17:14 min, Published 12.9.2016
The film shows how the pioneering municipalities of Bremen, Aidlingen and Dortmund take fair trade into account in municipal procurement.
According to the annual balance sheet of the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry (BDH) presented today, the German market for solar thermal systems has shrunk further by 8 percent to 573,500 square meters of collector area.
There was no initial spark for the heating turnaround in 2018 either. This is the central result of the annual balance sheet of the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry (BDH). Although the manufacturers organised in the BDH were able to achieve an overall increase of 3 percent compared to the previous year with 732,000 heat generators sold. However, this plus resulted exclusively from the still dynamic new construction business. "Last year, around 600,000 appliances were used in the refurbishment of existing buildings. With around 12 million obsolete systems in the portfolio, the current modernisation rate is too low. Politicians must finally provide incentives to mobilise the abundant private capital for climate protection," says BDH President Uwe Glock.
Once again, modern gas condensing technology was the technology most in demand, with 492,500 appliances sold and an increase of 4 percent on the previous year. As in the previous year, heat pumps came second in the sales statistics with 84,000 appliances sold and an increase of 8 percent. This was followed by oil condensing technology with 58,500 appliances and a slight downward trend of 3 percent. The development of biomass-based systems was not satisfactory, with 24,000 units sold and a drop of 9 percent.
In addition to the market figures, the BDH also published the results of its annual multi-moment survey. In total, the 104 companies organised in the BDH generated a worldwide turnover of 15.1 billion euros with around 75,500 employees. 680 million euros were invested by manufacturers in research and development, once again demonstrating the high innovative strength of the heating industry. "The development has mainly taken place in the area of digitalisation. Digitalised and networked heating technology will be one of the defining themes of ISH 2019," says BDH General Manager Andreas Lücke.
Source: PM BDH 7.2.2019
Keywords:
Stakeholders, DE-News, Renewable, Solar thermal, Environmental policy, Ecology
Even before the UN Summit on Sustainable Development, it is clear that the implementation of the 2030 Agenda is making slow progress. The global community now needs action instead of words to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The international report on the status of SDG implementation shows that there are major gaps in implementation worldwide. The number of hungry people is increasing again worldwide. Social inequality continues to rise. The climate crisis and species extinction are advancing.
It is particularly dramatic that Germany is not a pioneer. In sustainability policy, the German government permanently acts according to the motto "too little, too late". Germany has a double responsibility: firstly, as an industrialised country, to demonstrate that it is taking the implementation of the Agenda seriously as a pioneer. And secondly, to contribute more than it has so far to financing the 2030 Agenda at the international level.
There is no coherent national legislation aligned with the SDGs. Still not all departments have prepared SDG action plans or provided additional funding. The climate cabinet's proposals are far from sufficient to achieve the climate sustainability goal and the Paris Climate Agreement. Biodiversity is declining, nitrate pollution for groundwater is not decreasing, environmentally harmful subsidies amounting to over 40 billion euros annually are not being eliminated.
We demand binding targets for SDG implementation for all ministries and ambitious measures where there are particularly large deficits in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, the German government must develop more ambitious indicators to meet the requirements of the SDGs. There is also a need for a sustainability TÜV for new laws.
At the international level, sustainability summits need to be organised in a more goal-oriented and inclusive way. It is incomprehensible that the private sector is invited to the SDG Business Summit at the United Nations, while there is no comparable forum for civil society. This is a fatal sign at a time when civil society actors worldwide are increasingly suffering from restrictions. This approach runs counter to the "Leave no one behind" guiding principle of the 2030 Agenda.
Source: Press release of 24.9.2019 by Buendnis 90/The Greens in the Bundestag Uwe Kekeritz, Spokesperson for Development Policy, and Bettina Hoffmann, Spokesperson for Environmental Policy
Keywords:
Greening / climate adaptation, Soil & land consumption, DE-News, Renewable, Climate protection, Sustainable management, News Blog Europe (without DE), SDG 2030, Social / Culture, Transition Town, UN (United Nations), Environmental policy, Economics
The number of CarSharing customers in Germany rose to 2.46 million over the course of last year. Above-average percentage growth was recorded by station-based CarSharing services. Station-based CarSharing also remains the backbone of the expansion in terms of area and is now available at 740 locations in Germany.
At the beginning of 2019, 2.46 million customers in Germany are registered with a car-sharing service, 350,000 more than in the previous year. Station-based car sharing providers are experiencing above-average growth with an increase of 21.5 percent. In free-floating CarSharing, customer growth is slowing somewhat and amounts to 14.9 percent. Overall, CarSharing in Germany continues to be on a clear growth path.
Gunnar Nehrke, Managing Director of Bundesverband CarSharing e.V., comments:
"The positive development in the German CarSharing market over the past years shows: More and more people want to deal responsibly with the resource car and practically shape the traffic turnaround."
