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The project aims to minimize greenhouse gas emissions in the region and maximize value creation. This is to be achieved through the increased use of regional renewable resources within a technology network. The network brings synergies that would not result from the use of individual technologies.

The core of the project is the creation of a calculation model for the region, which can be used to consider different scenarios. These scenarios show different paths of use of the regional renewable resources and their economic and ecological added value.
The region thus has an innovative basis for discussion, on the basis of which it can set the course towards environmental and climate protection and a strengthened regional economy in an overall concept.

The state of North Rhine-Westphalia supports the structural development in the Bergisches RheinLand with the structural development program REGIONALE 2025. The aim is to improve the quality of the project space with concrete projects and concepts and to raise its profile within the Cologne/Bonn region.

Energiewende konkret – (Energy Transition in practice)

Development of a digital toolbox for integrated energy concepts for regions including (1) an energy map software, (2) a standardized software for comparison of energy demand and supply in combination with (3) a process network synthesis software for economic optimization of regional technology networks, (4) a communication and process design, (5) new functions for local climate models and (6) functions for the determination of costs and (regional) benefits.

Joint Programming a process of the European Commission, which was established in 2008 with the aim to strengthen the cooperation in the field of research and innovation of the European countries by using national resources in a coordinated way. The Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe was founded in 2010 to expand cooperation in the field of urban research and development in order to create attractive, sustainable and economically strong cities.

SYNCITY - Synergetic Cities for Europe:
The city of tomorrow needs sustainable participatory processes involving all relevant stakeholders, pushing innovation competence and operating in a paradigm of sustainability. This is the starting point for the SYNCITY project.
How can processes and structures be established between the relevant stakeholders that enable synergies, creative sustainable solutions and positive changes for living together in an urban community? This question becomes all the more important when faced with conflicting interests and uncertainties typical of urban development processes.
In line with SDG 11 "Sustainable Cities and Towns", SYNCITY shows how urban transformation projects, especially in disadvantaged areas with very diverse communities, can achieve a high level of acceptance among residents and positive effects on urban society as such, the local economy and the whole life in the city.
Often, urban transformation plans with a potential for positive change lack a comprehensive and coordinated integration of stakeholders. The SYNCITY case study in the neighbourhood of Cureghem in the center of Brussels, Belgium, leads to a methodology for urban transformation processes, which leads to three feasible proposals for future larger scale urban transformation projects in Crureghem and a toolbox for European municipalities to better implement integrative urban transformation processes in the future.

Instead of evaluating already existing processes, this projects aim is to integrate process and sustainability evaluation already during early development stages. Therefore, possibly costly and difficult changes in system structures can be avoided.

By creating a tool for standard process development, which combines important parameters with assessments of resources and materials, the user has an easy access to information about the future impacts of the process.

The aim of the cooperation is to determine and present the ecological footprint using the Sustainable Process Index (SPI®) method and the carbon footprint of the average LAYJET Micro-Pipe laying process compared to the conventional standard process. The evaluation reveals the areas that stand out from an environmental point of view within the new process as well as the differences between the innovative LAYJET method and the conventional dredging method.

PROJEKT PRO GmbH develops software solutions for planning and engineering offices and always strives to offer holistic solutions for its customers.
In this project, the goal of climate neutrality is to come closer, which is why the determination and presentation of the ecological footprint and the CO2 balance of the software company PROJEKT PRO GmbH is determined. With the help of the life cycle analysis (LCA), the areas that stand out within the company from an environmental point of view are shown, as well as the overall ecological balance. The results are based on the method of the Sustainable Process Index (SPI) and fully include all chains as well as external services. Based on these results, PROJEKT PRO GmbH can subsequently develop and present itself as a climate-neutral company.

Youth business activities in the spirit of the circular economy to achieve the Green Deal goals.

