Operations
Promoting Sustainable Organization
RWTH’s operations are an important area in which we as a University wish to become more sustainable. Our buildings need to be provided with electricity and compressed air, and we must heat them when the weather is cooler and cool them down when it is hotter. RWTH’s own combined heat and power plants run on natural gas. Our fleet of vehicles uses additional resources, and this is particularly true for those vehicles of ours that do not yet run on electricity. Our operative goal is to reduce our resource consumption to mitigate our impact on the climate and to enable us to all work together in a responsible, more inclusive way. This being so, we are focusing on using our resources, buildings, and outdoor spaces in a sustainable manner, designing sustainable procurement processes, establishing an energy data management system, and working toward making the University climate-neutral.
In the following chapter, you will find out more about developments in the field of operational sustainability at RWTH Aachen University. An overview of the goals and focus topics that we have set up to the year 2030 can be found in the section on the Sustainability Strategy – Operations.
Good to know: RWTH has a Sustainability Strategy
The Sustainability Strategy defines the overall goals that the University aims to achieve by 2030 in the areas of Teaching and Learning, Research, Governance, and Operations.
In this section:
- Sustainability in Campus Operations – Where Do We Stand?
- At a Glance
- Climate Protection at RWTH
- Who is Actually Responsible for Sustainability in the Field of Operations?
- E2C – the Energy Efficiency Challenge
- Getting to and from the University – Mobility at RWTH
- Waste Disposal at RWTH – From the Garbage Can Back Into the Cycle
Sustainability in Campus Operations
Where Do We Stand?
As part of the Sustainability Strategy, we adopted 21 goals with 73 assigned measures and 33 performance indicators for monitoring in the area of operations.
As of the reporting date (March 2025), 12 of these measures have already been completed. This also includes measures that have already been implemented and which are being implemented on a continuous basis. Over 70 percent of the measures are at least in the planning phase, and around 50 percent of them are being or have already been implemented. As of the reporting date, no sustainability target had yet been fully achieved in the area of operations. We consult annual status updates to determine to what extent a measure has been completed. This may result in discrepancies arising between the actual completion status and the status indicated in this report.
The Measures and Indicators Report provides a more detailed overview of the status of the Sustainability Strategy in the area of operations. The report contains both the current status of all our measures and the performance indicators that are used to determine the extent to which they have been achieved.
Using its Sustainability Strategy, RWTH has firmly cemented action for the world of tomorrow into its structure. We are gradually seeing the results and fruits of our efforts. It often seems as if we are only taking small steps, but we have made a great deal of progress overall. What’s more, we have managed to do this at a time during which other global crises have pushed issues such as climate protection and biodiversity out of the limelight.
It might seem as if sustainability is not that important right now. But that is certainly not true. This makes it all the more important for us to ensure that the public sees large organizations such as RWTH making gradual progress towards sustainability.
At a Glance
RWTH Aachen University contributes to operational sustainability through a wide range of activities and measures. To make this happen, it is important that all University members continue to act in a sustainability-conscious manner. You can see evidence of their contributions in things such as the range of ideas that the sustainability fund has supported.
Climate Protection at RWTH
Making Our Energy Supply Sustainable
RWTH Aachen University is continuing to work towards its goal of achieving climate neutrality. To achieve this, the University is working alongside other stakeholders. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia is also aiming to achieve climate neutrality in public facilities and state administrative offices by 2030. As part of the NRW Climate Neutral State Administration (KNLV) initiative, various measures are being drawn up to achieve this goal. Although the public universities in North Rhine-Westphalia themselves are responsible for fulfilling their role as climate protection role models (read here), they voluntarily submit figures on operational sustainability as part of their reporting system – and it goes without saying that RWTH Aachen University does so as well. Greenhouse gas emissions are now accounted for here using a separate tool. Uniform standards are applied and the results are published in corresponding reports. This forms the mathematical basis upon which RWTH Aachen University’s climate protection concept is based. We expect to finalize this concept in 2026.
The University’s energy supply, and the field of energy conservation in general is of particular importance for climate protection. It is this that accounts for the largest share of emissions. RWTH Aachen University is supplied with energy via its own networks for district heating, natural gas, electricity, cooling, compressed air, and water. RWTH Aachen University also operates central systems that provide its own supply of electricity, heating, and cooling. This also includes three combined heat and power plants, or CHPs for short. These are fueled by natural gas.
Energy is assigned its own targets within RWTH’s Sustainability Strategy. We are also working to save energy where possible, alongside studying our energy data and monitoring how we use it. We are also working to improve how we generate and procure our energy. Specifically, our goal is to achieve energy savings of at least 20 percent by 2030 by changing user behavior and by making infrastructural adjustments. The year 2019 serves as a reference point or assessment basis for our savings. The figure shows what this means in terms of energy consumption at the University.
Our total energy consumption amounted to 245,333 megawatt hours (MWh) in 2024. This includes electricity as well as heating and cooling energy. 20 percent savings compared with 2019 mean a maximum target of 202,922 MWh of total energy consumption in 2030.
