Additional funding for bifa Umweltinstitut GmbH - The Free State enables even more effective technology transfer in the environmental sector
Augsburg, 29 March 2019
From 2020, the Free State of Bavaria wants to increase its annual institutional funding of bifa significantly, from half a million euros to 1.1 million euros per year. At the initiative of the former state secretary and MP Hintersberger, CSU, and whip of the “Freien Wähler” party, Dr. Mehring, the Bavarian Landtag legislative assembly provided € 250k as bridging funds for 2019. These funds are to be used to implement the “bifa – fit for future” concept. The intention is to give bifa even better options for action in its most important task: technology transfer in the field of environmental technologies. This includes, for example, process engineering, integrated company environmental protection, sustainable waste management and climate protection.
bifa was founded in 1991. Since then, the institute has worked on well over 1,000 projects on application-related commissioned research and consulting for companies, municipalities and politicians in Bavaria, Germany and abroad. However, the implementation of funded products was extremely limited due to the level of own work and services to be contributed. Thanks to the additional funds, in future, together with partners in industry and research, bifa will be able to undertake even more research projects that are sponsored by funds of the Federal Government or the European Union.
This enables bifa to contribute the experience and knowledge from its practical projects to even more innovative research projects. This also strengthens the transfer of current research results to bifa commissioned research and consulting.
The increase in the share of institutional funding secures the continuation of bifa’s successful development. It maintains all the business and economic policy advantages of the institute and establishes planning security for the shareholders and for bifa. After this increase in annual funding, the share of institutional funding of bifa is still significantly lower than that of comparable technology transfer and R&D institutes. The shareholders of bifa are the Free State of Bavaria (75.0 %), the Swabian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (12.5 %) and the City of Augsburg (12.5 %).
