Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 3: Sustainability: Challenges and Solutions (joint session UP/CPP/SOE)

SOE 3.1: Talk

Monday, March 9, 2026, 09:30–09:45, MER/0002

Making a university climate neutral: First experiences from implementing a Climate Protection Strategy at the University of Greifswald — •Christoph G. Hoffmann, Tiemo Timmermann, and Christian von Savigny — University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

With a resolution of its Academic Senate, the University of Greifswald has in 2021 set the goal to achieve climate neutrality by the end of the decade.

While the aim of achieving climate neutrality within a few years is expectedly ambitious, a university as a bigger research institution has also a unique combination of knowledge to achieve it. This has already led to synergies from which particularly the teaching in the environmental subjects can benefit due to "home-made" practical experiences. This makes the whole University a living lab, in which the opportunities but also challenges of necessary transformations can be explored in an assessable setting.

Therefore, also the environmental physics group aims at contributing to and benefiting from this process. While our group is originally focused on basic atmospheric research, we cover a broader range of environmental physics topics in teaching, which overlap with the needs of the transformation process.

In this talk, we will give a short overview of the Climate Protection strategy of the University of Greifswald before we show some examples from our own work regarding the energy consumption of buildings.

Keywords: Climate Protection; Carbon Neutrality; Sustainable University; Energy Efficiency