Airium is a mineral foam which is produced on-site thanks to a highly technological truck. It can be used for multiple insulation needs (attics, sub-screed, or walls), therefore replacing traditional plastic materials (EPS, XPS, etc.). A particularity of this insulation material is its ability to rapidly absorb carbon dioxide while it dries, during a process which is called “carbonation”. This compensates for almost half of the greenhouse gas emissions which are emitted during its life cycle.

The Working Group published an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for Airium in July 2022, in cooperation with PELMOOSER Beton GmbH. For an EPD, the whole life cycle of a product is taken into account, from manufacturing, to use, disposal and further recycling possibilities.

The entire document can be downloaded here.

How can Austria become climate neutral by 2040?

Until 8 May, citizens can vote on the Climate Council's proposals in categories such as transport & mobility, buildings & construction and clean energy. The ideas developed in the climate council meetings as well as suggestions submitted online can be evaluated.

Start voting now!

The project aims to help consumers understand the amount of ressources and energy behind products at the supermarket. By making this information visible, the project supports sustainable purchasing decisions and ultimately a sustainable management and growth. 

A recently within the project published tool enables actors along the value chain all the way up to consumers to check and compare the environmental footprint of their products.
The tool was developed with the help of the Working Group and supports several vendors of organic produce so far.
Included in the footprint are manufacturing, packaging, transport, etc. ProNaWi displays the CO2 equivalent, as well as calculation details and information on data quality.
To speed up the assessment of products, a methodology has been developed that makes it relatively easy to combine existing product information and extrapolate it to new products using similarity analyses. 

Find out more about the project on the official website.
The ProNaWi research project is co-funded by the FFG.

How can Austria become climate neutral by 2040?

Mandated by the Austrian parlament, the new Climate Council, a representative group consisting of 100 people with various backgrounds and different opinions on sustainability and climate change, will work together on recommendations concerning climate mitigation and adaptation actions for Austria.
Gentle scientific support is essential for the independent work of the Climate Council. The council is therefore supported by a 15-member scientific monitoring committee, in which scientists from many different disciplines are represented, including Alexander Passer for the field of sustainability in the built environment.

The main focus (i.e. transport & mobility, diet, clean energy, social justice,...) as well as the exact method of decision making are yet to be agreed on. 

Above all the success of the Climate Council will be measured by whether the measures it develops find their way into the political process and are taken into account by the government and parliament. The Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology Leonore Gewessler promised to take the results very seriously (see press conference).

This was the Citizens' Climate Council 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naYT0v5tWVI

We are happy to share that the final version of the "Monte Verità Declaration on a built environment within planetary boundaries" is now published!

It is addressed to several different stakeholder in the buildings and construction sector.
More than 40 scientists from 20 countries signed the declaration.

The declaration was presented to Andreas Eckmanns, a representative from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and Swiss representative of the IEA EBC ExCo during the 10. expert meeting of the IEA EBC Annex 72.

This year's Science Day under the title Climate and Energy takes place on 29 September at Alte Technik and online (the keynote speeches as well as the panel discussion and award ceremony will be streamed live here).

In the afternoon researchers will shed light on the future topic of climate and energy in 8 theme sessions hosted by the 5 Fields of Expertise. 
They will focus on new research approaches and technologies in the context of their field of activity and discuss them with guests from science, business and society.

At 1 pm Alexander Passer is giving one of the four lectures hosted by the FoE Sustainable Systems. He will present the latest methodological and technological developments in Sustainable Construction.
To attend please register by sending an email with name and contact to scienceforfuture@tugraz.at.

For detailled information see tugraz.at/research/fields-of-expertise/tu-graz-science-for-future/2021-climate-and-energy/

Like last May, this year's (H)TU Sustainability Day will take place online on 19 May.