The DG HIVE project has as its main objective to empower youth with new knowledge, competencies and skills of the circular economy.
To provide circular economy skills focusing on youth entrepreneurial activities. The consortium of the project consists of five organisations from Austria, Slovenia, Poland, Lithuania and Greece.
Young people, youth workers and stakeholders have the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, improve their skills and better understand the importance of green economy and circular economy.
The young people, youth workers and stakeholders will have the opportunity to acquire new knowledge, improve their skills and better understand the importance of green economy, circular economy, business and innovation.

Young entrepreneurship is seen as an important factor in reducing youth unemployment. This project aims to contribute to the creation of jobs in the circular economy along the food chain and social entrepreneurship.

The project is supported by eight partners from six EU countries, three of which face high youth unemployment. It involves a wide range of experts in the fields of circular economy along the food chain, social entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer.

Specifically, the aim of TRAIN-CE-FOOD is to develop innovative professional skills and thus enable young people to use entrepreneurial and cooperative skills and ways of thinking. These should enable them to develop efficient cooperative solutions and business models in the field of circular economy along the food chain. This is to be achieved through open online learning, face-to-face workshops and distance coaching. Target groups are pupils and students, as well as teachers and professors from secondary school level upwards.

TRAIN-CE-FOOD produces, among other things, a curriculum at middle school level and one at university level, e-learning modules as well as an e-textbook, and offers intensive courses, business start-up coaching and a central workshop for all target and stakeholder groups of this project.

The project is co-financed by the European Commission, Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

Determination and presentation of the ecological footprint of the organic agricultural enterprise Harmer KG for the years 2016 and 2017. Recording of: Energy quantities (electricity and natural gas in kilowatt hours [kWh]), the groundwater used for irrigation in cubic metres [m³] and all crops produced.
A comprehensive ecological assessment at this level of accuracy of an individual farm has so far been the exception, as normally rough average values are used for very diverse farming and are not carried out on a farm-by-farm basis.

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In recent years, there has been a growing interest in analysing and shaping the food space of the city in terms of a circular economy. Topics such as food security, sustainable agriculture and bioeconomy are integrated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

In order to be able to address these current and future challenges in the food space of the city, the CITY.FOOD.BASKET project aims to promote shopping baskets as a measure to increase sustainable regional food consumption in cities such as Graz and Vienna. In this context, the preliminary work of the Smart Food Grid Graz project is used.

On the basis of personas, regional shopping baskets will be defined for different consumer groups and created with practical partners. Recommendations for the implementation of shopping baskets will be developed in a participatory process, which correspond to the realities of life of different consumer groups.

No other foodstuff is as inseparably linked to Styria in terms of its origin and development as Styrian pumpkin seed oil. It is a natural speciality with a unique character that does not require any foreign oils, colourings, flavourings or preservatives and is used in numerous dishes.
In this project, the various process steps from different regions of origin in Styria are to be evaluated according to the ecological footprint of the Sustainable Process Index (SPI) in order to show the so-called ecological hot spots. For this purpose, the data of numerous member companies of the Pumpkin Seed Oil PGI will be digitised and included. Based on the ecological assessment, Steirisches Kürbiskernöl g.g.A. will be able to operate even more ecologically by orienting itself to the best-case scenario developed and communicating this internally, as well as by presenting quantified comparisons with similar products.

Conception of a regional programme that fulfils the legal requirements and defined priorities and objectives of the Salzburg Spatial Planning Act 2009 as amended. In the Pongau Regional Association in the province of Salzburg, the spatial development of the region is to be linked with central tasks for the future: on the one hand with bioeconomy strategies, and on the other with digitalisation. To this end, we are working in a broad interdisciplinary team with RAUMPOSITION, stadland, con.sens Verkehrsplanung, the future.lab and Martin Netzer Consult. In this interdisciplinary team, STRATECO is responsible for providing the relevant core content with regard to the bioeconomy and circular economy.

