City's Metabolism: Rethinking How Munich Builds, Moves, and Regenerates

Every city has a metabolism. It takes in energy, water, food, and raw materials; it processes them into homes, mobility, and everyday resources; and it releases waste, emissions, and heat back into the world around it. For most of the industrial era, that metabolism has run in one direction: extract, use, discard. Munich Climate Week's first thematic cluster, City's Metabolism, is built around a simple but urgent question: what happens when a city redesigns its own metabolism to be circular, low-carbon, and genuinely livable without compromise?

The cluster brings together four themes that are usually discussed in separate silos – Energy, Decarbonisation*, Circular Economy* & Materials, and Cities & Mobility, and treats them as what they actually are: four organs of the same system. You cannot decarbonise a city without rethinking its energy supply. You cannot fix its energy supply without confronting how materials flow through it. And none of it matters if the way people move through the city doesn't change too.

Why this cluster matters–especially in Munich

Munich has set itself the goal of becoming climate-neutral by 2035, one of the more ambitious targets among major European cities. That's less than a decade away, and it means the city's "metabolism" has to change faster than most urban systems have ever changed voluntarily. A few reasons this cluster sits at the center of that challenge:

Energy is the foundation that everything else sits on. Munich's growth, its industry, and its famously dense residential neighborhoods all depend on how (and how cleanly) power and heat are generated and distributed. The transition away from fossil-based heating and grid electricity is arguably the single biggest lever the city has.

Decarbonisation is what happens when energy transition meets accountability. It's the measurement, reporting, and trade-off work of actually bringing emissions down across supply chains, buildings, and operations, turning cross-sector communication into action.

Circular Economy & Materials addresses the other half of the equation: even a fully renewable city still consumes enormous volumes of concrete, steel, packaging, and textiles. A circular approach, reusing, repairing, and redesigning materials to stay in use longer, is what keeps decarbonisation from just shifting emissions upstream into production.

Cities & Mobility is where all of this becomes visible and personal. How people get to work, whether streets are built for cars or for people, and how public transit and shared mobility are designed, this is the daily, lived layer of a city's climate performance, and it's where public participation is won or lost.

Together, these four themes describe less of a checklist and more of a feedback loop: cleaner energy enables decarbonisation, decarbonisation depends on circular material flows, and mobility choices determine how much energy a city needs in the first place.

Munich's own ecosystem is already working on this

One thing that becomes clear looking at Munich Climate Week's partner network is how many organisations already sit within this cluster's four themes, proof that this isn't a hypothetical agenda for the city, but active, ongoing work.

On energy: SWM (Stadtwerke München), Munich's municipal utility, sits at the center of the city's energy and mobility transition, running everything from the power grid to the MVG transit network. Alongside it, climate-tech partners like Polarstern (100% renewable energy supply) and Proxima Fusion (fusion energy) show the range of the conversation, from scaling what already works to betting on what's next.

On decarbonisation: Partners such as Climatiq, tanso and Code Gaia build the carbon accounting infrastructure companies need to actually track and cut emissions, while ClimatePartner and TÜV SÜD work on the certification and sustainability-services side that turns climate commitments into verifiable action.

On circular economy & materials: Circular Munich and the School of Circularity are building local knowledge and networks around circular design, while ReCup offers one of the most visible everyday examples of circularity in the city. The reusable cup system is now standard in cafés across Munich and beyond. On the public side, AWM (Abfallwirtschaftsbetrieb München), the city's own waste management operator, is a partner working the material-flow question at municipal scale.

On cities & mobility: With SWM's MVG subsidiary already central to how Munich moves, additional partners like BMW bring an industry perspective on the future of mobility technology, and organisations like New Mile work on reimagining urban mobility and public space more broadly.

What to look for in the programme

Munich Climate Week's full event line-up is being finalised as the week approaches, with sessions run independently by partner organisations across venues throughout the city, from universities and conference centers to community spaces and the streets themselves. If you want to learn more about the themes of this cluster, it's worth checking the official programme directly closer to the event (19-25 October 2026), where individual sessions on energy, decarbonisation, circularity, and mobility will be listed as partners confirm their formats, everything from panels and workshops to hands-on demonstrations.

One event that you can already put in your calendar is ‘Capgemini & Tanso: Next Frontier’ (Thursday, October 22, 3:00-7:00 PM), hosted at Capgemini's Munich office, which brings together business leaders, startups, and sustainability professionals to discuss scaling scope 3 decarbonisation*, sustainable AI infrastructure, and future energy technologies like fusion power* (practical case studies and networking included!).

You can register your attendance here: Luma

The bigger picture

What makes this cluster exciting isn't any single theme alone; it's the string that connects them together. A city's metabolism can't be redesigned one topic at a time. Munich Climate Week's framing of City's Metabolism is, in effect, an argument that the energy transition, the fight against emissions, the redesign of materials, and the future of urban mobility are one project, not four, and that Munich, with its 2035 target and its dense network of utilities, start-ups, researchers, and civic partners, is one of the more interesting places in Europe to watch it unfold.

The number of partners committing their time, expertise, and resources to Munich Climate Week is itself a clear signal worth reflecting on. It shows organisations across energy, industry, research, and civil society treating climate impact not as an occasional initiative but as a daily consideration built into how they operate. Gathered together, that commitment starts to look like a promising city-wide climate infrastructure, one built in Munich, for Munich, with the ambition of radiating outwards into the broader European and worldwide efforts against climate change.

Glossary

*Decarbonisation: The process of reducing/eliminating carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere, mostly by shifting away from fossil fuel use.

*Circular economy: an economic system that keeps products, materials, and resources in use for as long as possible to reduce waste and keep environmental impact to a minimum.

*Scope 3 decarbonisation: The reduction of indirect greenhouse gas emissions that happen across a company’s entire value chain.

*Fusion power: A potential method of generating energy from the heat released by nuclear fusion reactions.