With first place in the Communication and Decision-Making category, the reference plan "National Energy and Climate Plan for Austria" has been awarded this year's 7th Sustainability Award 2020.

Leading the work on the "Reference National Energy and Climate Plan for Austria" are Gottfried Kirchengast from the Wegener Center at the University of Graz, a team of nine co-authors (including Karl Steininger from the Wegener Center) and around seventy experts (see www.ccca.ac.at/refnekp).

The Sustainability Award has been presented since 2008 as an Austria-wide competition for universities, universities of applied sciences and universities of teacher education, jointly every two years by the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK), for particularly innovative and sustainable higher education projects.

"Ref-NEKP as a contribution to a climate-just future" – In conversation with Mathias Kirchner

Mathias Kirchner is the scientific coordinator of the Ref-NEKP. He talks about the content of the reference plan, the dialogue between climate science and politics in Austria, as well as the pathways for implementation and an outlook to the future.