The "Energy-efficient city" competition organised by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) focused on strategies and instruments that systematically and visionarily combine new technologies with services and climate protection.

The IZT was in charge of the accompanying research for this competition. This also included supporting local authorities in concretising their concepts. In addition, a set of instruments was to be developed to dovetail service and energy research.

The topic of climate protection has gained unprecedented importance in recent years. In this context, German cities and municipalities are particularly challenged because, although the central framework conditions for climate protection are set at international and national level, the municipality is nevertheless the level of action where the concrete implementation and applications take place. However, numerous studies have made it clear that very few local authorities in Germany have so far systematically and integratively utilised their options for increasing efficiency and reducing emissions. Genuine future planning with far-reaching prospects for a sustainable energy and climate policy has only been carried out in very few cases. In fact, the municipality was still not seen as a coherent overall energy system to be optimised, which resulted in a largely suboptimal energy use balance with regard to energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies.

The competition focussed on strategies and instruments that systematically and visionarily combine services and climate protection and thus provide significant impetus for the ecologically, socially and economically sustainable redesign of structures, functions and processes.

The accompanying research analysed obstacles and developed instruments, procedures and methods in order to achieve the BMBF's funding policy goal of dovetailing service research with other specialist R&D fields using the example of the energy-efficient city.