Shaping the Energy Transition

The Kopernikus project Ariadne (full name: Ariadne - Evidence-based Assessment for the Design of the German Energy Transition) is one of four Kopernikus projects, one of the biggest German research projects on the energy transition funded by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space. The University of Greifswald, represented by the chair of public law, in particular administrative and environmental law held by Prof. Sabine Schlacke, is part of this project since its beginning in October 2020 and its participation was also approved for the second funding phase ending in December 2026.

Ariadne is an interdisciplinary project focusing on the crucial question of governing the energy transition from the legal, economic and political science perspective. It asks inter alia: Which instruments and actions have the most impact on the transformation of the energy system? Thereby, the project does not remain a solely academic research project – it engages with players from politics and other stakeholders as well as society establishing and dialogue and joint learning process. 

Prof. Sabine Schlacke and her team of three academic researchers provide the legal expertise, by defining the international and national legal framework for the jointly developed ideas and solutions, assessing and supplementing them with legal options for action. In this way, they ensure that the legal feasibility of the instruments and measures developed is always taken into account, thereby making a key contribution to Germany’s energy transition. In its research, the team of Prof. Sabine Schlacke is focusing in particular on the spatial dimension of the energy transition and the challenge of reconciling competing interests over the use of space as a scarce resource. This challenge manifests in the fact that climate protection measures are increasingly coming into conflict with other (environmental) measures. In addition to publishing the results in academic journals, the team of Prof. Schlacke also presents its results to the wider (professional) public, among others at the annual Ariadne@Bruessels-Event, which has now become an established event in Brussels and is even set to continue after the project has ended. Furthermore, the University of Greifswald team actively supported the project’s unique approach of fostering a mutual exchange between science, policy and society, for example though participation in the Ariadne@Berlin dialogue forum and a research stay at the University of Tilburg, where the project’s findings were discussed with external experts.