In addition to the question of where there is potential for savings in the University’s energy consumption, we also need to consider the share of renewable energy sources in total energy consumption. The share of renewable energy at RWTH was 46% in 2024—the switch to green electricity in 2023 played a significant part in this. The share of renewable energy that we generated ourselves was less than 1% in 2024. This figure relates primarily to existing photovoltaic systems. However, the amount of energy we can generate ourselves at RWTH Aachen University is limited. The potential for making energy procurement and consumption more sustainable lies primarily in the contractual structure of procurement, for example through PPAs, and the increased use of more sustainable technologies such as heat pumps. RWTH Aachen Universityֹ’s climate protection concept will set out our path to climate neutrality. To this end, we are also discussing appropriate energy-saving measures, infrastructural adjustments and more sustainable procurement solutions.
As the climate protection concept envisages systematic recording and processing of the energy data of RWTH Aachen University, we will not present the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions separately at this point so as to ensure data consolidation and coherence at the time of reporting.
Who is Actually Responsible for Sustainability in the Field of Operations?
Committed to Cutting-Edge Building Operations
Almost 3,000 people were working in technology and administration at RWTH Aachen University as of December 1, 2024. Our University is large and many issues are dealt with by the Central University Administration. But who is actually responsible for increasing our level of operational sustainability? Sustainability runs through many areas of administration, and it is managed more or less directly by the parties involved. The Sustainability Staff Unit plays a strategic role in this process. One organizational unit that has a very direct link to sustainability is the Facilities Management and Sustainability division. Dominik Stollenwerk and his team are dedicated to the complex issue of sustainability at RWTH Aachen University. The division was established in 2024 as a strategic point of contact between divisions. Since then, it has been working on key challenges such as energy saving. You can read more about this below. But first, we ought to find out more about the work of Sustainable Facility Management.
E2C – the Energy Efficiency Challenge
Working Together to Reduce Energy Consumption at RWTH
The sustainable structure of the University is closely linked to the issue of energy consumption. Self-imposed targets and legal requirements are what are behind our drive to save energy. Ultimately, our aim is to exploit potential savings through a synergy of user behavior and building technology. This is the goal of the Energy Efficiency Challenge (E2C).
The Faces of Sustainability
People from science and administration at the University are behind every step that we take towards creating a more sustainable RWTH. Birgit Wergen is one of them. As an architect specializing in building and space recycling at RWTH’s Construction and Space Management division, she deals with the subject of sustainability in many different ways in her day-to-day work. For example, in her role as project coordinator, she is responsible for improving the energy efficiency of older RWTH buildings. The connection to renewable energy generation through photovoltaics (PV) is obvious.
In the video, Birgit Wergen talks about the successes and challenges of her work. Watch the video now and then read more about her work!
But Birgit Wergen’s work also deals with many other, often less obvious topics. Here’s an example of this: As early as the tendering stage, we take care to ensure that as few composite materials as possible are used in order to guarantee that they can be disposed of separately afterwards. What’s more, not all materials that are old always have to be disposed of. The process from the start of a building refurbishment to its completion and reuse involves many approaches to sustainability. Of course, Birgit Wergen also encounters challenges in her work. “With buildings, the problems often revolve around time and money,” she says and adds: “Time for preliminary planning and money for additional investigations during renovation, for example.” In general, many people from different institutions need to be brought together to achieve a common goal. According to the architect, this requires a lot of communication, organization, patience, and trust.
The topics of infrastructure and mobility, both important for the more sustainable positioning of RWTH, are also part of her day-to-day work. It supports projects to expand the charging infrastructure for electric cars and improve bicycle mobility at the University. The KLIMACS funding project together with the city of Aachen is an achievement that she is very pleased about. “KLIMACS improves climate protection on the Aachen campus by encouraging people to move around by bicycle,” says Birgit Wergen. “One of the things we are building as part of the project is lockable bicycle garages with charging facilities for e-bikes.”
The KLIMACS project includes 19 collective locking systems for bicycles. In addition, two bicycle parking garages will be set up, 100 additional bicycle racks will be created, and 750 old parking facilities will be replaced. See the section “Getting to and from the University—Mobility at RWTH” for more information on why promoting sustainable mobility at RWTH Aachen University is important and where we currently are in this process.
Getting to and from the University
Mobility at RWTH
Mobility is another key aspect of sustainable development at the University. Mobility-related emissions account for the second-largest share of total emissions at RWTH Aachen University after energy supply. Academic operations and the international cooperations that they tend to entail generate a corresponding amount of business travel.
Waste Disposal at RWTH
From the Garbage Can Back into the Materials Cycle
When it comes to the most efficient and sustainable use of resources, we often consider the issue of waste disposal. RWTH Aachen University’s Sustainability Strategy dedicates three separate goals to the topic of waste disposal. In addition to the effective separation of waste, we also focus on reducing the overall volume of waste.