The Climate Neutrality Foundation

Human-made climate change is a threat to humanity. Despite all the progress we have made, our economies are still largely based on oil, coal and natural gas. A rapid shift towards climate neutrality is urgently needed.

With its work, the Climate Neutrality Foundation aims to show how a rapid transformation can succeed. It is of central importance to:

  • avoid stranded assets in fossil technologies,
  • to massively improve the efficiency of energy use (Efficiency First),
  • expand renewable power generation to an extent that enables the necessary electrification of other sectors (Electrify Second)
  • and finally, to use electricity from renewable sources to produce hydrogen that replaces fossil fuels in industry, but also in other sectors (Green Fuels Third).

In addition, greenhouse gas emissions that are not caused by energy use, especially in the agricultural, industrial and waste management sectors, must be avoided as far as possible or compensated by negative emissions.

In the transformation process, the challenge posed by climate change is an opportunity for a comprehensive modernization of our economy that shall be seized. Against this background, the Climate Neutrality Foundation develops cross-sectoral strategies for a Germany that is climate-friendly.

 

Erneuerbare-Kreis

Resilience and political sovereignty

Prognos, Oeko-Institut, Wuppertal Institute (2023). Securing Germany’s Sovereignty – Resilient supply chains for the transformation to climate neutrality by 2045. Study on behalf of the Climate Neutrality Foundation.

The Climate Neutrality Foundation has commissioned a consortium of Prognos, Öko-Institut and Wuppertal Institute to analyze the demand for raw materials and intermediate products with their critical vulnerabilities and dependencies in key transformation technologies such as photovoltaics, wind power and electromobility, but also green steel, along their entire supply chains to identify the neuralgic points with a particular need for political action. The study by the Climate Neutrality Foundation provides for the first time country-specific data on the resilience of critical supply chains for Germany through a time series analysis in five-year steps up to the target year 2045 adopted by the German government for climate neutrality.

For example, in the solar supply chain, Germany is almost completely dependent on non-European suppliers for critical components. This heavy dependence not only jeopardizes a reliable transformation to climate neutrality and makes it more difficult to securely build up important future industries in this country. It also makes us politically blackmailable in times of turbulent geopolitical waters.

September 2023 | long version | condensed version | fact sheets

Heat Pumps: Myths and Facts

BLOG POST SERIES | FEBRUARY 2021

Heat pumps and heat grids are the central strategies for climate neutrality in existing buildings, alongside energy refurbishment.

Heat pumps in particular are repeatedly confronted with outdated prejudices: How can heat pumps be used in existing buildings? Do all existing buildings have to be extensively renovated first? Are heat pumps capable of providing sufficiently high flow temperatures required?

With a 12-part, weekly blog post series “Heat Pumps in Existing Buildings”, compiled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, we address these fundamental questions.

SMARD – ELECTRICITY MARKET DATA FOR GERMANY

An electricity system based on renewable energies is the basis for a climate neutral economy. The German Federal Network Agency’s SMARD platform presents nearly in real time the generation of renewables, power plants, electricity consumption and other electricity market data for Germany and partly also for Europe: https://www.smard.de/en