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Climate-Neutral Districts and Areas

What approaches to climate-neutral neighbourhoods and areas are there in Germany, France, Austria or the Netherlands? dena’s analysis provides practical assistance in disseminating your own ideas more quickly.

Topics: Buildings, Municipal governments, Redesigning buildings and areas

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Improving understanding of hurdles to climate protection in neighbourhoods

Our mission

Companies in Germany are to reduce their emissions by around 50 per cent by 2030. Industrial companies must therefore fundamentally reorganise their energy procurement, energy conversion and production processes. Technically complex measures, which typically incur high investment costs, are being required in more and more cases.

The German government supports these investments through funding programmes. These programmes need to be publicised in order for them to be utilised. This is where dena’s lighthouse project came in. The project was implemented on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz, BMWK). The projects paid close attention to four energy-intensive industries – the chemical industry, plastics processing, the glass industry and the foundry industry.

Our approach

dena provided technical support to ten companies, from planning the measures and applying for state subsidies to implementation and commissioning. The focus was on industrial waste heat, renewable process heat and energy-efficient production processes.

The overall outcome

The aim of the project was to identify possible solutions and derive standards for processes. As a result of the study, it became clear that there are many different approaches, including a number of promising ones. However, the stakeholders face complex challenges because the regulatory frameworks of the sectors (including subsidies) are sometimes contradictory. For this reason, the transformation towards climate-neutral neighbourhoods and areas is still in its infancy.