Abschlussbericht. EnEff:Campus: Intracting an Hochschulen

The building stock of universities is characterized by high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) (Emmerich-Rose 2016). This results in underfinancing maintenance and renovation budgets provided by the state for a long period of time. Even highly economic energy saving measures often are not realized due to a lack of personnel and financial resources. Furthermore, necessary financial means are in direct competition with research, teaching and administrative expense. At the same time the federal and state government defines an ambitious target regarding the reduction of GHG-emissions for the purpose of climate protection. Internal Contracting – briefly “Intracting“ – is an innovative financing instrument to resolve the conflict between long term goals for reducing GHG-emissions and the short term constrains on the allocation of funds. Intracting creates a positive financial and administrative framework, which enables the university’s internal energy management to constantly improve the energy efficiency of the buildings and thus to activate the existing energy saving potential. Intracting is for energy saving measures which finances itself by the saved energy costs. To start Intracting an initial capital is needed which is invested in energy saving measures. The generated energy cost savings are credited to an Intracting account and are reinvested in further energy saving measures. This leads to more cost savings that are reinvested again and so on. If designed properly, equipped and applied, a self-reinforcing Intracting-cycle is set in motion leading to an exponential growth of the financial capital. This principle is similar to a revolving fund. The research project “Intracting at universities – IntrHo“, this report is based on, systematically examines the implementation of Intracting at universities and develops tools that are necessary for planning and application. Thus, the results can be transferred reliably to various universities with different preconditions. The project this report is based on was supported with funds of the Federal Ministry of Economy Affairs and Climate Action (funding code 03ET1323A).