ClimNeutRes

Climate neutrality is a key challenge for the society – and hence also for research opera-tions. The Leibniz Association has set itself the goal of being climate-neutral by 2035. This requires a comprehensive analysis of current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as the development of concrete measures to reduce them. In ten pilot projects, 14 out of the total 97 Leibniz institutions are therefore endeavoring to drive this process forward in the period 2023-24 and to gain fundamental knowledge for broad implementation.

As part of the pilot project led by the IOER, the IOER and the GWZO (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe) plan to jointly implement an integrated man-agement approach to achieve the goal of “climate-neutral research operations by 2035” and to develop measures and monitoring for selected fields of action.
The project develops and tests an approach for the permanent establishment of a com-prehensive sustainability management, including balancing and monitoring of GHG emis-sions. The focus is on the “supporting processes” (LeNa).

The project deals with six selected fields of action in corporate sustainability management which are highly transferable (management, mobility, events, nutrition, procurement, waste) and comprise a total of 14 sub-activities. Project management and transfer will accompany these activities continuously.
Fundamental for the design of an effective management to achieve climate neutrality is the most accurate possible knowledge of the current direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions for all activities of the institutes. This results in a need for specific data and analyses as well as supplementary external consulting for the complete estimation/ calcu-lation of the GHG emissions, which classifies the emission sources systematically and in correspondence with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol according to Scope 1/2/3, as well as for the derivation and conception of concrete measures.

The results of the pilot project will contribute to a permanent structural establishment of an integrated management approach at the IOER and the GWZO, with a specific focus on climate neutrality of supporting processes (Scope 2 and 3).

The recommendations and findings on the management approach as well as the measures in all fields of action will be summarized in a guideline. In addition, the project team organizes the transfer to the Leibniz Association by two events and the public rela-tions work of the two partner institutes on the topic.