Eva Schulev-Steindl, professor at the Institute of Public Law and Political Science (University of Graz) and head of the Research Center for Climate Law will give the Sustainability Lecture on the topic "Legal policy challenges on the way to climate neutrality".
The climate crisis as a massive social, legal and political task is omnipresent today and has reached the center of social discourse at least since the emergence of the Fridays for Future movement.
Therefore, the lecture will focus on the obstacles that still need to be overcome on the way to the climate neutrality aimed for by the federal government by 2040 and where the impulses for a climate-friendly future are coming from.

The lecture will be streamed live from 16 to 18 o'clock on TUbe and is also available as recording afterwards.

Because of the current situation, the 21^th Climate Day was postponed again12 to 14 April 2021. For the first time it will take place online under the motto "Clash of Cultures?-Climate research meets industry!". The Climate Day is hosted by the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA) and is the most important networking event of the Austrian climate research community and promotes, among other things, the exchange and dialogue between scientific and non-scientific groups.
The current program including scientific contributions and framing events, as well as all other information about the Climate Day 2020 can be found here.
In each of the scientific sessions there will be 4 selected lectures on current climate research including discussion. In addition, there are thematically appropriate posters assigned to each session, but these are not presented directly in the session. In order to give the posters sufficient presence during the Climate Day, audio poster presentations will be made available on the CCCA website.

Barbara Truger's audio-presentation of a poster on the project ParisBuildings as part of the ACRP-Poster-Session 1 is available here.

A review of the 21st Austrian Climate Day can be found here.

At the end of January and the beginning of February, Alexander Passer and Antonija Wieser, hold interactive online workshops for schools on the topic of climate change and greenhouse gas reporting. The workshops are part of the project makingAchange.
makingAchange is a cooperation project between science and schools. The CCCA - Climate Change Centre Austria, together with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, invited secondary schools to participate in that project on climate change and sustainability in Austria. The AGNHB is conducting the workshops for schools in the Southeast of Austria, namly in Styria, Carinthia and Burgenland.

The overall aim of makingAchange is to contribute to the transformation of society, to raise awareness and integrate the topics of climate protection and sustainability into the school environment as well as in the everyday life of pupils. More about other topics is to be found on the website.

We are looking forward to a great interesting insights, lively discussions as well as many greenhouse gas reportings of schools.

For schools interested: Soon another Call for the second round of schools participating in the school year 2021/2022 will be announced. For updates check the website.

On 25 November, Dr. Marcella Ruschi Mendes Saade, who is an employee at the Working Group since July 2020, held a lecture on how to perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) as part of a series of seminars organised jointly with the Institute of Business Economics and Industrial Sociology.

The seminar series deal with Techno-Economic Research Methods, which are crucial to every scientific discipline as they ensure rationality and verifiability of scientific findings.

In the seminar, participants were taught the different steps involved in performing an SLR to enable them to differentiate between narrative and systematic reviews, to develop answerable research questions, to design a search protocol and to organize and combine search outcomes.

Two more seminars will take place in December and January. The second one is also co-organised by the Working Group and will be held by Prof. Karen Allacker from KU Leuven on the topic of "Research methods with focus on Sustainability". Registration is open until January 25th 2021. Biking or using public transportation and travelling by train instead of airplane on business trips is highly encouraged. The university subsidizes e-bikes, tickets for public transportation and the charging of electric cars and supports research projects especially in the area of sustainable construction.

This new study by Guillaume Habert (ETH Zurich), Martin Röck, Alexander Passer, Endrit Hoxha et al. explores the processes for establishing a carbon budget for residential and non-residential buildings. Target values for creating carbon budgets for buildings are important for developing climate-neutral building stocks. A lack of clarity currently exists for defining carbon budgets for buildings and what constitutes a unit of assessment—particularly the distinction between production- and consumption-based accounting. These different perspectives on the system and the function that is assessed hinder a clear and commonly agreed definition of ‘carbon budgets’ for building construction and operation. 
Find the detailed review of current approaches to budget allocation and the propsed framework to accommodate these different perspectives and spatio-temporal scales towards harmonised and comparable cross-sectoral budget definitions in the open access publication.

