According to the motto "Understanding Climate Change - Reducing Climate Change - Coping with Climate Change", the City of Hamburg developed an extensive action and climate protection concept in the summer of 2007, including a strategic action framework for the period 2007-2012. An update of the concept followed in autumn 2008 and December 2009. The overall objective of the concept is to reduce the CO2-emissions in Hamburg until 2012 by 2 million tonnes compared to the reference year 2007.
The Urban Development and Environment Authority for the City of Hamburg assigned the Wuppertal Institute to develop an evaluation and monitoring concept for the calculation of the emission and energy reductions achieved by the single measures and measure packages. Besides these methods to determine the contribution of the single measures to the overall reduction target, an important objective of the project was to develop methods for the calculation of the additional specific emission reductions, which the city achieved through supplementary measures, aside from regional trends and measures. In the end, the monitoring and evaluation concept of the Wuppertal Institute shall be utilizable by the Hamburg authority both for the verification of achieved emission reductions through the measures of the City of Hamburg and the ones achieved through measures executed by the economy of Hamburg. The concept includes the sectors of energy conversion, private households and transport, as well as the public sector.