Berlin-based independent environmental policy research institute — gemeinnützige GmbH, founded 1995, self-described “private, not-for-profit think tank”. Of the German sustainability-research peer group surveyed on 2026-10-29, the one institute with data governance as a named research strand, which makes it the closest thing in Germany to an academic counterpart to SINE’s own subject matter.
Org form and funding
gGmbH; seat Berlin; “über 100 Teamkollegen aus über 20 Ländern” (undated website figure). Funded purely through projects — explicitly without government base funding: European Commission, European Parliament, German ministries, civil society and foundations, plus tax-deductible donations.
⟨A parallel research round the same day (Slack, 2026-10-29) reported offices
in Brussels and Washington DC in addition to Berlin, 98 employees on annual
average 2023 from an audited Jahresabschluss, and €7.87 m project revenue in
2023. Those documents are not in sources/, so the figures are recorded
here as reported-elsewhere, not verified. The 98 vs. “over 100” gap is a
dated-figure gap rather than a contradiction.⟩
That funding shape is the opposite of the concentration risk recorded for Stiftung Neue Verantwortung and Bertelsmann Stiftung: many public principals rather than a few foundations, and no institutional funder whose independence could be questioned — but also no base funding to absorb a bad year.
Ecornet membership — the structural point
Ecologic is one of eight members of Ecornet (Ecological Research Network, ecornet.eu), a network of “unabhängigen, gemeinnützigen Instituten der Umwelt- und Nachhaltigkeitsforschung in Deutschland”, together around 800 staff, financed “überwiegend über Drittmittel”. Ecornet describes its members as founded “zwischen 1977 und 1995 als unabhängige Institute außerhalb des etablierten Wissenschaftssystems”.
The eight: Ecologic Institut, ifeu, IÖW, ISOE, IZT, Öko-Institut, UfU, Wuppertal Institut.
This matters because it answers a question SINE would otherwise have to answer by hand: the German peer group of independent, non-profit, transdisciplinary sustainability institutes is already an organised, self-identifying body with a shared funding model, not a list someone has to assemble. ⟨Inference, basis: the Ecornet self-description above.⟩ No wiki page exists yet for Ecornet itself or for the other members.
Data governance work — why this page exists
Multi-part project “Datengovernance und -regulierung für ein nachhaltiges Berlin”: the social and ecological implications of data regulation, and data-governance concepts for a sustainable circular economy. It explicitly covers digital product passports and the planned European data space for the circular economy. Two published reports (2022): Report 21 on data governance/regulation in the circular economy, Report 24 on overarching findings and recommendations.
The limit, and it is the important part: Ecologic researches the governance implications of these data spaces. It does not build the infrastructure — no wire format, no reference implementation, no conformance gate. ⟨Inference, basis: the project and report descriptions in the research note; no software or standards artefact was found.⟩
Strategic relevance to SINE
Read as a cooperation candidate rather than a competitor. Ecologic occupies the analytical position next to SINE’s engineering position on the same object: the governance of sustainability data spaces. The Data Commons framework makes governance claims that Ecologic’s Report 21/24 line of work is the natural place to have them tested against — or contradicted by — an independent German institute that has already written on the EU circular-economy data space.
Two caveats before treating this as warm:
- The documented work is Berlin-focused and dates from 2022; whether the strand is still live in 2026 was not established.
- Nothing found connects Ecologic to PACT, iLEAP, confidentiality or cryptography. The overlap is the governance layer only.
The same survey found the Wuppertal Institut closer on the artefact side — several DPP projects, a DPP pilot with Böllhoff and Fraunhofer IEM, the COPPA packaging-traceability platform, and a “GS1 Exchange: Digitaler Produktpass 2026” item that touches GS1 directly. It has no page yet.
Sources
sources/research/2026-10-29-german-sustainability-research-institutes.md
(§1 Ecologic Institut, §0 Ecornet; commissioned web research, 2026-10-29).
Research-grade — verify figures against the annual report before external
use.
See also
- IÖW — the second Ecornet member profiled here (2026-10-29), and the contrast case: Ecologic names data governance as a research strand, the IÖW does not name it at all. The two institutes also overlap at the level of ownership — Ecologic’s founder Andreas Kraemer is one of the IÖW’s ~50 individual Gesellschafter*innen.