How can water and energy infrastructures in rural regions be combined in such a way that they secure supply and disposal and at the same time contribute to regional value creation?
inter 3 is investigating this question in its pilot project in the East German model regions Elbe-Elster (Brandenburg) and Wittenberg (Saxony-Anhalt). The project will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) until 2013. In cooperation with the Technical Universities of Berlin and Cottbus, and Anhalt College, innovative concepts for sustainable resource usage in rural areas are being developed and put to the test in the model regions.
Technical and commercial, as well as financial and strategic concepts for effective resource and infrastructure usage are being developed, and local re-use chains are being built up. Re-use chains add value to waste materials, wastewater or waste heat. Central to this is the support of entrepreneurial approaches for optimising material and energy, as well as economic and social, re-use in rural areas.
Objective: Robust re-use chains for rural infrastructures
The objective is to set up one to two organisationally and financially robust re-use chains in each model region, which can be developed further by the regional actors using their acquired know-how. The participating scientific partners will provide the technical, economic, strategic and regional knowledge necessary for implementing these re-use chains. inter 3 as overall coordinator is organising the cooperative work of the research network. Further to this, inter 3 is providing innovation management, public relations work and technical concepts for the water branch.
Results: Entrepreneurial approach – steering value-added chains
Individual re-use chains in the model regions are strengthened to the point of economic sustainability. Other regions should also be able to profit from the results of this project. To achieve this, the accumulated findings on sustainable land management will be collected together in an "Activating Land Management” toolkit.