EAD Group at the TerraTec in Leipzig

Scientists from the

EAD Group led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jörg Lässig are representing Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences at TerraTec in Leipzig and will be presenting solutions that support local authorities and districts in drawing up greenhouse gas (GHG) balances, developing possible future scenarios and deriving specific measures to reduce emissions, as well as upstream steps for efficient data collection.

A central element of this is a balancing methodology for recording GHG emissions in various sectors such as energy, transport, industry, agriculture and waste management. The balancing process also takes into account statistical data from various sources and can therefore be flexibly adapted to the needs of the respective municipality/city or district.

The methodology was developed by Markus Will from the

Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

, who also works as a research assistant at the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, with a focus on scientific accuracy and the need for pragmatic applicability given the available data. He has long been involved with questions of environmental and sustainability assessment of organizations, technologies and products. His academic interests focus on methodological issues relating to the life cycle assessment of products and the scientifically sound compilation of greenhouse gas inventories in the municipal sector. 

As Prof. Lässig from the

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

explains, current balance sheet data for a given study area - such as a municipality - is compared with the development in recent years and the opening balance sheet from 1990 and interpreted accordingly.

In addition, various future scenarios for municipalities and districts can be developed and designed as part of scenario workshops. Corresponding scenarios are concretized and made comparable on an annual basis by means of quantitative values with regard to the development of emission values or the expected costs in order to ensure the most reliable planning of climate protection measures and their implementation with a calculable effect.

Upstream of the solutions described, it is possible to support data collection within the study area with monitoring solutions and systematic energy and resource management in municipal buildings. Continuous monitoring of resource consumption is an important first step towards knowing and understanding current consumption and identifying potential for reducing emissions. Automated analysis components can evaluate relevant information, identify problems such as consumption peaks, recognize trends and then visualize them.