Whether solar, wind power or electromobility, climate-relevant solutions require expertise and dialogue. Norbert Krain from Baden-Württemberg presents three organisations for the technical sector at the Greentech.LIVE conference, including Engineers for Future.
Norbert Krain: Promoting sustainability goals through non-profits
Solutions that promote or enable sustainability goals – this is the guise under which the communities and organisations for which Norbert Krain diligently speaks are known.
At the last Greentech.live conference in November 2023, he presented three of them: “Stadt.Land.Klima!”, the Sustainable Industry 4.0 and IoT Community and Engineers for Future.
All are non-profit and all pursue the goal of sustainability.
“Stadt.Land.Klima!”, for example, is a project with an online tool designed to enable a standardised ranking of municipalities in terms of climate protection. Transparency at municipal level is to be increased on the basis of a standardised catalogue of measures. The project is also intended to serve as a network for the groups.
Cross-company exchange in community networking group
The Sustainable Industry 4.0 and IoT Community is also organised under the heading of networking.
“A somewhat unwieldy name, which is due to the fact that 8 years ago, techies got together and said: We have projects that require cross-company know-how exchange,” explains Krain.
Norbert Krain sees networking among those present as particularly valuable
The community offers regular meetings, which take place hybrid, purely online or in person, and cover a range of relevant industry topics. These include technical topics such as blockchain AI, as well as Hydrop Water Systems, the Metaverse and information on the product carbon footprint.
Meetups on cyber security in January and green coding in February are scheduled for 2024. Anyone wishing to take part can join the group online.
Krain considers it very valuable that after each meeting there is an exchange of ideas and networking between those present. He believes that this will lead to further activities.
Engineers for Future are driving forward the energy transition through various projects
In addition to the Sustainable Industry 4.0 and IoT Community, Krain is also involved in Engineers for Future. The Engineers are an association of engineers who want to make progress in the field of the energy transition.
“The Engineers cover a wide range of disciplines, it’s not a homogeneous group. They are people from telecommunications, solar and wind power. We need technical expertise for many solutions relating to the energy and mobility transition,” says Krain.
However, he adds: “The engineers need to become much more active. We are currently a small group compared to others. The engineers need to understand that we have to deal with these issues.”
Heat pump project: Train the trainer concept through networking
The engineers are currently addressing these issues in various projects, such as the heat pump project, which focuses on existing buildings.
“We’ve often heard that heat pumps only work in new builds. We want to dispel these myths,” explains Krain.
It’s all about a “train the trainer concept”, meaning that the technical details have been summarised by the engineers and anyone who wants to familiarise themselves with the system can get in touch.
“We are looking for people who have a certain technical interest and would like to spread the word. We offer them a monthly exchange of speakers and new material.”
Ask the Engineers answers questions in technical areas
If you have any other technical questions, you can now also write directly to the engineers. They call it “Ask the Engineers.”
Questions that have already been asked and answered can be found on their blog, while questions that are still open can be sent to the e-mail address frag-die-engineers@eng4f.de.
In this way, they hope to provide further help in specialised areas and thus constantly promote sustainability.
