Sustainability at the Big-Data.AI Summit

Sustainable event planning

The German Federal Office for Environment defines the term climate protection with a simple principle of action from forestry: Those who use natural resources should make sure that future generations can still benefit from them. For us, this means using resources responsibly and paying attention to environmentally friendly as well as efficient concepts. As the organiser of the Big-Data.AI Summit, we can therefore make an active contribution to climate protection by conserving resources, saving energy and helping to raise awareness of climate protection when executing the event.

Framework and strategy

The Sustainable Event Scorecard from visitBerlin is used as the basis for action and evaluation of the sustainability of Bitkom events. This provides an overview of the measures achieved for each event. It is based on existing established frameworks and standards. These include the German "Guidelines for the sustainable organization of events" of the German Federal Office for Environment and ISO 20121 - sustainable events.

Based on the 13 fields of action and 47 possible measures for a more sustainable realisation of events, we follow the strategy: avoid, reduce and compensate. The fields of action of event management range from travel to communication. Specific measures and KPIs are defined for each field of action. The individual measures are assessed with points that make it possible to make sustainable events measurable, comparable and transparent. 

To ensure that we as Bitkom do our part to protect the climate, we implement strategies that make our events more sustainable. To do this, we are working with ClimatePartner to offset the CO2 emissions caused that we cannot avoid. If you wish, you can make a climate protection contribution when booking your event ticket. The principle of avoid, reduce, compensate also applies to us.

The principle of carbon neutrality

Companies, processes and products are carbon neutral if their carbon emissions have been calculated and offset by supporting internationally verified carbon offset projects. As well as avoiding and reducing carbon emissions, offsetting is another crucial step in climate action. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide spread out evenly in the atmosphere, meaning that the greenhouse gas concentration is the same all over the world. It is therefore irrelevant when it comes to greenhouse gas concentration – and global warming – where the emissions are caused or avoided. Emissions that cannot be avoided and reduced at the source can therefore be offset elsewhere through carbon offset projects.