Editorial February 2020

Anyone who has taken a look around the E-world show in Essen this week can confirm how many innovations are emerging in the energy sector right now and how many new business models are being developed. This is logical enough. After all, the challenge of transforming our energy supply to make it climate-friendly and sustainable is, first of all, not just specific to Germany, but rather a global phenomenon. Secondly, it is not an ephemeral interest, but something which will place intensive demands on us throughout the decades to come. And, thirdly, this challenge is so radical that it taxes all our inventive capacity.

To showcase the German energy world’s capacity for innovation, every year our Renewable Energy Hamburg cluster agency awards its innovation prize, the ‘German Renewables Award’, in the five categories of Project, Product, Life Work, Student Work and Journalism. Looking back over past prizewinners, what stands out is above all their diversity. The award-winning projects have included a fast, environmentally friendly corrosion coating for offshore wind foundations, an ice storage system for heating an office building ecologically and the largest project to date, using industrial waste heat to heat 8,000 residences in HafenCity, Hamburg. The award-winning student works and the people honoured for their life work were also pioneering and have provided valuable contributions to the technology, financing or regulation of energy supply, without which the production of renewable energies in their present form and to their present extent would certainly not have been possible. And the Journalism prize, which has only been awarded for a few years, shows how important high-quality communication about the increasingly complex developments of the energy transition is.

The application deadline for this year’s ‘German Renewables Award’ will be reopened on 28 February. As a company, you can enter your pioneering projects and products. Students can enter their graduation projects, journalists their articles on energy supply. And, last but not least, you can nominate people whose life work has left a decisive mark on the energy supply industry. Applications and nominations are accepted up to 15 May 2020. We and the jury are already excited about the ‘crop’ we’re going to receive this year!