"Germany had an early start on its pathway towards a more efficient and sustainable growth. During the last decades, it developed ambitious energy, industrial, and environmental policies at the national level and played a very strong role in these areas at the European level. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the country’s strong  environmental  framework  makes  Germany  a  pioneer  in  sustainable development, which shows that a more efficient and low-carbon economy is compatible with growth (OECD, 2012). Germany’s National Strategy for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2002, sets the guiding principles for national policies across all sectors. Despite several changes of government, the strategy has remained alive and in place, serving as basis for concrete targets and actions and is evaluated regularly.  Over the last decades, Germany had managed to substantially increase energy efficiency and decouple energy consumptions and greenhouse gas emissions from economic development. This is shown by the units of gross domestic product (GDP) per kg of oil equivalent generated in Germany, which are well above the world average, an indicator of the energy efficiency of the German economy from environmental and economic perspectives." (p. 2)