Berlin

Germany's capital Berlin has a population of approximately 3.5 million and is expected to grow by about 300.000 inhabitants until 2020.

Besides population growth, the City of Berlin is facing strong demands for sufficient and affordable housing as well as the need for providing attractive urban living structures. Given these facts, Berlin is also committed to define the way to a climate-neutral city until 2050. The City of Berlin aims to considerably reduce energy-related CO2 emissions by 85% and to less than two tonnes per resident and year by 2050.

These ambitious goals can only be reached by giving renewable energies an even greater role in future. Buildings will need to be more energy efficient and transport will need to be even more climate-friendly.

Against this background, Berlin has launched a feasibility study which examined different scenarios how the given goals could be achieved. The feasibility study provided the basis for developing an integrated energy and climate concept which points out specific measures and activities in five fields of action (energy supply, private households, economy, buildings and traffic).

The importance for the institutionalisation of integrative urban energy planning has partly been addressed in Berlin's energy and climate-protection policies and will be enhanced through input of URBAN LEARNING.

Local working group Berlin

As the urban energy planning processes do take place on city and district level, public representatives of both levels are involved in the local working group. In addition to the city and district departments in charge of urban energy planning, also external stakeholders such as from the energy and building sectors are included.

The project's focus has been put on the existing building stock, which represents the main sector of energy consumption and CO2 emissions in Berlin. With this regard, one major objective which has been defined by the local working group is to promote suitable planning mechanisms which help to motivate building owners and related stakeholders for carrying out refurbishment activities at an early stage of urban development.

See Berlin's approaches towards integrative energy planning at one glance.