The project, commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), and led by the Competence Center Foresight of the Fraunhofer Institute, aimed to establish and test a cross-departmental horizon scanning system in the context of implementing the government’s Climate Protection Programme 2030 and the Climate Protection Plan 2050.

The exercise included, first, the continuous scanning of relevant climate protection trends for the sectoral and overall societal transformation towards greenhouse gas neutrality. Second, the project involved sensemaking tasks, i.e. assessing the relevance of new trends and future issues for climate protection and identifying possible opportunities for climate protection policy.

As part of the sensemaking process, future workshops were held to bring together climate protection policy officers from various ministries as well as experts on emerging topics. In addition, strategy workshops were conducted to identify interdepartmental needs for action in climate protection policy.