As part of the module "Communication of Science and Technology", 40 BTU students had the opportunity to gain practical insights into five manufacturing industries together with Professor Roh Pin Lee, Chair of Decarbonization and Transformation of Industry.

The one-day excursion to industries in the district of Meißen took place on 15 November 2024. Early in the morning, students from various study programs, such as Environmental & Resource Management, Transformation Studies, Physics and Artificial Intelligence, started out from the main campus in Cottbus to learn about five industrial companies based in the Meissen District in Saxony. The central focus of the excursion was to gain insights into the question “What specific opportunities and challenges do energy-intensive industries in regions undergoing structural change face?”.

The Chair of Decarbonization and Transformation of Industry (DTI) at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU) organized the technical tour in close cooperation with Energy Saxony e.V., the energy cluster for Saxony, and the EWI network (Energy and Hydrogen Alliance in the Meissen Industrial Arc). On site, the students were able to obtain first-hand insights during the guided tours into the organization and operations of the industries in the Meissen Industrial Arc, where experts explained about their production processes and how they are optimizing and transforming their processes and companies in order to remain successful in the energy transition.

Companies visited during the excursion include three steel industries namely ERVIN steelworks, MANNESMANN RÖHRENWERK and Schmiedewerke Gröditz, as well as the chemical company WACKER and the wood processing factory Kronospan. In addition to a technical tour of the companies, students were able engage industry experts in dialogue to find out more about their transformation processes.

This excursion to industrial companies in the Meissen District is offered as part of module 13234 "Communication of Science and Technology" in the interdisciplinary General Studies program. In the winter semester 2024/2025, students are tasked to investigate the topic "Structural Change & Transformation in the District of Meissen", and to develop a science communication video and a group presentation on the opportunities and challenges for young adults in the course of the district’s transformation processes. The aims are firstly to gain insights into the attractiveness of the Meissen region from the perspective of future skilled workers, and secondly to give BTU students the opportunity to find out more about potential opportunities and future prospects in regions undergoing structural change for themselves.

The 5^th edition of the Lausitzer Conference on Climate Neutral Industry took place on Thursday, 7^th November 2024 between 09:00 – 16:00 in Cottbus. At the event which took place in Messe Cottbus, about 400 experts and stakeholders from industry, science and politics came together to discuss about the potential of storage technologies for reducing Germany’s CO2-footprint. The welcome by Andreas Findeisen (Coordinator of the Cluster Decarbonization In Industries) and Jakob Flechtner (Director of the Competence Center on Climate Change Mitigation in Energy-Intensive Industries) as well as a video address by Dr. Robert Habeck – Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action – was followed by a keynote presentation by Dr. Markus Röhner from MAN Energy Solutions SE Berlin on political frameworks for the deployment of industrial storage technologies. The program also included presentations by diverse industry actors on multidimensional opportunities and challenges associated with different storage technologies, as well as innovation pitch by innovative companies, start-ups and research organizations. An expert panel discussion on alternative storage technologies for industrial application rounded up the conference.

For more information: https://www.cluster-dekarbonisierung.de/de/newsroom/details/lausitzer-fachkonferenz-2024-speichertechnologien-als-schl%C3%BCssel-zur-co%E2%82%82-neutralen-industrie.html

From 29^th – 30^th October 2024, the 2^nd Science for Future Conference – under the series “On the Path to Carbon Neutrality” in the Science for Future Initiative which was jointly launched by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2018 – took place in Berlin Adlerhof. The event brought together leading scientists from Germany and China for a discussion of innovative approaches ranging from basic research to application, and provided a platform for bilateral exchanges on strategies and research to achieve carbon neutrality being pursued by scientists in Germany and China. At the event, leading scientists from both countries – including former nobel prize receivers as well as directors of Germany’s national research organizations – not only provided updates and insights into their research, they also highlighted the need for intensifying international research collaborations and extending global political frameworks for international scientific exchanges in order to successfully address the grand challenges our society are facing today.

For more information: https://www.leopoldina.org/en/events/event/event/3169/

During the 12th International Freiberg Conference on Circular Carbon Technologies which took place between 23^rd – 26^th September 2024 in Shanghai/China, Prof. Lee used the opportunity to launch the STEEP-CarbonTrans Online Tool – developed in cooperation with the Technology Assessment Research Division at the Institute of Energy Process Engineering & Chemical Engineering (IEC), TU Bergakademie Freiberg and the Climate Media Factory – to the international community comprising of key actors from science and industry who are active in the fields of decarbonization and circular carbon economy.  The STEEP-CarbonTrans Online Tool – developed as part of the BMBF-funded Project STEEP-CarbonTrans – is an interactive process flow diagram which is designed support the user in exploring alternative possibilities for transforming the chemical industry towards sustainable chemistry. Besides obtaining an overview of the status quo of today’s chemical and waste sectors, the user will also gain insights into different possibilities for transforming the chemical industry towards sustainable chemistry (Near-Term and Long-Term Scenarios including associated greenhouse gas emissions reduction potential of different transformation possibilities and their electricity input requirements). Do check out our STEEP-CarbonTrans Online Tool at  http://steep.climatemedia.de to find out more!

