The EUREF Campus in Berlin is a self-described "real laboratory for the energy transition," a business district currently providing around 7,000 jobs. It is located directly at Schöneberg S-Bahn station and not far from the Schöneberg highway junction.
Further development of transportation infrastructure in the area surrounding the EUREF Campus has been the subject of heated political debate for decades. With its existence and its policy of favoring sustainable mobility solutions, the EUREF Campus played a decisive role in ensuring that the federal highway was not extended further north. At the same time, local companies received incentives to electrify their vehicle fleets through the decisive promotion of electromobility on campus – nearly 100% of all parking spaces in the underground garages are capable of charging vehicles. At the same time, high prices made parking unattractive to employees, regardless of whether they own electric or combustion engine vehicles.
The decisive factor for this sustainable development was the scientific consultancy of the interdisciplinary Research Campus Mobility2Grid (M2G), led by the TU Berlin (Technical University of Berlin) and the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), together with industrial partners such as Siemens and Schneider Electric.
The site's owner, EUREF AG, not only followed M2G's mobility concept but also installed a microgrid with bidirectional charging facilities for electric cars, scooters, and bicycles, as proposed by M2G in 2014. The electrification of all parking spaces, car-sharing offerings, and electric-based micromobility are the cornerstones of the concept. Fewer than 10% of the 7,000 people currently working on the campus commute by car.
Combined with on-site sustainable energy production, the EUREF Campus offers an exceptional example of sector coupling between the transport and energy transitions. Furthermore, the EUREF Campus only builds energy-efficient buildings, and much of the old fabric is reused and renovated in a climate-neutral manner. The interior design of the former gasometer is a prime example.
Many companies, especially young ones, and research institutions from the fields of energy, environmental protection, and mobility, developing ecologically and economically sustainable solutions, have established themselves here since the site's development began in 2008. The EUREF Campus has been meeting the German government's CO2 climate protection targets for 2045 since 2014. This highly visible former symbol of the fossil fuel era is now a landmark in the sustainable conversion of former industrial sites.
This allows us to draw conclusions about the urban integration of new or existing (business) districts into their environment: transport policy and urban planning should be more closely intertwined; instead of new districts in greenfields (virgin areas), new settlements should be preceded by sustainable transport infrastructures and not, as is still common, succeeded by them.