Guiding principles

The Sustainability Center Freiburg (LZN) is the joint innovation ecosystem in Freiburg and beyond in the are of sustainable technology research and it transfer into the economy and society.

We conduct research into solutions that meet social and global needs. In addition to the engineering focus, the LZN addresses the interface between technological sustainability and social issues. This is done in a network together with partners from science, business, society and politics.

On the one hand, our aim is to provide a dynamic and bi-directional transfer infrastructure that is available to all stakeholders in an open ecosystem. This is intended to ensure that the key areas addressed have an economic and social impact from their foundation to their application in order to contribute to a sustainable future. On the other hand, the LZN aims to work on topics together and through cooperation between the participating research institutions.

The uniqueness of Freiburg as a location with the University of Freiburg as a full university consisting of 11 faculties with 17 scientific centres and the 5 Freiburg Fraunhofer Institutes provides an excellent basis for this.

In order to account for a sustainable transformation process, technology-orientated research is to be thought of and connected with environmental, natural, social and economic sustainability research on an interdisciplinary basis.

Mission: our understanding of sustainability

Our programmes and funding enable the development of research results, products, services and business models that make an important contribution to sustainable development. In doing so, we are guided by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We support and design research for the transformation to a sustainable economy and way of life. To this end, we develop technologies to improve the social and economic quality of life while taking planetary boundaries into account. We also promote technologies that contribute to resource reduction and ecological change processes in the context of climate change.

In addition, against the backdrop of increasing local and global crises, we are focussing on resilience issues in order to maintain the ability to act in the event of a crisis and thus remain sustainable in the long term.  

When realising our projects, we rely on cooperation with science, society and industry in order to put research results into practice.

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the University of Freiburg, with their excellent researchers and high-quality infrastructure, form the basis of our work.