Between 23^rd and 26^th September 2024, the 12^th International Freiberg Conference on Circular Carbon Technologies (12^th IFC) – one of the world’s leading scientific conference in the field of circular carbon conversion technologies for the transformation towards a resource efficient, circular and climate neutral economy – took place in Shanghai, China. Before the scientific conference program in Shanghai, Prof .Lee – together with Prof. Martin Gräbner from the Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering (IEC), TU Bergakademie Freiberg – led a group of conference participants between 19^th – 21^st September for technical site visits to the Ningdong Energy & Chemical Industry Base in Yinchuan, Ningxia (where the world’s largest Coal-to-Liquids (CtL) facility as well as the first commercial methanol-to propylene/MTP plant in China are situated) and to Lunan Chemical Co., Ltd. in Tengzhou, Shandong (where the highest successful Opposed Multi-burner (OMB) gasification technologies as well as China’s first waste gasification pilot facility are situated). Subsequently, the scientific conference program in Shanghai between 23-26 September brought together over 180 international participants for an interactive discussion about the opportunities and challenges as well as innovations and developments in circular carbon technologies at the nexus of science, technology, politics and society. To kick start the conference, Prof. Lee contributed a keynote presentation on how waste gasification for methanol production could represent a transformation route towards green chemistry in China.  

The CDI Summer Summit 2024 – a yearly event organized by the Cluster Decarbonization in Industries to bring together cluster partners for 2 days of intensive discussion and networking – was hosted by SIEMENS ENERGY at its Innovation Campus in Görlitz from 11-13 September 2024. In addition to impulse and technical presentations by politics, industry and science, CDI partners also had the opportunity to directly engage with each other via participation in 4 interactive workshops to jointly address topics ranging from future of green markets, evaluation and balancing of greenhouse gas emissions, energy concepts for industrial plants to technologies for heat storage and their potential. During this year’s Summer Summit, another highlight of the event was the inauguration of the CDI (Industry) Advisory Board.
 

More information under:  

https://www.cluster-dekarbonisierung.de/de/events/details/cdi-summer-summit-2024.html & https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/cluster-dekarbonisierung-industrie/

On 10^th September, Prof. Lee joined the FIT4FUTURE Summer School participants during their site visit to the LEAG’s open-cast lignite mine Welzow-Süd. On the bus journey from BTU Cottbus to the mine, Prof. Lee provided an overview of the STEEP (i.e., social-technological-economical-ecological-political) approach for a multidimensional assessment of opportunities and challenges which are associated with the transformation of carbon intensive industries towards decarbonization and circularity. Following a highly informative bus tour into the depths of the coal mine where participants had the chance to view different process steps of modern coal mining by LEAG up close and person, the group embarked on the bus journey back to Cottbus. During the return bus journey, the Summer School participants engaged in an interactive discussion with Prof. Lee of what they perceived as STEEP opportunities and challenges for a coal company such as LEAG in its transformation towards sustainability. 

On 15^th July 2024, Prof. Lee visited the facilities of the National Institute of Clean-And-Low-Carbon Energy (NICE) together with Prof. Martin Gräbner and Prof. Bernd Meyer from the Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering, TU Bergakademie Freiberg. During the NICE Seminar which provided a platform for exchanges with NICE’s experts as well as invited specialists from the CHN Energy Group, she and Prof. Meyer – one of the leading international expert in the field of gasification – also contributed a presentation on “Technology comparison for biomass gasification: Demands for industrial syngas production”.

On 26^th June between 17:00 – 22:00, the SPD Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag held an evening event with around 250 guests on the economic situation in East Germany. In addition to a keynote speech by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, there were three compact panel discussions focusing on the topics industry, trades and crafts, development of rural regions as well as tourism. The overarching goal of the event was to gain a realistic view of the economic situation in East Germany, to clearly identify challenges as well as positive developments, and to draw conclusions for political action.

