The Technical University of Munich (TUM) has declared sustainability to be an integral guiding vision for its plan of action. President Prof. Thomas F. Hofmann recently presented the TUM Sustainable Futures Strategy 2030 at the first TUM Sustainability Day: “We intend to secure the resilience of our university and shape the sustainable transformation of society with responsibility, talented individuals, scientific excellence and innovative power. We are making TUM a catalyst for the tremendous changes inevitably emerging in our pursuit of sustainable development, taking ecological limitations, economic constancy and social justice into account.”
TUM is building on a foundation in research and teaching which has evolved over the course of several years. One example is the TUM Campus Straubing for Biotechnology and Sustainability, which focuses on renewable resources, biotechnology and bioeconomy. Research and teaching at the TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan campus spans all orders of magnitude, from the molecular scale to the cellular systems of plant and animal organisms and all the way to sustainable, ecosystem-oriented strategies for land use.
The TUM Garching campus and Munich main campus are home to a large number of research and teaching activities relating to industrial biotechnology, sustainable energy, mobility and infrastructure systems, satellite-guided earth observation and digitalization, all oriented towards the United Nations’ Global Sustainable Development Goals. And TUM researches the Alpine ecosystem in the process of climate change at the Schneefernerhaus environmental research station on Zugspitze and the Friedrich N. Schwarz research station in Berchtesgadener Land.
President Hofmann also emphasized the fact that the individual in particular has to be activated as an innovation driver in sustainable transformation: “We have to empower students, employees, alumni, and expert and management staff, above and beyond their expert knowledge, with the sensitivities and new skills necessary to make well-founded decisions, to convince others, to develop effective measures for a sustainable future. We must also help them rigorously implement these advances with scalable innovations.”
Six concrete fields of action
Working together with students, employees and scientists in a participatory development process, TUM has defined its sustainability strategy based on six concrete fields of action:
Research
TUM encourages and supports research activities that contribute to the sustainable transformation of society. To this end, the university provides targeted support for the digitalization and scaling of developed solution strategies while taking ecological, political and societal aspects into account.
Teaching and Continuing Education
TUM helps students, employees and alumni as well as external expert and management staff develop their own understanding of sustainability. Above and beyond the spectrum of university teaching and continuing education, TUM conveys competencies in data-based and evidence-based sustainable behaviors.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation
TUM promotes and empowers founders in leveraging their own entrepreneurial opportunities to accelerate sustainable transformation. In the future, innovative technologies, products and services as well as new business models are to unite economic success with ecological and social responsibility.
Campus Operations and Resource Management
As an organization, the university itself is to serve as an exemplary model for the deployment of a sustainable and resilient society. The university’s tasks include reducing consumption of energy and resources, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy and resource efficiency and reduced-emission mobility as well as improving equality, diversity, inclusion and providing healthy working and studying conditions.
Governance and University Community
TUM intends to motivate its students and members of the university community to actively participate by strategically anchoring the Sustainability Strategy at the General Management level and by implementing open, participatory decision-making processes.
Communication and Global Engagement
TUM intends to create an even greater societal awareness of sustainability with transparent and self-critical communication and to take on a proactive role in the transformation process. To this ends, the university combines its research and teaching agenda with entrepreneurial drive in the fight against climate change and pollution, poverty and inequality as well as against the lack of access to proper health care and education.
