Climate Protection

Climate action is one of the major challenges of our time, and universities bear a significant responsibility in this regard – including us at ABK.

By signing the Higher Education Funding Agreement II (HoFV II), the universities of Baden-Württemberg have committed themselves to achieving the state government’s climate targets (net greenhouse gas neutrality). Among other things, 60 per cent of the energy required by the state administration is to be allocated to the higher education sector.

The appointment of the Climate Protection Manager marked the first step. Their role is to draw up an energy and climate protection strategy that involves all university members and key stakeholders through a participatory process. Existing activities and measures will be incorporated into the strategy.

As a first step, a greenhouse gas inventory will be compiled in accordance with the criteria of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. To this end, consumption data will be collected from areas including heating, electricity, transport, procurement and waste. These figures will be cross-referenced with emission factors to determine the ABK’s emissions.

Based on the greenhouse gas inventory, potential areas for improvement, scenarios and measures will be identified, from which the energy and climate protection strategy will be developed. A key element here is the development of a catalogue of measures in collaboration with the relevant stakeholders.

This strategy forms the basis for ABK’s future climate management.

The report on ABK Stuttgart’s 2024 greenhouse gas inventory is available for download below:

In addition to greenhouse gas accounting and the stakeholder engagement process, the concept also encompasses accompanying communication measures and the establishment of a system for monitoring and controlling the data to be collected and the measures to be implemented. This makes progress visible and turns climate protection management into an ongoing project.

The project to draw up the energy and climate protection strategy is 70% funded by the National Climate Protection Initiative (NKI) over a two-year period.