Protecting the climate together

Climate action is a matter for everyone, and for some areas in particular. One of those is the building sector, because it accounts for around one­third of the carbon emissions in Germany. Deutsche Wohnen began to take active steps to protect the climate a long time ago. The right legislative framework is also called for, however, and to this end we cooperate with others, such as the foundation “Stiftung 2° – Deutsche Unternehmer für Klimaschutz” (German entrepreneurs for climate action).

Stiftung 2° – Deutsche Unternehmer für Klima­schutz is an initiative by various entrepreneurs seeking to make a joint contribution to establish­ing a sensible, market­based-framework for climate action. We have been working with the foundation since 2017 and became a sponsor in November 2019.

Together with other well­known partners of Stiftung 2°, including Deutsche Bahn, Telekom, Otto Group and thyssenkrupp, we ramped up our activities before the federal government adopted its climate package. We campaigned in particular for a dependable framework and so for greater certainty for planning and investments.

In the course of our partnership with Stiftung 2° we have renewed our commitment to our strategic sustainability programme and our own CO2 reduction targets, because collaborat­ing with others can only be one side of the equation. The other is our own efforts, which can be expressed in numbers: we reinvest more than 50% of our rental income to refurbish our houses and estates. Our investments always focus on maximising the energy efficiency of the buildings. This enables us to improve their energy efficiency by an average of 30%. This puts us ahead of many others: the energy footprint for some 64% of our residential buildings is better than the average energy footprint of residential buildings in Germany. So our portfolio of 164,000 residen­tial and commercial units gives us significant leverage in matters of climate policy, and we make good use of it.

Climate action in figures