Sustainability is more than climate protection

To move forward in uncharted territory, you need experience, knowledge and orientation. To navigate the era of transformation that we currently find ourselves in, we need political direction and a clear technological compass. In its orientation studies, FVV develops proposals for future technologies thus enabling a sustainable economic, environmental and social transformation.

Text: Petra Tutsch | Picture credit: United Nations

With scientifically sound studies based on neutral facts, FVV helps decisionmakers from the worlds of politics, business, science and society to get to grips with complex technical questions. Climate-neutral, regenerative energy sources – such as electricity from renewables, hydrogen or the synthetic fuels that we urgently need to achieve a sustainable transformation and use resources in a greener way – play a key role in the research programme: regardless of the energy converter, vehicles, mobile machinery, planes, boats, ships and power generators will only be able to conserve resources and achieve greenhouse gas neutrality and zero net emissions with climate-neutral energy sources.

As the studies on the energy sources of the future take all applications and all options for energy generation and provision into account, researchers
are able to use them to comprehensively assess innovative technologies.

FVV orientation studies employ systematic thinking, take the economic aspects of innovation and competition into account, and place the principle of life cycle emissions at the centre of all analysis, in a global energy and carbon system with a CO₂ budget expressed as a residual amount of greenhouse gas emissions that may still be emitted up to the year 2050.

»Decisions almost always come down to sustainability.« In 2015, the United Nations published its Agenda 2030, setting out 17 global Sustainable Development Goals. These goals are intended not just for governments around the world, but also for civilians, the private sector and science:

FVV pursues the following six Sustainable Development Goals on the path to climate neutrality – each of which is given equal weighting:

Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation.

Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.