The European Climate Foundation aims to promote climate and energy policies that greatly reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and help Europe play an even stronger role in international leadership on mitigating climate change.

Michael Hogan – Director, European Climate Foundation:

“The European Climate Foundation is excited to be associated with this important initiative. The realization of the full potential of renewable electricity, both large and small scale, will be contingent on massive investments in grid infrastructure. Such projects always raise important questions about environmental and social impacts, and they raise important financial challenges to utility shareholders and ratepayers. As such, it is tremendously encouraging to have leading transmission utilities and leading NGOs for the first time cooperating so closely to bring forward needed investment as quickly and as prudently possible while ensuring that all stakeholders’ interests are adequately addressed.”

Prof. Dr. K. E. Pollmann – Dean

„Renewable energies are undoubtedly a major issue, in research as well as in education programmes. The Otto-von-Guericke- University is engaged in this field since more than 10 years. Education in the scope of energy and especially renewable energy however is still in the beginning of its development. The knowledge about the future power systems and especially the role of renewable energies is not implemented intensively in the study programs. The Otto-von-Guericke- University is going to introduce a new master program in renewable energies. In this context we will cooperate with international partners such as RGI or the European Wind Energy Academy and are starting national or international projects e.g. W2E or EE-Harz.Mobility.“

The BTU with its 6500 students mainly in engineering and its 125 full professors and 500 scientific researchers is a small, but internationally recognized technical university dedicated to teaching and research. The research activities in power engineering (13 full professors and approx 120 co-workers) as well as the master programme in power engineering will be coordinated by CEBra - Center for Energy Technology Brandenburg, a central academic research center under direct responsibility of the university president.

Main focuses in research at CEBra will be put on the CO2 separation acc. to the oxy-fuel process, the grid integration of renewable energies, mainly wind power and photovoltaic and the grid impacts of e-mobility. The MSc Power Engineering meanwhile is linked to several high ranked universities in China, Taiwan, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and India. International companies e.g. Siemens in Germany, China, Brazil and India, ESKOM in South Africa, German Rail and others will support students in this programme.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Schwarz - Managing Director CEBra, Programme Director MSc Power Engineering and Director of Institute for Energy Distribution and High Voltage Engineering, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus:

“The North East of Germany is a region with one of the highest densities of renewable energies in the world, connected to a grid designed for a much lower consumer load. It will be very challenging to integrate another 10-15 GW of renewable to the 10 GW actually connected to a grid with a consumer demand between 4-11 GW and keep in mind that the conventional generation (large units and urban combined cycles) will also increase from 25 GW actually to 35 GW within 10-15 years. Beside a tremendous extension of the grid transport capacity, the training of the control centre staff will be one of the most important factors for a safe grid operation in the near future. 50 Hertz-Transmission Ltd. and BTU Cottbus developed one of the most powerful grid training centres in Central Europe at BTU in Cottbus. The centre capability will allow a simultaneous training of up to 10 interconnected transmission and distribution grids with a simulation speed, which will create “real stress situations” to the trainees.”