Karlsruhe, Germany
Empowering communities for a climate-neutral future.
In Karlsruhe, the pilot site supports the city’s ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2040. One of the main goals is to foster the activation of Energy Neighbourhoods—local communities where residents and homeowners are supported in improving the energy performance of their buildings.
Through initiatives like practice seminars at Karlshochschule and the Mobile Participation Lab at KIT, Karlsruhe is also embedding energy transition topics in everyday education and communication. As project partners emphasize: “We need to engage people who are less involved in the energy transition, and train others to inspire and do the same.”
The local challenges:
While Karlsruhe has a strong climate strategy, unlocking its full potential requires broad societal engagement—particularly from homeowners and neighbourhood communities, which are often difficult to reach.
The main challenges include:
- The building sector accounts for over 75% of heating-related energy consumption, most of it from fossil fuels.
- Many private homeowners are unfamiliar with renovation options, lack technical confidence, or feel disconnected from broader climate goals.
- There’s a need to lower the threshold for active participation in the energy transition and to engage groups that have been left out of these discussions.
- Addressing pressing needs on renovation rates in residential sectors, phasing-out of fossil-based systems, and greate adoption of nenewable energy sources.
Activities
Energy Neighbourhood Activation
• Supporting residents directly with knowledge, tools, and inspiration to take action on their buildings.
• Offer independent, free consultation to homeowners and tenants on energy-saving renovation and renewable energy use.
• Encourage building owners to invest in PV systems, insulation, and heating upgrades.
• Motivate community-scale action to unlock neighbourhood-wide energy potential.
Knowledge Sharing & Participation
• Organize interactive engagement activities through the KIT Mobile Participation Lab.
• Conduct “train the trainer” upcycling workshops for balcony PV systems, using recycled panels.
• Support the formation of innovation communities around decentralized energy.
Educational Engagement & Research
By embedding energy literacy into education, Karlsruhe is planting the seeds for long-term change.
• Run seminars and practice-based learning through Karlshochschule.
• Carry out accompanying research on the impact and replication of balcony PV programs.
• Facilitate small-scale PV upcycling experiments .
Partners involved
