Energy efficiency
The German capital region is home to extensive expertise and experience thanks to its ambitious climate protection goals.
As a growing city, Berlin offers ideal opportunities to develop and apply the latest technologies, energy services, and new business models, especially in the building sector. Many companies are pioneers in the systematic implementation of efficiency measures or their own energy production.
About the Capital Region
„With its numerous competencies in science and business, the Berlin Brandenburg Energy Technologies Cluster offers an ideal environment for developing and advancing new technologies in the area of energyefficient building systems.“
Facts and figures
- Employing about 26,000 people and generating revenues of more than €3.3 billion a year, technologies related to energy efficiency represent an important aspect of the region's energy and environmental sector.
- Efficient technologies are being developed and tested in a variety of projects here.
- Such things as lighting technology, consumption visualization, smart home technologies, lightweight construction, air conditioning, building efficiency technologies for historic buildings, geothermal energy use and storage, efficient distribution and storage technologies for heating and cooling, as well as building systems all play important roles in this.
- The energy-efficient buildings segment accounts for about two-thirds of those working in this sector and about 57% of the revenues.
This EUREF-Campus in the middle of Berlin is a symbol of the energy transformation in Germany and serves as a home base for companies working in the fields of energy, sustainability, and mobility. On the site, energy production from solar and wind is combined with bio natural gas cogeneration plants and power-to-heat and power-to-cool plants. The German government's CO2 emissions targets for 2050 were already met here in 2014.
The city of Berlin wants to develop into a climate-neutral city over the next few decades and, like other major cities worldwide, respond to the challenges of climate change. The plans adopted by the Berlin Senate to achieve this climate-neutral target in the Berlin Energy and Climate Protection Program (BEK) contain concrete strategies and measures in the fields of energy, transport, building codes, urban development, business, private households, and consumption.
As the capital of Europe's digital transformation, Berlin is also making important contributions to the development of energy-saving IT solutions. The Photonics Enhanced Data Centers project at the Fraunhofer Center for Digital Networking, for example, is working on ways to integrate photonic elements into data centers in order to reduce their enormous energy consumption levels significantly.
