The aim of the handbook is to provide municipal actors with concrete tools that can be used to keep and locate production in urban areas. In the joint project UrbaneProduktion.Ruhr, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, research was carried out from October 2016 to December 2019 into whether and how it is possible to bring production back to the city.
The handbook offers answers to the questions: What will the city of the future look like? And what role do manufacturing companies play in this? How can their number be increased again, especially in the city? The handbook and the research project are the work of: UrbaneProduktion.Ruhr of the Institute for Work and Technology of the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, the Bochum University of Applied Sciences, the Urbanists and the City of Bochum. For three years, opportunities and challenges of urban production were researched in real laboratories in Bochum-Langendreer and Bochum-Wattenscheid. The focus is on businesses that process or manufacture material products. These include classic craft enterprises such as carpentry shops and bakeries as well as industrial enterprises and urban agriculture.
Thuringia is making six million euros available this year for investments in municipal climate protection. The funding comes from the state's "Climate Invest" program, which has already kick-started more than 15.5 million euros in investments in municipalities since the start of 2018, the Environment Ministry announced in Erfurt on Thursday. 312 funding applications have been approved.
At the same time, Siegesmund encouraged Thuringian municipalities to take part in the nationwide "Climate Active Municipality 2020" competition. The Federal Ministry for the Environment has started a new round in the competition of ideas for climate protection. Cities, counties and municipalities are called upon to submit exemplary ideas. Prize money totalling 25,000 euros awaits the winners.
Berlin, 9 January 2020 - One of the Herculean tasks in achieving the climate targets is to radically reduce CO2 emissions from the heating supply. A research group led by the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) is showing how cities can move away from coal, oil and gas in a socially responsible way. The "Urban Heat Transition" project analysed possible contributions from renewable energies and local heat sources in Berlin's urban districts. "Waste heat from businesses, heat from waste water or geothermal energy have hardly been utilised to date. The key to such environmentally friendly heat are neighbourhood concepts and heating networks," says project manager Bernd Hirschl from the IÖW. "An important prerequisite is a more efficient building stock. Only if the heat demand is significantly reduced can environmentally friendly heat sources be utilised efficiently."
In the three-year project, the project team from the IÖW, the University of Bremen and the Technical University of Berlin worked together with the Berlin Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection with funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research to develop local heating concepts for three Berlin neighbourhoods. At the end of 2019, they discussed their results with the heating industry in Berlin, and the documentation of the conference is now available online at www.urbane-waermewende.de.
Developing nuclei for the heat transition
"Previous neighbourhood concepts were often too complex, had too many different stakeholders and often ended up in a drawer. That's why we recommend a nucleus approach," says Elisa Dunkelberg from the IÖW. These could be public buildings, new construction projects, commercial buildings or housing associations and co-operatives.
The researchers show what a neighbourhood concept can look like for an old building district in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf: Firstly, the heat demand must be reduced through energy-efficient refurbishment. The heat can be generated using a wastewater heat pump, which is partly powered by solar electricity generated on site, in combination with combined heat and power generation. "Particularly in the case of public buildings, which have a pioneering role - enshrined in law in Berlin - it should always be checked in the case of refurbishment and new buildings whether they are suitable as a nucleus for a neighbourhood concept and the co-supply of surrounding buildings," emphasises Dunkelberg.
Climate-neutral district heating: utilising waste heat and renewables
District heating plays a major role in urban areas. "To become climate-neutral, it is important to integrate more local heat sources from wastewater, river water and geothermal energy as well as waste heat into district heating," says Hirschl, adding that attention must also be paid to the resilience of the heat generation system. A joint case study with the Neukölln district heating plant shows that it is possible to utilise local heat sources. But it needs to be tested technically and requires supporting financial measures. The next steps should now be test drilling for deep geothermal energy, for example, as well as pilot plants that use large heat pumps to provide wastewater or river water heat for district heating. Strategies for funding and risk protection are needed for investment in these technologies, some of which are untested and highly expensive.
Heat transition requires municipal strategic heat planning - and social compatibility
"Municipal heat planning, which has long been standard practice in pioneering countries such as Denmark and in other federal states and municipalities for some time, helps to tap into the identified potential," emphasises Hirschl. The basis for this is a heat register that visualises heat sources such as waste water and commercial waste heat. This can also be used to identify neighbourhoods for cross-building concepts. With sector coupling, it is also important that local authorities and cities plan across infrastructures. Instruments such as urban land-use planning and urban development contracts must be geared towards climate neutrality.
Low refurbishment rates in recent years show that purely incentive-based measures are not enough to ensure energy modernisation. The researchers therefore recommend implementing the regulations more strongly and developing a step-by-step plan to guide the building stock towards climate neutrality. At the same time, subsidies must be increased and conditions for passing on rent must be made more socially acceptable. A step-by-step plan under the conditions of a rent cap must be designed in such a way that energy modernisation is economically reasonable for both landlords and tenants.
Federal Ministry of Education and Research funds "Urban Heat Transition" project for another two years
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project in a new partner constellation for a further two years in order to test solution strategies for the central obstacles to implementation and to anchor the research results in municipal heat planning. In addition to the IÖW, the partners are Berliner Wasserbetriebe and the law firm Becker Büttner Held.
Over the last 150 years, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are responsible for climate change, has risen sharply. Germany has set itself the goal of becoming largely greenhouse gas neutral by 2050. The great importance of municipalities in achieving these climate protection goals and the important role played by the increased and responsible use of wood became clear at the award ceremony for the 2016/2017 HolzProKlima municipal competition in Baden-Württemberg.
The award ceremony honoured cities, municipalities and districts that have made a conscious political decision to contribute to climate protection in their region by increasing the use of wood as a renewable resource. The competition office received a total of 40 applications. Cash and non-cash prizes totalling 20,000 euros were provided by companies in the wood-processing industry.
Climate champion was the municipality of Frickingen. Baden-Württemberg's Forestry Minister Peter Hauk (CDU) honoured the winners of the municipal competition in person and thanked the organisers of the state-sponsored competition: "There is a great need for the climate-positive material wood, and the possible uses are becoming increasingly diverse thanks to innovations."
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