Climate protection through innovations: Munich Re supports the POC21 open-source initiative

Engineers, designers and social entrepreneurs will be developing low-carbon and resource-efficient open-source products at the POC21 innovation camp. Munich Re is promoting the initiative as an enabling partner and bringing in know-how from the areas of climate protection and energy.

Munich. Given the pressing, unresolved issues of global warming and the uncertain outcome of the UN's COP21 climate summit in Paris at the end of this year, Munich Re is taking a new approach to contributing to climate protection: with the Franco-German POC21 innovation camp, it will be supporting an innovative civil society initiative in which designers and inventors develop unconventional but practical products that can be copied. To this end, from 15 August 2015 around 100 designers, architects, communication experts and social entrepreneurs will be working together for five weeks near Paris, in order to develop open-source products for a carbon-neutral, resource-efficient future. Twelve projects will be chosen beforehand from the areas of energy, food, mobility, communications, life-cycle management and housing, the prototypes of which will be developed into ranges of products suitable for large-scale use. The innovative products are characterised by open-source blueprints, longevity and ease of repair, thus offering an alternative model to today's throwaway culture.

An essential part of the innovation camp is the "proof of concept" (POC) from which it takes its name: Which projects will make a relevant contribution to sustainability globally? How can existing resources be used for this and as yet unused resources be conserved? What has realistic chances of catching on? How can economic and sustainability parameters be reconciled? Munich Re and other established companies, as well as scientific institutions from the whole of Europe, are supporting the project in a critical and constructive way.

Torsten Jeworrek, Board member at Munich Re: "The prospects of an effective international agreement on climate protection are unfortunately highly uncertain. As a complementary way of protecting the environment, Munich Re is therefore supporting POC21's idea of developing actual sustainable products and making them widely available for use. We are thereby expanding our civic involvement with new approaches that are directly related to our risk and technological expertise."

Dominik Wind, co-founder of POC21: "We are thrilled to have acquired as a partner such a strong and experienced voice for climate protection as Munich Re. Together we will research and evaluate how our prototypes can be widely disseminated as the basis for a climate-friendly society."

POC21 wants to help bring fundamental changes to patterns of production and consumption, thereby creating an essential prerequisite for the transformation to a post fossil-fuel society. The organisers are the OuiShare initiative from Paris and the Open State initiative from Berlin. The results from POC21 will also be displayed in Paris, Berlin and Munich from October 2015 in the run-up to the UN climate summit.

Further information:
www.poc21.cc/newsroom