Climate protection in Switzerland and Ukraine: SNSF funds HSG research project with around 400,000 francs

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU) are supporting 20 research projects with a total of CHF 7.6 million as part of a joint call for proposals. The aim of the call for proposals “Ukrainian-Swiss Joint Research Programme (USJRP) 2023” is to support academic institutions in Ukraine, which has been severely affected by the war with Russia. The projects come from a wide range of disciplines. 

The project of the Institute for Economy and the Environment (IWÖ-HSG) of the University of St.Gallen approved by the SNSF and the NRFU is called “Decentralisation of energy and climate governance in Ukraine and Switzerland”. The project is led by Prof. Dr Rolf Wüstenhagen, Chair of Management of Renewable Energies at the University of St.Gallen, and Prof. Dr Serhiy Lyeonov, Academic and Research Institute of Business, Economics and Management at Sumy State University, Ukraine. Further experts include Dr Nadiya Kostyuchenko, Prof. Dr Denys Smolennikov, Prof. Dr Oleksandr Telizhenko and Dr Inna Tiutiunyk. The Swiss-Ukrainian team has already worked together successfully from 2015 to 2017 on an SNSF SCOPES project, at that time in cooperation with the University of Tartu (Estonia) on the topic of energy security.

Regional approach

To meet the challenges of climate change, dependence on fossil fuels must be overcome as quickly as possible. According to the 2023 Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), emissions must be reduced by 48% by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources, in particular renewable energy, is therefore an important policy priority in many countries. 

At the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, more than 110 countries committed to the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030. The focus is on electricity generation from photovoltaics and wind power. These two technologies account for around 90% of all global investment in renewable energies. The transition to electricity generation from solar, wind and other renewable energies goes hand in hand with a decentralisation of the energy system. Achieving national climate targets therefore depends crucially on the implementation of projects on the ground. The scientists of the Swiss-Ukrainian project are focusing on the analysis of regional approaches to energy and climate policy in their new project.

Aim: to gain insights into energy and climate policy

"Climate change is a global challenge. After three decades of tough negotiations at the UN climate conferences, however, one has to wonder whether the international community will find an effective global solution to the problem. In this context, there is a growing interest in local climate solutions. “Our project contributes to this by showing in which regions the transition to renewable energies has already progressed and what citizens, communities and cantons can do to successfully implement climate solutions,” said HSG Professor Rolf Wüstenhagen, summarising the main objective of the project. For this purpose the researchers are going to combine different research methods: in addition to collecting regional data on policy instruments and emissions and creating a Local Energy Transition Progress Index, a survey with a choice experiment will be conducted with 2,000 Ukrainians and Swiss. The focus of this survey is the population's preferences for participatory approaches in energy and climate policy. 

The project answers the following questions, among others:

• How do the different regions in Switzerland and Ukraine perform in achieving climate targets? And how do they implement energy policy?
• What role does the decentralisation of energy and climate policy play in explaining regional differences in target achievement?
• What preferences do the populations have with regard to decentralised energy and climate policy? Are there differences in citizens' preferences between and within the two countries, Switzerland and Ukraine?

Impulses for decision-makers

The research project should provide important insights for energy system transformation at the regional level. The focus here is on the role of decentralisation and citizen participation. The results should help to better understand the preferences and needs of key stakeholders. Political decision-makers in Switzerland and Ukraine in particular could benefit from the findings to improve their climate and energy policies. The research results can provide insights for policymakers at the national level, such as the Swiss Federal Office of Energy or the Ukrainian parliament, and the regional level, such as the canton of St.Gallen or Ukrainian oblasts (districts). The aim is to close the gap between national climate targets and actual progress in the regions.

The results are also relevant in view of Switzerland and Europe's efforts to support post-war Ukraine in its reconstruction – with a view to achieving climate targets and avoiding the mistakes of the past that led to a heavy dependence on energy imports from a small number of suppliers. 

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