Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI

The Heat Roadmap Europe project helps to build the knowledge, skills and capacity required to enable new policies and encourage new investments in the heating and cooling sector. Fraunhofer ISI contributes to the project with applying its bottom-up model FORECAST for a detailed profiling of today’s heating and cooling demand in Europe as well as for simulating its future evolution. A workshop organized in Berlin on January 24, 2019, will focus on the topics district energy and building energy renovation.

The German health care system is considered one of the best worldwide, but is also characterized by conflicts of interests and distribution that can hinder social innovations. To remove these obstacles, an evaluation tool has been developed at Fraunhofer ISI on behalf of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, which exposes conflicting objectives and makes the often heterogeneous effects of innovations in the health system transparent and able to be discussed.

The number of electric vehicles is rising steadily. Because these are powered electrically, they have an impact on the entire electricity system and therefore on electricity prices as well. Fraunhofer ISI has calculated that, although investments in power grids will probably be needed, overall the electricity prices for households could fall if large numbers of electric vehicles drive on German roads.

In a new study, Fraunhofer ISI together with the IREES reviewed the evaluation framework for electricity access´ conditions in developing and emerging countries, which is applied for monitoring the attainment of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. The developed approach includes the productive use of electricity, which plays a central role for economic development, as well as for the achievement of climate change goals.

How can road freight transport contribute to climate protection in the future? This question is addressed in a joint paper of Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, the Oeko-Institut and ifeu – Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Heidelberg.

How and where will we live, what will we eat in the future in an economy no longer based on fossil resources? Experts from industry and research discussed this with young people at the second BioKompass future dialog on 18 September in Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt. The results were captured as BioKompass future visions that describe possible variants of daily life in a bioeconomy in 2040.