We are happy to welcome our new team member, Marcella Ruschi Mendes Saade.

Marcella performs research in Environmental and Civil Engineering, specifically working with Life Cycle Assessment applied to the built environment. Her focus is on the development and/or adaptation of life cycle inventories, data uncertainty, impact distribution and dynamic modelling of carbon balances. She has collaborated with the Working Group in other research projects since 2016.
Marcella will join the group as a postdoctoral researcher, supporting different projects and aiding in class preparation and lectures.

This lecture is part of the course Software-based Building Information Modeling (219.254), which deals with geometrical modelling of parametrised objects, semantical modelling, forms of cooperation within integrated Information Modelling and standardisation as well as introduces students to the basic methods and possibilities in the digital construction.

On Monday, 25 May at 14 o'clock, Agron Deralla (BIM-Manager at AllesWirdGut at Vienna) and Martin Taurer (Product Designer for Autodesk Revit and Consultant at LivingRoomCraftz) will share their experience working with Building Information Modeling.

The lecture will be streamed live on tube.
Questions can be asked via feedbackr.

In its mission statement Graz University of Technology committed to implementing the UN Agenda 2030 goals. In addition to contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in teaching, research and administration, TU Graz, together with the University of Graz, is responsible for SDG 11 "Sustainable Cities and Communities" within the UniNEtZ project.

„Städte und Gemeinden/Gemeinschaften spielen eine Schlüsselrolle für die nachhaltige Entwicklung in unserer Welt. Derzeit leben ca. 50% der Weltbevölkerung in Städten, bis 2070 werden 70% erwartet. SDG 11 zielt auf die Schaffung nachhaltiger Städte und Gemeinden (bzw. Gemeinschaften) und damit auf die Schaffung einer sozialräumlich gerechten und ökologisch zukunftsfähigen Lebensgrundlage für die Menschen ab. Durch den wachsenden Urbanisierungsgrad ist SDG 11 mit einem der Megatrends des 21. Jahrhunderts konfrontiert. Darin liegen gleichermaßen Probleme wie Potenziale, da es nicht nur auf die Verbesserung der derzeitigen städtischen Infrastrukturen und Lebenssituationen abzielt, sondern auch auf die Transformation hin zu sozial, ökologisch und ökonomisch nachhaltigen Gemeinschaften mit resilientem Charakter. Die wichtigste Herausforderung ist daher die Schaffung von Strukturen, die nachhaltiges Alltagsleben ermöglichen.“ [Allianz Nachhaltige Universitäten in Österreich (2020): UniNEtZ – Universitäten und Nachhaltige Entwicklungsziele – Perspektivenbericht. Wien, Innsbruck, Österreich. ISBN: 978-3-901182-74-7]

www.uninetz.at

At the invitation of Landesrat Johann Seitinger, experts including Alexander Passer discussed the future of living at Kunsthaus Graz. Climate protection and the creation of affordable property were the focus of attention.
According to Seitinger, the building sector makes a very significant contribution to climate protection: "About one third of the progress made to date in climate protection comes from this area. Strict insulation standards and heating with renewable energy sources not only protect our climate, but also reduce operating costs."

Professor Passer presented the necessary mitigation and adaptation strategies to cope with climate change, especially in heavely built-up urban areas. These areas are going through a rapid phase of growth and the emergence of heat islands is threatening: "It is essential to plan buildings, open spaces and entire neighborhoods in advance to counter climatic change" says Professor Passer. Our cities then would not only be better prepared for climate change, but they would make an active contribution to climate protection.
You can download the full presentation here.

See also:

• Landentwicklung Steiermark
• Lebensressort Steiermark

At the Sustainable Built Environment D-A-CH Conference 2019, researchers adopted the Graz declaration for climate protection in the built environment.

