Over time, environmental policy has developed numerous different (sub-) fields. The amount of adopted objectives and instruments for their implementation is rising. As a consequence, the risk in-creases of contradictions and conflicts between different environmental fields of action as well as dif-ferent levels of government. Observers point to more and more inconsistencies within the sphere of environmental policy. For instance, policy-makers on the one hand encourage energetic restorations and on the other hand call for a reduction of material use. On the one hand, fossil fuels shall be sub-stituted by renewable resources such as biomass; on the other hand, ecosystems are to be preserved. Ensuring the coherence of policy objectives and instruments is a permanent challenge for environ-mental policy. It requires a good overview of the different fields of action, policy objectives, policy instruments, their effects and interactions. Such knowledge cannot be provided by a single person or organizational unit but is distributed among many experts and networks. The study at hand presents an approach for analysing and ensuring the coherence of environmental policy. It is an output of the research project “Examining the coherence of environmental policy ob-jectives and instruments for the purpose of environmental reporting” which was commissioned within the Environmental Research Plan (UFOPLAN). The developed approach can be used in the context of formulating, evaluating, reporting and com-municating environmental policy. It is based on a Wiki platform that makes data on environmental policy objectives easily accessible. Interactions between policy objectives are identified through the analysis of causal chains (causal chain analysis): policy objectives are implemented by means of pol-icy instruments which trigger (intended or unintended) changes in the behaviour of actors such as companies, households etc.. These behavioural changes may not only affect the initial environmental problem, but also other problems – by mitigating (synergy) or reinforcing (conflict) the causes of these other problems. In the “Coherence Wiki”, this information is presented in a schematised form. The analysis of the collected data shows that the objectives of German environmental policy are highly interrelated. Conflicts and synergies exist between the objectives and instruments of different policy sub-fields. The developed method also allows forecasting the coherence of potential new ob-jectives and instruments. The approach is hence particularly apt to support the development of new environmental policy strategies.

This study develops a methodology to assess the distributional effects of environmental policy instru-ments and measures. This method takes into consideration the economic as well as social and envi-ronmental effects. As a first step, the state of the art of the conceptualization of distributional effects was resumed. This overview combines the state of the art in research as well as the current practice of policy impact assessment and the guidelines in this context. Based on this theoretical overview, the authors developed a method to analyze distributional effects. This analysis consists of three main steps: 1) scoping phase, 2) relevance test, 3) in-depth analysis. The result chain analysis constitutes the basis of the scoping phase to identify possible direct and indirect effects of a policy. For the effects that were identified as relevant, an in-depth analysis is undertaken. The first step of this analysis is an assessment of the distributional effects of the status quo. The analysis of the current state serves as a “business as usual” scenario, which can be used for a comparison with the suggested new policy in-strument. First, the in-depth analysis for both, the analysis of the status quo as well as the assessment of the policy instrument, consists of an analysis of the current state of the art based on a literature re-view. Secondly, the economic effects of the instrument are simulated with the micro-economic model IZAΨMOD. This method was applied in five case studies. The instruments examined are: 1) Abolishment of the commuting allowance, 2) A revision of the speed limits on highways, country roads, and in built-up areas, 3) Incentives for promoting energy-focused building refurbishment, 4) A replacement program for cooling appliances in combination with a counselling programme on household energy saving, and 5) a modification of the taxation of the private use of company cars.