Climate change mitigation is a cross-cutting policy issue that requires coordination between policy departments and different levels of governance. However, the constitutional division of responsibilities (polity) and changing political constellations in government and society (politics) are constraining factors for achieving a horizontal climate policy integration and vertical coherence. This is especially the case in the federal system of Germany which is characterized by high degree of independence of departments and interdependence of the federal and subnational level. In recent years, integrated climate mitigation strategies were increasingly employed as a new governance mechanism to cope with the challenges of climate policy integration, coherence and longterm planning. This paper analyses and assesses the impact of three integrated climate mitigation strategies in Germany, namely the 2007 federal government’s “Integrated Energy and Climate Program” as well as regional strategies from Baden-Wuerttemberg and Hamburg. It shows that existing approaches especially at federal level so far lack important strategic elements that would ensure longterm impacts. Baden-Wuerttemberg’s recently initiated strategy process might serve as a role model for other entities because it combines clear objectives and targets with institutional innovations, legal codification and broad participation. The case studies demonstrate that effective strategies not only require ambitious and targets and measures, but also a continuous process and dedicated strategic capacities. However, the impacts of strategies on actual policy development are hard to attribute.

This paper analyses the enabling conditions, barriers and future prospects of decentralised experimentation with renewable energy sources (RES) in the German energy transition, with a specific focus on the multi-level governance framework. It investigates why, and under which conditions, decentralised experiments have served as a major driving force in the development of RES in Germany, highlighting the instrumental role local governments and the national support scheme for RES have played in supporting and protecting decentralised RES initiatives. Looking at the impact of decentralised experimentation, this paper argues that the scope of decentralised renewable energy development is now such that there is an obvious need for multi-level governance coordination to address the emerging challenges of temporal and spatial disparities between power generation and demand, as well as distributional and land-use conflicts. The authors observe that many local and regional governments have not yet sufficiently considered the coordination required to make their own efforts compatible with overall energy system transition needs. They may lose their function as important facilitators for RES experimentation if they do not start engaging in new approaches to stakeholder participation, coordinated regional energy flows and system integration of RES. Moreover, bottom-up experimentation with decentralised energy system structures is also threatened by recent changes in the political framework condi-tions at the European and national level which have led to a reform of the German support scheme for RES, including, amongst others, a phase-out of the feed-in tariff scheme and its replacement by an auction scheme. Against the backdrop of these adverse political framework conditions, the paper concludes by discussing strategies to preserve the dynamics of decentralised experimentation as a vigorous driver of the German energy transition.

This paper analyzes the degree of climate policy integration (CPI) in Germany’s building policy. The basic assumption of CPI is that the cross- sectoral and multi-level challenge of climate change necessitates the integration of climate concerns into non-environmental policy fields (horizontally) and across different levels of governance (vertically). There are at least three dimensions in which CPI can be analyzed, namely a conceptual, a procedur-al, and an output/outcome dimension. We use this distinction and analyze the current sta-tus of CPI in Germany’s building policy, an area highly relevant for climate change mitiga-tion. In all three dimensions, CPI appears to be at a fairly low level, leaving much room for improvement in terms of prioritization, coordination, and coherence. It seems as if politi-cal commitment to climate change mitigation has a rather low impact on everyday policy-making, i.e. when decisions on trade-offs, resources, and reallocations have to be made. In the absence of a comprehensive strategy, current German building policy does not reflect the need for coherent and long-term climate policymaking. What is the role of federalism in this regard? In section 2, we outline that federalism might impact both positively and negatively on the prospects of CPI, and that there is no uniform relationship between the two. In the specific case of building policy, a number of negative effects of federalism – incoherence, veto players, enforcement deficits – seem to material-ize. Even though coordination between federal and Länder level is deemed necessary, real-ity shows that it happens only to a very limited extent. The Länder partly opposing more ambitious policies, a stronger integration and are varying considerably regarding the im-plementation of federal policies. On the other hand, potential advantages from federalism for CPI are limited in the field of building policy. Baden-Wuerttemberg’s pioneering role in setting standards for renewable heating systems certainly inspired federal legislation, but so far that is mainly restricted to new constructions. The lacking horizontal CPI across departments in particular as well as the lack of coordina-tion across levels of decision making leads to an argument for more and better coordina- tion between all actors involved, be they federal or state actors. Coordination needs to be firmly embedded in the whole policy cycle, starting with joint target-setting, continuing with agreement on adequate policy instruments, and concluding with an evaluation of ef-fects. Strategic capacities, e.g. dedicated institutions or budgets would be needed to maintain the topic on the agenda as an issue of high priority even after changes in government. The finding however, indicates that the low hanging fruits of energy demand and ef-ficiency have not received similar attention as the supply of (renewable) energy.

In this article, we develop the concept of transformative environmental policy as a com-plementary field of environmental policy, which addresses on-going processes of societal change and utilizes them for achieving environmental sustainability. In our view, transformative environmental policies are not replacing other environmental policies that protect natural resources or reduce emissions or such policies that aim to integrate environmental concerns in other domains of policy making. Instead, transformative environmental policy is focused on on-going societal change. The concept of transformative environmental policy is based on the assumption of limited government’s capacities to plan and steer societal transformations. Based on this assumption, it suggests three key elements of governing transformative change: 1) a systematic observation and analysis of processes of societal change, 2) identifying issue areas and action fields which are critical for societal change even if they are beyond the traditional responsibility of environmental departments, and 3) the development, support and review of experiments which have the potential of re-directing societal trends towards sustainability. The concept is based on the notion of transformation as a co-evolution of different societal systems, and in particular technological systems, culture and institutions. There is no single determinant that is causal for transformation, and certainly not a single governmental intervention. Instead, transformations are the result of a dynamic interplay between different systems and innovation. The concept seeks realistic opportunities of influencing societal transformations towards sustainability. It is a characteristic of transformations that the direction and the pace of change are disputed. This is also the case for transformations towards sustainability: Different actors compete on the framing of visions which may guide such transformation. They range from green economy-visions of industrialized and globalized societies to post growth-visions and regionalized societies. The paper is organized as follows: The first section discusses questions on the characteristics of societal transformations, the drivers and actors of transformation based on a review of literature. The second section summarizes findings from an analysis of visions of transformations towards sustainability. The third and final section develops the concept of a transformative environmental policy and discusses the implications for policy making and opportunities to govern transformative changes