An intact natural environment is not only vital for humankind but also provides the basis for further social and economic development. For more than 30 years, the international scientific community has provided a strong body of evidence on the increasingly high atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases (GHG) and the need to reduce these in order to limit the damages and risks caused by global warming.

The operation of buildings is responsible for approximately 40% of Europe’s energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions, making them the single largest cause of energy consumption and GHG-emissions. In addition, there are energy consumption and emissions caused by the manufacturing of construction products for creation and refurbishment of buildings and constructed assets. 

The objectives of limiting global warming require translation into actions for the specific sectors and actors.

You can sign the declaration here.

All signatories can be found here.

We are a partner of the summer school “Green.Building.Solutions. (GBS)”, which will take place from July, 20th to August, 11th 2019 in Vienna. 
Therefore, we invite our students to apply for the summer school.

The programme deals with ecological, economical, technical and social aspects of sustainable planning and building. Participants deepen their knowledge in the fields of passive house technology and energy efficiency. The contents are transmitted in close cooperation with Austrian experts in a transdisciplinary and intercultural setting of lectures, excursions and a final project work (information under: www.summer-university.net.)

Application deadline: April, 22nd (resp. June, 30th 2019)
Participation fee (incl. Housing, light refreshments):
Scholarship: EUR 490,- Regular fee: EUR 2000,- for students / EUR 2490,- for professionals
Application here

The Working Group Sustainable Construction, the Science, Technology and Society Unit and the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change teamed up for the project 'Transition of the procurement process towards Paris compatible public buildings' to identify the mitigation potential for the public building sector and to help integrate requirements to reach climate objectives.

In alignment with the Paris Agreement, Austria is committed to development towards a climate neutral society. The ParisBuildings project addresses the implications on buildings in Austria, considering both operational and embodied emissions. Moreover, the project combines environmental with economic assessments and develops Paris compatible public procurement requirements. The derived recommendations are evaluated based on case studies to support Austria’s policymakers.

This project is funded by the Climate and Energy Fund and implemented under the program ACRP.

SUSTAINABILITY LECTURE by Univ.-Prof. Ing. Verena Winiwarter (BOKU) on Sustainability as a Challenge: Innovations, Preparedness and Interdisciplinary Thinking.
Afterwards panel discussion with Rector Kainz and the Sustainability Advisory Board.

When: 5 June 2019, 12 to 14 o'clock
Where: Hörsaal i9, Inffeldgasse 13, ground floor, 8010 Graz

For further information and registration please have a look at tugraz.at/go/SL.
The event will be recorded.

Starting in 2019, Hermes is an international research project driven by scientists in Norway, Austria and China focusing on the integrated evaluation of energy saving, emission reduction potential and management strategies for urban road systems.

Innovation strategies aiming to improve urban life and development must address the pillars of urban areas: their infrastructural system. In Europe, about 80% of the road network consists of asphalt pavements, requiring more than 275 million tons of asphalt mixture to be produced every year. The negative impact of this production in terms of fossil energy, air quality and resource depletion is immense. If we are to take great leaps towards a sustainable infrastructure this challenge must be addressed. For further information on the project please have a look at the website.

From April 24 to 26, Austrian climate researchers gathered at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU) and the Vienna University of Technology.
Under the umbrella of the Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA), Climate Day, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, has become the most important networking event of the Austrian climate research community and promotes, among other things, the exchange and dialogue between scientific and non-scientific groups.
70 posters divided in 5 Sessions on the topics Transformation, Climate I Water I Snow, climate change impacts, agriculture and forestry, and climate change adaptation were presented.
The complete Conference Transcript can be found on CCCA’s website.

The Sustainability Advisory Board is the central body for implementing sustainability at Graz University of Technology. In addition to advising university management in all matters of sustainability, the Advisory Board continuously develops the current sustainability strategy, bundles activities and initiates new proposals and projects.

Sustainability should be anchored at all levels of the university through the activities of the Advisory Board. For example, the Sustainability Advisory Board aims to integrate technology assessment in research and teaching, optimise energy and mobility management at TU Graz, develop measures to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, initiate (research) projects in the field of sustainability and regularly compile a sustainability report.

