White Week: Climate-friendly Campus Usage
RWTH Aachen University is not only a place of knowledge education and transfer, but also a relevant urban element due to its large area and building share in the city of Aachen. In the context of climate change, this will require transformation measures in the future in order to achieve the climate neutrality targets that have been set. To fulfill their function as economic catalysts for innovation, universities consume energy in their operations. In addition to working on teaching and research projects that promote a climate-neutral future, it is therefore necessary to address the university's internal energy consumption. In this context, energy in the building can be negotiated on the basis of gray energy in the building fabric on the one hand, and on the basis of energy for building operation on the other. The latter requires knowledge of the energy consumption of buildings in order to develop appropriate and sensible strategies for action.
In practice, this means not only improving the energy efficiency of the building envelope, but also communicating information that can provide users with information about their consumption. By classifying the information, immediate measures for optimizing consumption can be implemented.
In interdisciplinary cooperation, students of Reiff are developing a handbook for climate-friendly use of the faculty building at Schinkelstraße 1 as part of the White Week. The aim of the handbook is to compile the status quo on energy consumption at the operational and material building level. The jointly developed handbook will serve as a starting point for sustainable projects and actions at Reiff in the future. The event will take place from November 21-25 in cooperation with the students of the courses "Vision Campus" from the Chair of Building Technology, "Climate Neutral Campus" from the Junior Professorship Cycle-Oriented Construction, "University campus as a living lab: rethinking public space for climate action at university campuses" from the Chair of Urban Design and the Semester Stegreif from the Department of Design Computation.