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Bad Hersfeld is a small city with about 30.000 inhabitants situated in the middle of Germany. Climate Protection has been on the political agenda in Bad Hersfeld since quite a while. In 1997 the Wuppertal Institute elaborated a first energy and CO2 balance for the city, which was updated in 2007. With the compilation of the CO2 balance it was shown that the emissions in Bad Hersfeld almost stayed at a constant level between 1997 and 2006.
The result was sobering for the local authority. Although some single measures had been implemented, there was no improvement of the CO2-balance.
It was concluded that a successful climate protection strategy needs a comprehensive concept comprising all sectors and a periodic monitoring. Bad Hersfeld commissioned the Wuppertal Institute to develop feasible measures to reduce the CO2 emissions drastically and instruments to overcome existing barriers. In a close cooperation with the City Council and the local municipal utility a climate protection concept was compiled that is rather ambitious for a city of this size.
In consideration of the regional peculiarities12 concrete measures and 7 accompanying measures build the core of the concept with a main focus on energy efficiency (final energy), combined heat and power (CHP) and renewable energies. Another important part of the concept is a municipal support programme to develop the endogenous efficiency potentials and renewable energies in the region. Further to these planning instruments, information and networking activities are compiled as well as a variety of suggestions for a climate protection marketing (Wagner 2008).
Some of these measures that were developed in an iterative and cooperative process between the responsible actors in Bad Hersfeld and the Wuppertal Institute are transferable to other cities and towns. The impeding factors in Bad Hersfeld like the user-investor dilemma, the low capital of small housing associations or the large stock of listed historical buildings, are typical for cities of this size.
The general conditions for local authorities in Germany have changed fundamentally during the last decades. Not only do municipalities compete with each other for employment, prestige and competitive advantages, they also face increasingly higher demands by their citizens, for instance in the area of climate protection.
Therefore, every municipality has to consider various economic, social and ecological determinants in its decision-making processes. With respect to public buildings, an economically-oriented cost-benefit-analysis alone is not adequate due to a municipality's role as "consumer and role model". To identify measures with a broader benefit, a multicriteria analysis (MCA) has been used to analyze energy efficiency measures in public buildings for the city of Dortmund.
For several years Dortmund has committed itself to implement energy efficiency measures and improve the energy performance of its building stock. Nevertheless, a benchmark analysis still shows a high energy saving potential that cannot be tapped with the existing measures and instruments. Therefore, a package of measures has been developed in close cooperation with the city of Dortmund, ranging broadly from measures of energetic retrofitting and green IT to behavioral change of building occupants.
In the MCA these measures have been assessed according to ten different criteria such as innovativeness, cost effectiveness, external costs, CO2 reduction potential, local value or effort of implementation. Three different scenarios ("City as Role Model", "City as Homo Oeconomicus", "City as Climate Protector") show different municipal perspectives.
The analysis has shown that the greatest benefit for municipalities, regardless of the municipal perspective, is yielded by measures such as voluntarily enhanced minimum standards for new or for energetic retrofitting of public buildings, the procurement of energy-efficient office equipment, the expansion of heat generation from renewable energies and the usage of private capital in participatory projects like "Solar&Save".
The German contribution to limiting global warming to two degrees has to be - as in other developed countries, too - a reduction of 80 to 95 percent of CO2 emissions by 2050 compared to 1990. The project "Low Carbon City Wuppertal 2050" has analysed how such a drastic reduction of CO2 could be achieved on a municipal level in the transportation and residential sector by also working on the land use and material flows dimension. The focus of this paper lies on the space heating in the residential sector.
Wuppertal is a city with about 350,000 inhabitants in the West of Germany. According to the CO2 balance (2007) of the city that was adjusted to the year 2010, the emissions that were caused by space heating in the residential sector remained almost the same since 1990. They decreased slightly from 693,000 tons CO2 in 1990 to 691,000 tons in 2010, although final energy use for space heating increased by about 15 percent. But the shift of energy sources especially from coal to gas avoided an increase of emissions. However, the reduction target of 95 percent means that CO2 emissions have to be reduced to 35,000 tons per year until 2050.
