Market & Industry Overview

2.1 Market and Industry Overview

2.1.1 Regional Overview

Freiburg is known for being a student city, situated in the middle of the blackforest in the border triangle, Switzerland and France located closeby. It is a city that attracts a lot of young people like students, as well as families and people having a strong connection with nature. A lot of outdoor activities are possible within the surroundings of the city. These opportunities bring people closer to nature, if the will to do so is present. Since the 70s Freiburg has been developing more and more in the direction of a green city, acting as an example for other cities on how to live in a sustainable way. (Talmage et al., 2018). For this purpose, a lot of projects are supported by the city itself and many small NGOs with ideas regarding the thoughts about sustainable living in cities have been founded in Freiburg. Regarding these NGOs a list of them can be found within a table in the attachments of this document. Similar projects to the one being established by Solare Zukunft might be the Mundenhof, P3-Werkstatt or Ökostation, and furthermore in the surroundings of Freiburg the “Haus-der-Natur” in the blackforest. Calling these existing projects the concurrence would not make any sense, as there have been a lot of cooperation between most of them and Solare Zukunft already. Also, other NGOs with similar ideas are better suited to be possible collaborators, as the project is run by an NGO as well and therefore has a non profit goal.

2.1.2 Over-Regional Overview

Regarding the over-regional level, there are existing equivalents to the idea of the Sustainability Hub, but as this kind of institution is strongly tied to the city itself, this part of competitors can be kept outside the analysis, at least for the purpose of identifying the competition. Moreover, these existing centers can be used as inspiration and for the finding of new ideas. (Capturing Solar Energy at the Sustainability Hub)