The 2000-Watt Society

The "2000-Watt Society" is a model for energy policy, developed at ETH Zurich, which demonstrates how it is possible to consume only as much energy as worldwide energy reserves permit and which is justifiable in terms of the impact on the environment. Lucas Bretschger, CESifo Visiting Scholar at the end of August, was the lead author of a study that explored the economic aspects of this project. The 2000-Watt society is one of the future scenarios in the plans of the Swiss Office of Energy and was approved by Zurich voters in 2008.

Mr Bretschger's research interests include the dynamics of resource use, endogenous growth models, trade and economic development, environmental and regional economics, innovation and biased technical change, and sustainable development. His recent work has been published in such academic journals as the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Resource and Energy Economics, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, and Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Lucas Bretschger is Professor of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). He is the Director of CER-ETH, the Center for Economic Research at the ETH, Associated Chair at the Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (CEPE), ETH Zurich, and External Research Associate at OxCarre (Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource-Rich Economies), University of Oxford. Lucas Bretschger is a member of the Advisory Body on Climate Change to the Swiss government and was a member of the Swiss Delegation at the United Nations climate change conferences COP 15 (Copenhagen) and COP 17 (Durban).

He has held previous academic positions at the University of Zurich, Princeton University, University of Konstanz, University of La Paz, and Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald. He studied Economics at the University of Zurich, where he got his PhD in 1989.