Actively promoting climate protection

Furtwangen University is working intensively on the topic of climate protection. Climate Protection Manager, Dr. Sandy-Cheril Manton and her team have initiated a series of workshops to sensitise the more than 600 HFU employees to the issue of climate protection and get them actively involved.

The events took place on all HFU campuses − in Furtwangen, Schwenningen, Tuttlingen and the Freiburg Study Center. Under the title “Climate protection at HFU”, the initial aim was to collect current topics and measures and to enter into an exchange with the representatives of the Constance Office for Property and Construction responsible for construction measures at HFU. “Climate protection in practice” focused on the topic of communication − the participants drew up an overview of activities at the university and discussed space efficiency and room occupancy management. In the third series of workshops, “Klimaschutz akut”, various guest speakers were invited to speak on the HFU campuses. Petra Neubauer (Climate Protection Office Villingen-Schwenningen), Alexander Schmid (Public Transport Administrator, VS Green Space and Civil Engineering Office), Ansgar Kundinger (Mobility Manager, VS Green Space and Civil Engineering Office) Ulrich Grosse (independent local transport planner for the surrounding area and region) and the two HFU Climate Protection Managers, Nico Eisenkrämer and Maren Gernsheimer. Topics of discussion were the required expansion of cycle paths and the creation of a cycle path network were discussed, with bike and car sharing models being presented, and the close networking of HFU, the DHBW, municipal utilities and the city of Villingen-Schwenningen with regard to heat planning.

“We are very pleased with the support that the topic of climate protection has received at HFU,” says organiser Dr. Manton. “You can tell that the topic is important to everyone. We will be organising further events to raise user awareness in the coming year − above all, we want to reach out to students.” Through the series of workshops, measures were identified that were included in a catalogue in the university's Climate Protection Plan. The creation of the HFU Climate Protection Plan by the two Climate Protection Managers, Gernsheimer and Eisenkrämer, was financed by the National Climate Initiative (NKI) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. This concept will enter the implementation phase from January 2025, announced Manton, who also coordinates activities at other universities such as the DHBW and the Trossingen University of Music from HFU, as one of the state's nine cluster climate protection managers. As state institutions, the universities are obliged to be climate-neutral by 2030.