Assoc. prof. dr. Rebeka Kovačič Lukman from University of Maribor is a visiting professor at the Working Group Sustainable Construction since January 2019. Her research focus is: sustainable consumption and production, LCA, circular economy. She has been involved in the coordination and implementation of over 25 international and national projects, focusing on sustainability, energy and environment. She is a core group member at the expert group by the European Commission in the field of Circular Economy Financing in the EU. Until now, she has published over 100 bibliographic units, including papers, conference proceedings, chapters in monographs, etc. Based on the Current Research Information System data, her h-index is 10. In the Web of Science (WoS) database, she has over 955 pure citations of her academic papers, which are in WoS ranked in the 1 % of the highly cited papers in the field.

Assoc. prof. dr. Rebeka Kovačič Lukman will teach the course Environmental assessment of construction materials (206.456). During her stay, she will co-supervise PhD- and master students and collaborate in scientific projects and publications paper in the field of LCA.

This year, the initiative Growth in transition is organizing its fourth international conference, entitled “Europe’s transformation: Where People Matter”, on 14–15 November 2018 at the Austria Center Vienna.
During the two-day event, plenary and parallel sessions will feature inspiring speakers from politics, science, civil-society and the private sector. 
Keynote speakers include Ban Ki-Moon (Co-Chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens and Former Secretary-General of the United Nations), Elisabeth Köstinger (Federal Minister for Sustainability and Tourism of Austria) and Frans Timmermans (Vice-President European Commission).
The conference will address the transformation towards a sustainable society from very different perspectives. Conference topics will range from social and distributional aspects of a fair society to the role of the financial sector enabling a sustainable transformation.

Graz University of Technology and the Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria organized a Session in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research, ETH Zurich and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology:

The Built Environment in Transition:
Adaption of Production and Consumption Patterns in the D-A-CH-Region
The aim of the session is to underline the need for a transformation of the built environment. Due to economic importance of the construction and real estate sector covering our human needs for shelter and infrastructure, the anthropogenic material flows and the high energy demand as well as the associated emissions, there is a great need for action in the direction of sustainable development. To tackle these challenges in the sense of the Global Grand Challenges, UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement, a paradigm shift is needed in the construction industry (planers and contractors), on the part of procurers (public and private investors, real estate sector) as well as on the demand side (user needs and user behavior).
Speakers:
Alexander Passer, Professor for Sustainable Construction at Graz University of Technology
Josefina Lindblom (DG Environment, European Commision)
Thomas Lützkendorf (Director of the Centre for Real Estate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Guillaume Habert (Chair of Sustainable Construction, ETH Zurich)
Oskar Mair am Tinkhof (Salzburg Institute for Regional Planning and Housing)
Günter Getzinger (Graz University of Technology)

You can download the preliminary programme here. For further information check the official conference website.

From July 23rd to August 3rd Marco Scherz took part in the 13th EURO PhD Summer School on MCDA/MCDM in Chania, Greece.

MCDA/MCDM focuses on developing and implementing systematic approaches to decision-making that require consideration of a variety of criteria, goals and perspectives. The application of MCDM methods is an essential contribution to the implementation of sustainable construction, also with regard to achieving the climate goals.

By attending the Summer School Marco increased the solid foundation for his PhD thesis and enlarged his network for important future collaborations. 

The pioneers and best scientists of the MCDA/MCDM area gave their lectures within in the Summer School (see program).

For the practical application, the participants had to work on a case study “Urban Sustainability Assessment”. After preparation and presentation (see project presentation) of the case study, the group in which Marco worked, was honored with an acknowledgment of excellence for their outstanding performance in the case project work.

We sincerely congratulate.

“Development of a glycosylation platform cell factory
and optimisation of downstream processing for the sustainable production of glycosides and building blocks”