Publications | Umweltbundesamt

Climate | Energy, Economy | Consumption, Digitalisation

Software Solutions for Environmental and Sustainability Management

Environmental and sustainability-related data is becoming increasingly important for corporate success, not least because of rising regulatory requirements. The use of software solutions and digital technologies offers numerous potentials for process optimisation, decision support and improvement of environmental performance. At the same time, barriers and challenges are known from corporate pract...read more

Climate | Energy, Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

Sustainable building air conditioning in Europe

Concepts for avoiding heat islands and for a comfortable indoor climate

The intensity of heat islands in urban areas with many sealed surfaces and little vegetation is increasing due to climate change. This study investigated both how to mitigate this effect on affected neighbourhoods and how to provide agreeable indoor temperature, if possible without air conditioning. Using simulations of both microclimate and buildings, the effect of alterations in outdoor areas (p...read more

Climate | Energy

How to perform a robust climate risk and vulnerability assessment for EU taxonomy reporting?

Recommendations for companies

A robust climate risk and vulnerability assessment is required for companies wishing to achieve taxonomy compliance under the EU Taxonomy Regulation with respect to significant contributions to climate adaptation for certain economic activities. The relevant legal requirements are defined in Annex 1, Appendix A of Delegated Regulation 2021/2139. To facilitate the implementation of these requiremen...read more

Climate | Energy

Climate resilient infrastructure systems

Improving science-policy-practice collaboration

In 2021 UBA commissioned workshops to discuss how research outputs on climate resilient infrastructure systems could be more consistently transferred into practice of infrastructure operation. This paper presents barriers for successful transfer and provides recommendations to overcome them. The target audiences for these recommendations are funding bodies, policy makers, and standardization bodie...read more

Climate | Energy, Waste | Resources

Biogenic and fossil carbon in sewage sludge and digester gas determined by isotope investigation

The aim of the study was to conduct an initial analytical survey of a small number of samples analyze the proportion of fossil carbon in sewage sludge and digester gas and to correlate it with other data collected in a sewage treatment plant.A conservative but representative standard value of 80% biogenic carbon could be derived for sewage treatment plants if they receive less than half of the loa...read more

Economy | Consumption, Waste | Resources

Pilot screening of the environmental hazard potentials of mine sites

OekoRess III

100 large mining sites for copper, iron ore and bauxite worldwide were examined for their environmental hazard potentials. An assessment method developed in the preceding projects OekoRess I and II was applied. The 100 environmental hazard profiles are presented in the form of an interactive map. The report describes the research process, summarises and discusses the research results, draws conclu...read more

Climate | Energy, Sustainability | Strategies | International matters

Land use as a sector for market mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement

The land-use sector plays a critical role for achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. This report discusses key environmental integrity challenges for using carbon market mechanisms to implement mitigation activities in the land-use sector. The report evaluates how existing carbon market mechanisms address these challenges in practice and to what extent these approaches can mitigate environmen...read more

Chemicals, Water

Food web on ice - Investigation of the bioaccumulation of chemicals in an exemplary food chain

Final report

Trophic magnification factors (TMFs) have been derived in a variety of different aquatic eco-systems worldwide to investigate accumulation patterns of environmentally relevant chemicals. Not only is the TMF interesting for chemicals’ risk assessment related questions, but also for monitoring aspects under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). This study is the first TMF study con-ducted in...read more