As a transformation researcher at the BTU, Prof. Lee together with Carsten Schneider (East Germany Commissioner of the German Federal Government), Stefan Böck (Workers’ Council at the K+S Werra site in Thuringia), Dr. Jutta Matreux (Senior VP and Head of the Nünchritz site), Sonja Pierer (Managing Director of Intel Germany), and Prof. Dr. Jörg Steinbach (Minister for Economic Affairs, Labor and Energy of the State of Brandenburg) discussed about transformation paths for the industrial powerhouse East Germany and alternative ways to support settlements especially of skilled workers in the structural change regions. The panel discussion was moderated by Bernd Westphal (Member of Parliament).

On Thursday 25^th April 2024, as part of this year’s BTU Open Day Program, Prof. Lee shared insights into the plastic waste challenge as well as alternative routes for its sustainable management, either as resource via mechanical and chemical recycling, or as a fuel in the form of refuse-derived-fuel (RDF).

On Wednesday 10^th April 2024, the NK2 Network (Network for a Circular Carbon Economy) hosted a workshop on “Concepts for decarbonization and circularity by integrated chemical sites” at the LEUNA Chemical Complex. NK2 partners from science and industry (e.g., IEC, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Fraunhofer IKTS, LyondellBasell, Synthos, RWE, Air Liquide, Dow, Inovyn, TAF) came together with infrastructure providers (i.e., InfraLeuna, PCK Schwedt, Infraserv, Currenta) as well as public agencies (KEI, UBA) for a discussion on opportunities and challenges for the sustainability transformation of integrated chemical sites. Besides an overview of their strategy and projects for decarbonization by the four infrastructure providers, Dr. Pascal Freund from KEI also shared information about the upcoming funding program “Bundesförderung Industrie und Klimaschutz” (BIK) to support the decarbonization of energy intensive industries in Germany.  Following an interactive discussion in world café format focusing on feedstocks, technological innovations and regulatory frameworks moderated by Prof. Bernd Meyer, Prof. Martin Gräbner and Prof. Roh Pin Lee respectively, workshop participants also had the opportunity for a technical tour of the LEUNA chemical complex, in addition to gaining insights into the operation of the POX/methanol complex by TotalEnergies.

On Tuesday 9^th April, Prof. Lee visited the Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering (IEC) at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg together with colleagues from KEI Think Tank as well as KEI Project Sponsor (Projektträger). In addition to a technical tour of IEC’s bench-scale and pilot-scale facilities for circular carbon technologies, another focus of the visit was to experience the Carbon Discovery Trail which was developed by IEC in collaboration with Prof. Lee in 2021 to raise public awareness and interest in IEC’s R&D activities as part of the institute’s science communication activities.

Between 19^th January and 8^th April, Prof. Roh Pin Lee was invited as guest researcher at the Singapore Management University (SMU) where she worked together with her SMU collaborator Prof. Jochen Reb on their joint research project on recycling perceptions, attitudes, judgments and decisions in Singapore, and engaged with other SMU faculty to identify other potential collaboration opportunities. Additionally, she also engaged in exchanges with the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), the National Environment Agency (NEA), the Public Utilities Board (PUB) as well as the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) on the opportunities and challenges for “Waste-to-Products” in Singapore while she was onsite, in addition to technical site visits to the Waste-to-Energy Research Facility, a biogas facility for farm waste as well as a biogas test facility for the processing of sewage sludge in combination with food waste.

Between 18^th to 22^nd March 2024, Prof. Roh Pin Lee (BTU Cottbus) was invited to join an expert delegation together with Prof. Martin Gräbner and Antonia Helf from the Institute of Energy Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering (IEC), TU Bergakademie Freiberg to the Highsun Holding Corporation/HSCC coal gasification facility – one of the most modern coal gasification facilities in operation in China – in Fujian (China) for a technical tour of its coal gasification activities for the production of hydrogen for downstream ammonia synthesis as well as caprolactam production. Goal is to gain insights into the current state-of-the-art for such technologies and their implementation in China, and engage Chinese gasification experts in dialogue on the potential for transference to chemical recycling in the form of waste gasification to support the decarbonization and circularity transformation of China’s chemical industry.

On 5^th March 2024, Prof. Roh Pin Lee was invited to give an impulse presentation on decarbonization at the Kick-Off Meeting of the Federal-State Working Group on Funding for Industry and Climate Protection at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). During her online presentation, Prof. Lee shared her multidimensional approach for the decarbonization of carbon intensive industry based on the case of chemical recycling. Subsequently, she engaged the participants from the economic and environment ministries at federal and state levels on the potential and challenges associated with chemical recycling as a decarbonization pathway for the chemical sector. 

