Judith Wiemann, Thomas Meister and Prof Matthias Kiese represented project co-ordinator RUB at the second TRANSFORMER Consortium Meeting in Bologna, Italy, from 28-30 March. The workshop took place on the premises of the project partner Regione Emilia Romagna. Besides multilateral updates on the progress of the project, the meeting included a training session on living labs and co-creative processes, as well as a field trip to a biogas facility converting waste into methane that is fed into the gas grid.

The ambition of the TRANSFORMER project is to design long-term systemic transformation frameworks for regions across Europe in order to accelerate the shift towards climate neutrality. The project sets out to develop a conceptual framework of Transition Super-Labs. This approach understands entire regions as living laboratories, i.e. as Super-Labs, in which new ways of transformation towards a climate-neutral future can be developed, tested and implemented. Actual Transition Super-Labs will be piloted in four European regions – the Ruhr Area (Germany), Emilia Romagna (Italy), Lower Silesia (Poland) and Western Macedonia (Greece) – addressing five key sectors: Mobility, Circular Economy, Energy, Agriculture & Food Production, and Industry through specific leverage points connecting them.

www.transformer-project.eu