The Smart Living industry association has submitted a statement on the Building Energy Act to Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy. In this statement, the association refers to the climate protection contribution of digitisation in buildings.

For this statement, Borderstep has calculated figures on the possible CO2 reduction through building automation systems in existing residential buildings in Germany.

“With an annual renovation rate of 300,000 apartments, around 2.3 million tons of CO2 can be avoided in 2030,” explains Dr. Severin Beucker, an expert on smart energy at Borderstep.

The building stock in Germany is responsible for a significant proportion of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. Digital energy management can help to significantly reduce this share and promotes the use of renewable energies. It is both economically and ecologically an important alternative for the refurbishment of existing buildings.

The use of smart building technology and intelligent control of energy use in buildings can thus make a substantial contribution to climate protection. This should be supported by targeted incentives for the use of intelligent systems and digital solutions in buildings, according to the statement.

The figures come from the Borderstep working paper “Reduction of CO2 emissions in existing buildings through digital energy management“. The publication (only in german) can be downloaded free of charge.

Cloud Computing, 3D-Printing, Big Data, Industry 4.0: The world of work and life is changing drastically due to digitisation. How does this affect climate protection? This is the topic of CliDiTrans, a new project of the Borderstep Institute.

Some studies are calculating the potential for reducing global CO2 emissions through ICT by up to 20 percent by 2030. These studies, however, do not take two essential aspects of increasing Digitisation into adequate consideration:

Firstly, digitisation triggers changes in demand. Completely new products and services are emerging or existing solutions are becoming better quality and cheaper at the same time, so that there is greater demand for them. Secondly, the use of ICT solutions is associated with national and international shifts in production processes.

Together with the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research and the practice partner Zweckverband Kommunale Datenverarbeitung Oldenburg (KDO), Borderstep analyses the climate protection effects of digitisation on the basis of case studies and macroeconomic considerations.

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework of the funding programme “Economics of Climate Change”.