Join our 500plus! membership campaign.

For 30 years the Öko-Institut has been a non-profit organization. It is true that our work is financed primarily through project-related contracts and funding from public and private clients. But we still need you as a member. For our members ensure that the institute retains its strong links with society at large; they enable us to continue our crucial sustainability research and to remain financially independent in the long term.

That is why we have launched our 500plus! membership campaign. We are aiming to recruit 500 new members.

Join in! You will be helping to solve some of the pressing social challenges of today and tomorrow. Please tell other people about our campaign and write to us if you have comments or suggestions.

26.05.2008

Bioenergy and Biodiversity: Potential for Sustainable Use of Degraded Lands

Info event on May 27, 12.00 -13.00 h at the “Plaza of Diversity”, Forum Booth 1

The Federal Environment Agency (UBA), on behalf of the German Ministry for the Environment, is funding a research project on sustainable global biomass trade, carried out by Öko-Institut and IFEU until end of 2009.
In that context, a sub-project will identify global potentials of degraded land suitable for sustainable bioenergy production. A GIS-based mapping with FAO and other global data on land cover, soil and biodiversity-relevant areas will be used to “screen” global land, and case studies in several countries will match the global screening with “bottom-up” analyses.

04.04.2008

The Bali Conference - Climate Breakthrough or Anti-Climax?

Latest issue of eco@work now online

Politicians, scientists, environmental groups – almost everyone had great hopes that the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali – the 13th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC – would produce some very good outcomes for international climate protection. Yet assessments of what was achieved in 13 exhausting days of negotiations vary very widely. So how do the researchers at the Öko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) – who were directly involved in the talks and who have been addressing urgent climate issues in numerous studies and projects for years – judge the outcomes of the Conference? Find out about this and more in this current issue of eco@work.

12.02.2008

E-TRACK: Where does network electricity come from?

Öko-Institut, together with ten international energy institutions, has published recommendations for a European system of electricity disclosure. In the final report of the E-TRACK project, the institutions suggest ways to standardize tracking of where the power that is fed into Europe’s electricity networks comes from. E-TRACK proposes a coordinated and consistent system in which the way electricity is generated is characterized by particular “attributes of power generation”. These attributes relate, for example, to the source of fuel used, the emissions produced in generating the energy, and any public support obtained.

24.01.2008

Values for business: Rhetoric or reality?

Latest issue of eco@work now online

Nowadays, practically every major company seeks to project an environmentally and socially responsible image. But what of this is windowdressing and what is real change? A three-year project conducted across Europe has unravelled precisely that question, which we have made the focal theme of this latest issue of eco@work. Find out what the scientists discovered. We also present a new trend in industry: carbon footprinting. And we report the insights gained by Christian Hochfeld, corporate policy expert at the Öko-Institut. Read on here.

07.01.2008

Guided tour of the Solar Ship

A look behind the scenes of the Öko-Institut

Are you interested in taking a glance behind the scenes of the so called Solar Ship, a part of the Solar Community? The Öko-Institut offers guided tours through its ecological office building.

On their tour through the front part of the Solar Ship, visitors will have the chance to gain insights into the specific construction of the building, which is characterized by its extremely low energy demands and its high environmental standards.