The new Sustainability Report recounts how Freie Universität Berlin has pursued its sustainability and climate goals with concrete measures. This includes the internal climate protection fund established in 2026, which can be used to finance new ideas and initiatives from university members, as well as climate-friendly measures that promote biodiversity for buildings and other campus facilities. The funds can solely be used for activities that go above and beyond what the legal requirements for public institutions dictate.

“We need to prioritize sustainability not only to prepare for the future, but also to be ready to shape it ourselves,” says Professor Günter M. Ziegler, president of Freie Universität Berlin. “I am glad that Freie Universität Berlin has taken this idea to heart over the last quarter century – and it continues to be forwarding-thinking in this respect, for example, with new ideas like the climate protection fund. The fund serves multiple purposes: through internal carbon pricing, it allows us to be transparent about our emissions, while also creating opportunities to finance projects in the areas of campus infrastructure, biodiversity, and participatory sustainability.”

Freie Universität also wants to stimulate discussion around these issues and strengthen a sense of individual responsibility within its community. “In that spirit, the university has established new sustainability goals and principles for business travel, which are now firmly embedded in our new travel guidelines. We also plan to showcase so-called ‘handprint’ activities, such as transformative education, shared resources, and living labs on campus. In doing so, we want to make these positive efforts to promote climate protection and sustainability visible and meaningful beyond the calculation of our own carbon footprint,” says Andrea Güttner, chancellor elect of Freie Universität Berlin.

The report highlights new plans for the future at Freie Universität Berlin as well as what the university has accomplished over the last few years. For example, in 2024, Freie Universität was the first university in Germany to adopt its own biodiversity strategy accompanied by guidelines setting out concrete measures. Three years earlier, the university established an ideas and innovation management focused on sustainability. Around sixty new project proposals were submitted, approximately half of which received funding.

“Our ambitious dedication to sustainability here at Freie Universität Berlin demonstrates that, even at a large institution like our university, sustainability transformation is happening, and it is opening up new realms of possibilities! For instance, our early investment in energy management helped us mitigate the effects of the dramatic spike in energy costs during the energy crisis that followed Russia’s attack on Ukraine. At the same time, our activities make it clear that sustainability concerns all areas and levels of the university and can only be achieved through collective effort,” says Andreas Wanke, director of the Sustainability & Energy Management Unit.

The university laid the groundwork for these developments early on. In 2001 Freie Universität Berlin implemented a university-wide energy management system that was certified by the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) in 2021 and has maintained this status since then. These measures have helped the university reduce its energy consumption by 32% since 2000/2001. For the past fifteen years, the Sustain It! initiative has been promoting sustainability through activities such as the Sustainability Days, FUdSharing, and the UniGardening project. Since 2024, the university has also been successfully implementing a project to promote cycling.