Carbon-neutral regions as strategic approach for support of sustainable consumption patterns Analysis and development of political recommendations

The chances of regional policy approaches for climate protection become more and more clear. Strategies like “climate-neutral region” or “100 percent renewable-energy region” are an indicator for promising approaches. The strategic potentials of these approaches to strengthen sustainable consumption patterns have not yet been analysed.

Against der background of the 2016 launched German “National program for sustainable consumption” the project intends to analyse the strategic relevance of such regional self-commitments and reflect their importance as environmental policy measure. To do this, experiences of existing initiatives will be assembled and prepared for a future dissemination. The project will reflect the role of citizens as potential drivers and as success factor and develop potential measures and initiatives for a future strategy to strengthen the above listed approaches.