Seminar series
Helmholtz Sustainability Talks
The Helmholtz Working Group Sustainability Forum cordially invites you to the 3rd round of the Helmholtz Sustainability Talks seminar series on 26 August 2025 from 14:00 to 15:00. In each seminar we want to focus on a specific area of sustainability, share valuable experiences and facilitate questions.
This time we will focus on the following topic: Sustainable research: Greenhouse gas emissions in the research process - comparison of three research projects. While actual sustainability research predominantly focuses on the challenges faced by society, it is less common for organisations to systematically scrutinise their own research behaviour. In the evaluation context of organisations, the focus is therefore often on locations or entire institutes and less on individual research activities, which nevertheless represent potential "hot spots" and can therefore harbour potential for improvement. The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has addressed this issue in an internal research project that methodically evaluated eight of its own research projects in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. This presentation shows the basic approach based on life cycle assessment using the example of three selected projects, the results, the challenges and a summary of recommendations for action.
Registration is possible under the following link: Webinar-Registration - Zoom
About the speaker
Dr. Henning Wigger has been at the DLR Institute of Networked Energy Systems in Oldenburg since 2019 and works on the assessment of sustainability and resilience aspects of new energy technologies. His main focus is on the prospective assessment of technologies in early development phases and associated uncertainties as well as multi-dimensional sustainability assessment to support decision-makers. Previously, he worked on environmental risk assessment of nanomaterials with his PhD thesis at the University of Bremen and post-doc time at Empa in St. Gallen (CH), as well as various research projects on resilience, innovation and technology analyses and prospective technology assessment in the context of technology assessment.