Angela Köppl Honoured as "Sustainable Designer"

© Michael Hillebrand

 
A jury of around 60 people in the field of sustainability selected WIFO environmental economist Angela Köppl and environmental economist Stefan Schleicher to receive the "Sustainable Designer 2024" award. The award, which has been presented by the magazine Businessart since 2009, honours committed and innovative individuals in the field of sustainable business.

Angela Köppl has been working at WIFO since 1992. Her research interests and work have focussed on issues of economic sustainability from the very beginning. This led to the establishment of the new research field "Environmental Economics" at WIFO. Questions of ecological, economic and social sustainability have now established themselves as research topics in science. In the 1990s, however, these issues were still considered marginal topics.

Environmental economist Köppl was confronted with an inadequate data base in this area of innovation and the challenge of raising awareness of the relevance of these topics among her colleagues and the research community as a whole. Her first research papers, such as "Macroeconomic and Sectoral Effects of Energy Taxation in Austria" (1996), "Environmental Technologies as a Contribution to Environmentally Sound Development" (1999) and "CO₂ Emission Trading – Instrument of an Austrian Climate Strategy" (2000), have lost neither their innovative power nor their topicality to this day.

Their commitment contributed significantly to establishing the importance of environmental economics in the scientific debate and to promoting interdisciplinary co-operation. However, the establishment of sustainability issues as central fields of research at WIFO is also due to her commitment. The Research Group "Climate, Environmental and Resource Economics"' at WIFO now comprises eleven researchers and three research assistants.

As a member of the founding board of the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA), Angela Köppl was instrumental in establishing this institution. She also served as vice-president of the Austrian Chapter of the Club of Rome until 2023. In addition, the environmental economist contributes her expertise to various committees, including as a board member of the Austrian Economic Association, on the transdisciplinary advisory board of the JPI Climate, in the Climate Change Center Austria, as a member of the supervisory board of ÖBB Holding AG and as a member of the university council at the Vienna School of Economics and Business.

Stefan Schleicher is a professor at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz and a consultant at WIFO, where he is involved in numerous innovative research projects.

"The WIFO Directorate congratulates the laureates on this award. The willingness to integrate new issues into economic research and economic policy advice has undoubtedly required long-term perseverance," said WIFO Deputy Director Christine Mayrhuber.