On 11. December 2023, the 3. Fachforum Chemie was organized by the German Competence Centre on Climate Change Mitigation in Energy Intensive Industries (KEI), focusing on the topic of “Acceptance strategies in the transformation of the chemical industry”. Besides Dr. Jörg Rothermel (Head of Energy, Climate Protection and Resources at the German Chemical Association/VCI) and Dr. Utz Tilllman (Senior Advisor Industry at Agora Energiewende), Prof. Roh Pin Lee (Chair of Decarbonization and Transformation of Industry, BTU Cottbus) also contributed an impulse presentation on a multidimensional approach to support a holistic evaluation of the transformation of the chemical industry towards circularity and carbon neutrality. Following the presentations, the three speakers were joined by Dr. Indira Dupuis (Division Head of Work Transformation, Work and Environment Foundation of the IGBCE) and Dr. Franziska May (Research Associate in the Group Energy Transition and Public Policy at Research Institute for Sustainability/RIFS Potsdam) for a panel discussion on multifaceted aspects related to public, market, political as well as employee acceptance in the sustainability transformation of the chemical industry.

More Information under: https://www.klimaschutz-industrie.de/veranstaltungen/3-kei-fachforum-chemie/

On 30.11.2023, the BMBF organized the China Competence Conference to promote networking amongst actors who are active in and contributing to the development of China competences in Germany. The interactive event enabled the identification of existing China competences as well as China-focused research projects in Germany to support the generation of potential synergies and cooperation opportunities.  

On Thursday 9^th November 2023, the 4^th Lausitzer Conference 2023 brought together key actors from science, industry and politics in Cottbus for an intensive discussion about opportunities and challenges for energy intensive industries on their way towards climate neutrality in Germany. In addition to addressing the question required solutions to enable and accelerate sustainable production and process chains, speakers also shared about their current developments and project deployments for producing climate-friendly production. The 2023 Lausitzer Conference was organized by the Cluster Decarbonization in Industries (CDI) – founded in November 2021 by the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), the Fraunhofer Research Institute for Energy Infrastructures and Geothermal Systems (IEG), the Institute of Low-Carbon Industrial Processes at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) as well as the Competence Center on Climate change Mitigation in Energy Intensive Industries (KEI).

More information under https://www.cluster-dekarbonisierung.de/de/newsroom/details/4-lausitzer-fachkonferenz-praxisbeispiele-veranschaulichen-nachhaltige-industriedekarbonisierung.html

On 7^th November, Dr. Christopher Jones from the University of Portsmouth (UK) held a guest lecture on social acceptance of technology in the course “Communication of Science & Technology” at the BTU Cottbus, sharing his work in factors affecting public acceptance of technology and his experience in engaging the public on controversial energy project deployments.

On 1^st November, the Zeit Veranstaltungen, in cooperation with the Cluster Decarbonization in Industries (CDI), kicked started the first of its series “ZEIT Campus Zukunftsfragen: Grüne Jobs von Morgen” at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. Following a welcome by Prof. Grande (President of BTU Cottbus) as well as a short interview with Andreas Findeisen (Head of the CDI), Prof. Lee (Chair of Decarbonization & Transformation of Industry, BTU) discussed about opportunities for young adults to contribute to the green transformation of the industries together with Dr. Erik Blasius (Project manager of Renewable Energies, BASF Schwarzeheide), Sebastian Kießling (Co-founder and General Manager of Prof. Dr. Berg & Kießling) and Rico Schneider (Head of Transformation, SIEMENS Energy) in the panel discussion.

More Information under: https://www.cluster-dekarbonisierung.de/de/events/details/zeit-campus-zukunftsfragen.html

We welcome Prof. Dr. Roh Pin Lee at the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg this coming winter semester. As head of the research division Technology Assessment at the Institute for Energy Process Engineering and chemical Engineering (IEC) at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, she has had an impressive scientific and professional track record. Born in Singapore, Ms. Lee is trilingual (German-English-Chinese) nd has been in Germany since 2005. Her scientific background encompasses psychology, decision-making and international resource and environmental management. In 2022, she also completed her habilitation in the field of technology assessment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with the thesis “Multidimensional Assessment for a Carbon Transition in Carbon Intensive industries”.

With a strong international network from science and industry in the energy, chemical, waste management, recycling and engineering sectors, she additionally acts as the scientific coordinator of the German National network for a Circular Carbon Economy (NK2).

“My focus is the integrated social-technological-economical-ecological-political (abbreviated: STEEP) assessment of decarbonization and transformation options for the industry. Together with BTU students and colleagues, I aim to provide grounded systemic information and insights to inform/quality/support socio-political dialogues and decision-making processes for the sustainability transformation. My vision is to connect different disciplines, sectors and interests so as to promote transdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration at the interface of science, industry, politics and society.”