This makes businesses the engines of a move towards sustainable development. The design supply chains. They influence patterns of consumption. They can develop the low-resource and –carbon technologies, products and services for the growth markets of today and tomorrow. They can reduce the pressure on the necessary massive build-up of infrastructure and thus reduce the global and local demand for raw materials and energy. But they will need to be ecologically intelligent and socially innovative. Transformations towards sustainability and climate protection are only possible with businesses and their know-how. So what can be the contribution of businesses and industries for the world of tomorrow?

To make the contribution that only they can bring to the table, businesses will have to adopt a broad idea of (system) innovation. To test these innovations, they will need their own "laboratories" where they can better understand the effects of transformative products and services and drive innovation. The Wuppertal Institute puts a special focus on industries with high resource use and high emissions or those industries enabling a transformation, e.g. information technology, logistics, plant and machine construction.

28 Percent of resource use and 17 percent of climate emissions can be attributed to Europe's food industry. Changing habits such as higher consumption of prepared meals and increasingly industrialised production provide a challenging starting point for sustainable change. The Wuppertal Institute provides comprehensive analyses of food production and processing along the various links of the supply chain and pinpoints key ecological and social challenges, providing the basis for a transformation in the food industry.

Decarbonising energy intensive industries – mostly steel production, basic chemicals, aluminum, glass, paper and cement – is a key component of reducing global energy and resource throughput. These are the industries that provide the basis for infrastructures, buildings, machines and consumption goods. The Wuppertal Institute supplies energy system analyses and scenario analyses and studies the flow of resources along supply chains as well as the specific innovation systems of relevant industries.