As part of the "Our Food. Our Future" project by Südwind, STRATECO co-designed a youthlab on the topic of food and activism. The seminar explored the impact of our food on the climate and the price of our food on working conditions and working practices. The topics covered were the ecological aspects of climate change, food sovereignty, harvest labour but fair trade.

The "Our Food. Our Future" project by Südwind aims to strengthen the commitment of young people from the EU to human rights and solidarity and to address the global challenges of migration, climate change and a sustainable food system. They should adopt sustainable consumption habits and actively support sustainable food supply chains, fair trade relations, respect for human and workers' rights and sustainable development.

"Das Mosaik des guten Essens für alle" is a campaign that addresses the current challenges of the current food system and develops possible solutions in a participatory manner in order to create impulses for a more sustainable and just food system in Graz and the surrounding area.

The aim is to find out in a participatory way what consumers can do themselves, where obligations for the economy are needed and what the state must or should do in terms of regulation and funding so that, on the one hand, basic rights (human/worker/women's rights) in the food system are protected and, on the other hand, ecologically sustainable products and logistics can be ensured.

The exploratory project MURREAL aims to create a comprehensive development path for a real laboratory to test the energy transition in the Murtal district.

The goal of the Murtal region in Styria is to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2040.

From November 2021 to July 2022, we analysed the current energy status of the Murtal and derived a suitable energy transition concept for a possible reallaboratory in the region. This builds on the implementation concept and the two-year action plan of the KEM Murtal climate and energy model region, with a focus on a long-term implementation strategy.

At the end of this exploratory project, a development path for a real laboratory is available.

The findings will be made available to other regions on a knowledge platform.

TOWARDS A NEW ZERO FOOD WASTE MINDSET BASED ON HOLISTIC ASSESSMENT

Food waste is a major problem: around 88 million tonnes of food is wasted annually along the EU supply chain, from primary production to consumption, with associated costs of €143 billion. The associated environmental impact is also huge: global food loss and waste is equivalent to 8-10% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions and costs around $1 trillion per year, and 30% of agricultural land is wasted. The situation may be even worse, as statistics indicate that 70% of all food lost or wasted by humans may be unrecorded because it originates from primary production or is used as animal feed. In parallel, the assessment of this problem remains unresolved, not only because it is extremely complex due to the lack of open access data and the absence of a standard methodology for comprehensive assessment in real food systems, but also because it affects the commitment of private entities that need to assess the cost-effectiveness and sustainability of food waste prevention and reduction (FWPR) solutions in order to act. ToNoWaste is a 48-month project in which 21 institutions from 7 countries collaborate to overcome this challenge with a multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary approach that considers not only agronomic, economic, environmental and business model challenges, but also other cross-cutting aspects such as psychology, law and social innovation to fight also against gender and social inequalities. ToNoWaste will inspire market actors to use science and evidence-based assessment tools and data to make better decisions towards more sustainable food production and consumption patterns. It starts from research on what makes the best decision regarding FWPR actions in the fresh food value chain. It is an open innovation ecosystem designed to leverage previous findings for the identification of social, technical/environmental, economic, political/legal, ethical and demographic drivers and to collaborate with ongoing R&D actions to propose comprehensive FWPR solutions.

The Airpower events of the last two years 2019 and 2022 were recorded by the Austrian Armed Forces with the active participation of the event managers. The responsible persons were given the respective input rights and the data was meticulously collected, sorted and entered into the ESG Cockpit.
The key figures calculated by the ESG Cockpit, especially in the area of greenhouse gas emissions, were an essential starting point for the development of the strategy for Airpower 22, much of which could be implemented in a very short time, also digitally documented and linked to the SDGs. STRATECO was instrumental in drawing up the greenhouse gas balance sheet and co-developing the sustainability strategy and contributed essential content regarding the sustainability-related components of the sustainability strategy.

The project was implemented together with Michael Jayasekara (MeetNgreen/Vionmo), Petra Bußwald (Akaryon) and their teams.

This observation was only the beginning, there is still great potential for improvement that needs to be raised in the future!

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