Energy Efficiency technologies: the IKARUS Database

The German modelling tool IKARUS (Instruments for the development of greenhouse gas reduction strategies) focussing on the main greenhouse gas CO2 has been applied recently in a scenario exercise to 2020 considering reduction scenarios up to -40%. This paper - based on a large recent report - shows that such a large reduction is technically not only feasible in Germany that there are also a variety of political measures at hand to realise climate protection targets. However, policy should not just rely on very few measures and sectors, as this would lead in the sectors concerned to hardly acceptable interference but on well constructed and targeted bundels of measures covering all sectors. To achieve this target, the initiation of structures for incentives, in particular based on economic leverages - is, in a first place, the task of the political decision makers at all levels.