Success for two sustainability projects at the university

New funding programme from the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation / Oldenburg scientists involved in two further projects

Great success for sustainability research at the University of Oldenburg: two project proposals led by the university scored highly in the "Science for Sustainable Development" funding programme initiated by the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Oldenburg scientists are also involved in two other approved research projects on sustainability. The new programme will fund a total of eight projects with around twelve million euros.

"Interdisciplinary research on sustainability has a long tradition at the University of Oldenburg - it began back in the 1970s and has been part of the university's identity ever since," explains Prof. Dr. H.-Jürgen Appelrath, Vice President for Research. With the current funding commitments, the high quality of Oldenburg's research is once again recognised and the interdisciplinary commitment of the scientists is honoured in a special way.

The approved projects:
"Reflexive Responsibilisation. Responsibility for sustainable development" - this is the title of the research project led by Oldenburg sociologist Prof Dr Anna Henkel. Sociologists, economists and philosophers are jointly researching the ambivalences and resulting "side effects" that arise in the practical implementation of various sustainability programmes. The central question here is: How are attempts made to make people responsible subjects for sustainable behaviour, and how do they make themselves so - or not? The aim of the research is to reveal obstacles on the way to a sustainable society, to anticipate foreseeable consequences and to develop possible ways of reflecting on the attribution of responsibility in a sustainable society.

"Resilience of socio-technical systems using the example of the electricity transport system" is the second project, which is being led by the University of Oldenburg. The Oldenburg physicist Prof Dr Ulrike Feudel is in charge of the project. Resilience is the ability of a system to maintain essential functions in the face of changes in economic, demographic and environmental conditions as well as disruptions. For example, a future energy system must be resilient to climate change, but also to the increasing feed-in of fluctuating wind energy. In the project, economists, physicists and social scientists are researching the interplay of complex networks consisting of economic actors, technical systems, institutions and social processes in the context of the energy transition. The aim is to identify resilience-determining characteristics of these networks and their interactions, which should be taken into account for the sustainable development of the energy transport system.

"NEDS - Nachhaltige Energieversorgung Niedersachsen" is coordinated at the University of Hanover. Together with computer scientists and environmental economists from the University's School II of Computing Science, Economics and Law and the affiliated Institute OFFIS, the scientists are researching options for a sustainable power supply in Lower Saxony. They are looking for ways to design the electrical energy supply by 2050 in such a way that sustainability criteria - i.e. technology, economy, ecology and social issues - are taken into account as much as possible.

"Sustainable consumption of information and communication technology in the digital society - dialogue and transformation through open innovation" is being led by the University of Osnabrück. Business environmental and sustainability computer scientists and economists from the University of Oldenburg are involved in the project and are working with psychologists and social scientists to develop ways of making the consumption of information and communication technologies (ICT) more sustainable. They want to work together with consumers, companies and politicians to develop sustainable products, services, business models and legal frameworks.

About the "Science for Sustainable Development" funding programme:
With the "Science for Sustainable Development" programme, the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation are for the first time funding projects that pursue interdisciplinary approaches to mastering the problems of the future. They are providing 15 million euros in funding from the Lower Saxony Advance Programme. A total of 66 project proposals from more than 300 working groups from all over Lower Saxony were received in the first round of proposals. From these, 15 groups were selected to present their research projects to the panel of experts and interested citizens in a public colloquium. A total of eight projects were then selected for funding.