Economically Viable Environmental Measures

Public authorities and infrastructure operators are challenged to implement sustainable measures that positively impact the environment and the organisation's economy. Current measures are often costly and difficult to justify economically, which is why some are postponed or rejected. To deliver a sustainable impact, this challenge seeks economically viable solutions that positively impact the environment and contribute to achieving sustainability goals.

These include:

• Greening
• Biodiversity projects
• Measures against air pollution
• Measures against sealing/unsealing
• Waste disposal and prevention
• Monitoring of neophytes (including sustainable and cost-effective pest control).
• Nature conservation

The aim is to take a holistic approach that combines the following dimensions: climate protection and adaptation to climate change, the circular economy, a sustainable energy supply and mobility system, biodiversity, soil protection and resource efficiency.

All of this must be done with a view to implementing ecological measures that positively impact the organisation's economy.

Thus, economically viable environmental measures are becoming a key strategy for achieving climate targets while ensuring long-term value creation. The search is on for marketable, scalable, and implementable approaches that make public spaces and infrastructure fit for the future and take equal account of ecological and economic aspects.

The search is on for holistic solutions that are economically viable and at the same time have a positive impact on the environment and the organization. The focus is not only on traditional environmental issues, but also on processes that can be rethought. One example is greening, which not only has a positive effect on air quality, but also on the air conditioning costs of buildings and/or spaces.

Smart new approaches are intended to help public authorities not only implement environmental measures, but also derive positive monetary or process-related benefits from them. (Completely) rethought approaches offer a great lever for bringing together the environment and innovation and help to view existing approaches from new perspectives.

By introducing such solutions, public authorities expect to implement environmental measures more quickly, easily, and cost-effectively. The aim is to ensure that the new approaches also have a positive economic impact.

Ideally, a submission should not only address the two dimensions of ecology and economy, but also include aspects such as health, energy, or mobility.

This IÖB Challenge invites companies, start-ups, and research institutions to present new and innovative ideas that combine ecological benefits with economic benefits for public authorities. The aim is to gain an overview of new products, services, and technologies that can support the public sector in implementing the necessary environmental measures in an economically viable manner.

Companies can submit their entries via the online form until March 16, 2026.

Description
The description should focus on the evaluation criteria. Convince the jury with comprehensible use cases and references.

Summary of added value
Summarize the unique selling point and key advantages! What makes your solution particularly innovative? What sets it apart?

Confidential information (for the jury only):
This information can be submitted confidentially via the platform.

In this text field, you can enter additional information that you wish to share exclusively with the project managers. Alternatively, you can send a PDF by email to the challenge moderators.

You will also need a cover image. This will be your visual flagship in the overview of submissions for this challenge.You also have the option of attaching a file. This file should supplement the text in the form fields, but not replace or repeat it! Use the file attachment for graphics, for example.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Submissions within a consortium are possible. Keep it short (guideline:
maximum 10-12 presentation slides or 4-5 A4 pages). We are currently in the market exploration phase of the challenge.
It is therefore not necessary to prepare drafts or feasibility studies specifically for this occasion.