives from analytical shortfalls of the prevailing literature, which features strongly engineering and business economics, by using insights from New Institutional Economics, from Cognitive Sciences and, partly, from Evolutionary Economics. It emphasises the role cognition and institutions play in the adoption of "green" technologies by firms. A cognitive perspective derives from recent research on simple heuristics and context-based rationality; it is proposed that those recent findings can serve to analyse decision-making of individual actors or firms and, thus, should complement economic analysis. A second proposition is that eco-efficiency and normative rules such as a Factor Four strongly rely upon institutions, i.e. the ability of institutions to evolve over time and the development of those institutions that are most appropriate to enhance technological change. In this regard, business institutions and competition are crucial, but regulatory needs remain in order to safeguard continuity of knowledge creation. The framework allows for an analysis why overall adoption of eco-efficiency still can be considered relatively slow and why some markets and firms are far ahead. As a brief case study the article reflects upon German waste law’s ability to enhance eco-efficiency.