April 2022

Authors (members of SSCP KAN in bold):

Best, Benjamin; Bierwirth, Anja; Bonhage, Almut; Bradke, Harald; Breil, Klaus; Brischke, Lars-Arvid; Deffner, Jutta; Dütschke, Elisabeth; Ehmler, Hartmut; Eichhammer, Wolfgang; Fischedick, Manfred; Fischer, Corinna; Fuchs, Doris; Gensch, Carl-Otto; Götz, Konrad; Gran, Christoph; Grießhammer, Rainer; Heiland, Stefan; Hennicke, Peter; Jänicke, Martin; Leuser, Leon; Lorek, Sylvia; Nagel, Kai; Noll, Christian; Oei, Pao-Yu; Schneider, Flurina; Schrader, Ulf; Spangenberg, Joachim H.; Stieß, Immanuel; Thomas, Stefan; Thorun, Christian; Tröger, Josephine; Wiese, Frauke; Wolff, Franziska; Zahrnt, Angelika; Zell-Ziegler, Carina; Ziesing, Hans-Joachim

The German Energy Sufficiency Community just launched a thesis paper providing arguments why saving energy is the key to energy security and thus energy sufficiency needs to be better developed as a strategy. You may find it valuable for similar initiatives in your country or just as a source for inspiration and reference on the way to energy sufficiency.

Proposals on how to react to the war in Ukraine in terms of energy policy are currently overflowing. One key principle is only slowly entering the public consciousness: energy sufficiency. This means reducing the demand for energy. Energy sufficiency lowers costs, reduces the need for additional purchases, makes us more independent in terms of energy policy and is helpful in terms of climate policy. It must now become a central principle of political action.

A supplementary publication to a collection of various materials on proposed measures and potential assessments on the topics of energy sufficiency, energy efficiency and energy independence are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6405817 (in German).

A quick English translation of the paper is now available. (Translation by Almut Bonhage, Stefan Scheuer Consulting)