SPREAD – Scenarios of Perception and Reaction to Adaptation | Umweltbundesamt

Specific assumptions on climate change are not considered. SPREAD focuses on the transformation of the German energy market and a changing social environment awareness regarding renewable energies.

Impacts of climate change on society and renewable energies

The objective of the SPREAD project is to create a model of cultural change potential in the face of climate change, which provides information about the scope and limits of possible cultural adaptation processes. In addition different, successful socio-technical innovations will be studied.

Based on a comprehensive literature review and on the results of the qualitative interviews, the quantitative survey and the agent-based modeling the overarching theory is being developed continuously in exchange on employee-level and in the project workshops. Particular attention will be given to the integration of the results obtained with the three different survey methodologies.

The simulation results so far indicate:

• The spatial spread is located earliest and most in suburban areas (suburbs of metropolitan areas). This correlates with the spatial distribution of innovation affinity surroundings in these areas.
• Combination effects between different measures are possible, in particular, a mutually reinforcing effect of a catastrophic media event and personal communication in social networks.
• In terms of lifestyles the diffusion of the use of green electricity in the coming years will hardly exceed the post-material milieu and remain in the niche.

Concerning the implementation of the model refinements and scaling to larger pilot areas (individual federal states or the whole of Germany) are still pending. Subsequently systematic simulations of various scenarios and the analysis and interpretation of the results will be done.