A reference scenario shows that the city could achieve about 30 percent of the reduction required with the current trend of renewable energy development and energy efficiency measures such as retrofitting the building stock. But looking at the difficult financial conditions of the municipality as well as at the socio-economic situation of the inhabitants it becomes clear that the remaining 65 percent of the target to a 95 percent reduction will be difficult to reach and that innovative measures of energy efficiency and sufficiency1 need to be developed.
But which social-ecological effects does the implementation of comprehensive climate protection measures have on the inhabitants of a city? How do people live in a "Low Carbon City"? In this paper qualitative and quantitative scenarios will be developed since the combination of both is promising to show both effects: what share could renewable energies, energy efficiency and sufficiency measures have in reaching the target of 95 percent, and how could life look like in an almost CO2 free city in Germany in 2050.
Klimaschutzkonzept für den Kreis Nordfriesland : Vertiefungsband ; die Energie- und CO2-Bilanz
(2011)
Die energetische Sanierung des Gebäudebestandes in Deutschland gehört zu den Schlüsselfaktoren für eine Verbesserung des Klimaschutzes. Trotz günstiger Rahmenbedingungen und ökonomischer Anreize hinkt die Umsetzung der energetischen Sanierung im Gebäudebestand jedoch bisher den vorhandenen technischen Möglichkeiten und den wirtschaftlich tragfähigen Maßnahmen deutlich hinterher. Die Ursachen hierfür sind sowohl vielfältig als auch auf verschiedenen Ebenen angesiedelt. Die Investitionsbereitschaft bei Haus- und Wohnungseigentümern scheint eher gering, auch aufgrund weiterhin bestehender Informationsdefizite beispielsweise in Hinsicht auf die Nachhaltigkeit energetischer Maßnahmen und das Ausmaß der Fördermöglichkeiten. Dies gilt auch bei verschiedenen Berufsgruppen, die für eine effektive und schnelle Umsetzung der energetischen Sanierung wichtig sind. Hinzu kommen eine hohe Zersplitterung der Beratungsangebote und eine damit verbundene Intransparenz der Beratungs- und Förderstruktur. Die Wüstenrot Stiftung hat sich angesichts der Unübersichtlichkeit entschieden, die Struktur und die Qualität der Energieberatung in Deutschland einer differenzierten Betrachtung zu unterziehen. Vorgenommen wurde eine Analyse der Rahmenbedingungen der Energieberatung in Deutschland, wozu auch eine Aufarbeitung des Beratungsbedarfes und eine Sichtung und Analyse der Informationswege zwischen Zielgruppen und Beratungsanbietern gehörte. Außerdem umfasste die Studie eine empirische Untersuchung zur Erhebung der Struktur der Energieberatungsangebote sowie die Erstellung einer Übersicht vor allem zu den Aktivitäten, die von Kommunen und Verbänden unternommen werden, um die verschiedenen Beratungsangebote zu koordinieren oder um in eigener Regie die Beratungsqualität vor Ort zu sichern. Mit der Durchführung der Untersuchung hat die Wüstenrot Stiftung das Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie GmbH beauftragt. Die gefundenen Ergebnisse belegen die Einschätzung zur zentralen Bedeutung einer umfassenden, von allen Betroffenen akzeptierten Energieberatung, ebenso wie das weiterhin vorhandene, nicht geringe Optimierungspotenzial auf diesem Sektor. In verschiedener Hinsicht spielen die Beratungsangebote der Kommunen eine wichtige Rolle in den Szenarien, die der weiteren Entwicklung der Energieberatung in Deutschland und der dadurch erzielbaren Effekte zugrunde gelegt werden können.
Städte haben in dreierlei Hinsicht eine Verbindung zum Klimawandel. Als Verursacher sind sie für einen wesentlichen Anteil der anthropogen verursachten Treibhausgasemissionen verantwortlich. Gleichzeitig sind sie von den Folgen des Klimawandels, z. B. durch zunehmende Hitzebelastung, Starkregenereignisse und Überschwemmungen, besonders betroffen. Schließlich können Städte als Experimentierfeld für die Entwicklung und Umsetzung von Klimaschutzkonzepten, Technologien und Maßnahmen dienen. Sie sind damit Initiator für einen Transformationsprozess hin zu einer nachhaltigen und zukunftsfähigen Entwicklung.