The association is particularly pleased with the strong growth in the area of station-based CarSharing services, as several scientific studies had shown in 2018 that this variant has a particularly high traffic-relieving effect. Association Managing Director Nehrke explains:
"In station-based CarSharing, 70 to 80 percent of customers no longer own a car. Cities and municipalities should specifically promote this variant by setting up CarSharing stations in public areas.
In connection with CarSharing funding, the association criticises the Federal Ministry of Transport: "Even one and a half years after the Carsharing Act (CsgG) came into force, cities and municipalities cannot practically apply this law in all points because the Ministry does not present the ordinances that are the basis for it.
Christian Hochfeld, Director of Agora Verkehrswende, explains the current development of CarSharing:
"It is important that CarSharing becomes visible and available in public spaces. However, CarSharing should not be seen as an individual measure, but as an integral part of a municipal mobility strategy. After all, the right traffic policy framework conditions - such as comprehensive parking space management and the expansion of environmental zones - can further strengthen the positive effects of CarSharing services."
20,200 CarSharing vehicles will be available in Germany at the beginning of 2019, 2,250 more than in the previous year. Station-based providers account for more than half of the supply with 11,200 vehicles, while 9,000 vehicles will be used in free-floating CarSharing.
In the "free-floating" market segment, 890 vehicles belong to combined station-based/free-floating offerings. This new form of offering is used by some formerly purely station-based providers in order to be able to offer the advantages of both CarSharing variants from a single source. New combined systems were launched in 2018 in Leipzig and Karlsruhe, for example.
Station-based CarSharing is currently available at 740 locations in Germany. This is 63 locations more than in the previous year. Pure free-floating services are currently available in seven metropolitan areas and a few surrounding communities of these major cities.
The number of electric vehicles in the German CarSharing fleet remained almost unchanged in 2018. However, there are shifts in the number of electric vehicles in the individual fleet segments: The number of electric vehicles in the free-floating fleets of car manufacturers remained largely unchanged at 1,025 vehicles. The medium-sized CarSharing providers in the station-based sector were able to increase the number of electric vehicles from 321 to 498.
On the other hand, the operators of pure e-car sharing projects recorded declines. Here, the number of vehicles fell from 431 to 304. This is mainly due to the fact that the period of public funding or the leasing contracts for a high number of vehicles expired in 2018. As the vehicles had not reached the threshold for economic viability, they were removed from the fleet. Gunnar Nehrke explains:
"The electric share in CarSharing is 50 times higher than in the national car fleet. This shows: The providers want to switch to emission-free drives. But the framework conditions are not yet right: the vehicles are still too expensive. And there is still no funding concept for the installation of charging infrastructure at car sharing stations."
Keywords:
CarSharing, DE-News, Mobility, Resource efficiency, eMobility
In Jerry Yudelson's latest book, "Reinventing Green Building: Why Certification Systems Aren't Working and What We Can Do About It," published in June 2016, the American pioneer of sustainable building writes that certification systems are not advancing the needed sustainable development in the building sector quickly and substantially enough.
This has been shown by the experience of certification systems for sustainable building such as the DGNB, BREEAM and above all LEED seals of approval in recent decades. On the one hand, they are becoming increasingly widespread and their standards and methods are being perfected - on the other hand, they are becoming more and more expensive and complex.
Jerry Yudelson was described by WIRED magazine as the American "Godfather of Green". He is regarded as one of the pioneers of the green building movement in the USA at the end of the 1990s and played a key role in founding the first local chapter of the US Green Building Council in Seattle. The long-time LEED Fellow has trained around 4,000 professionals from the construction industry on the LEED system during his active time. Between 2014 and 2015, he was President of the Green Building Initiative (GBI), a non-profit organisation that provides the Green Globes green building rating system and programme in America. (Source: greenimmo.de)
Yudelsons says the maths is simple: there are 5.5 million buildings in the US, of which about 35,000 are LEED certified today. That's less than 0.7% of the building stock and that's after 15 years of a lot of hard work. It is relatively simple and very clear that we will never achieve the CO2 reduction targets this way. In addition, we have no documentation and no studies, NOTHING! The big challenge ahead of us is the existing buildings and the property market. He goes on to say in his book that it is a misconception that certifications can save the planet.
Yudelson also offers a solution in the book. A data-driven strategy that utilises the latest cloud-based technologies to reduce certification costs by 90% or more. This could achieve a market uptake to 50% of all buildings by 2025.
Order at buecher.de
Source: www.greenimmo.de/zukunftsthemen/reinventing-green-building/
Keywords:
DE-News, New books and studies, News Blog Europe (without DE), Certification & Labels, Life cycle assessment
