What is your vision for decarbonising heating and cooling in Europe by 2050?

Save energy by adapting the demand to the real requirements in the first step. Recover heat as far as possible with recuperative systems in the second step. Use waste heat and ambient energy with heat pumps in the third step to transform the available green electricity from the renewables highly efficient and with available and proven heat pump technologies to heat. There is a lot of potential in heat recovery and especially when heat pump technologies even deliver cooling simultaneously.Decrease the usage of the fossil fuels step by step in the future. We must not and should burn fossil fuels for heating purposes.

What is your contribution to this vision as stakeholder in your professional environment, but also as individual?

The blue-five-programme engaged by Airbus for 2020, will be extend in the future with aggressive targets concerning energy, CO2, waste, water and VOC savings. At Airbus I am engaged to create the “route to zero impact” for the new paint booth in the framework. I provoked our partners, to offer an integrated and ambitious solution. Sometimes this means for me as an individual to leave the comfort zone for the success. A very ambitious concept was developed by Airbus. On this idea, a first project, concerning the paint booths for the A350 Nose of Fuselage and centre fuselage, was engaged with DÜRR our partner and offer us an integrated solution.

Who do you think is the strongest ally in making your vision of a decarbonised Europe a reality?

At first you need a reliable partner for the technical solution but this is self-evident and also available out there. Second you need strong arguments, such as the return on invest. So the strongest ally is the cost spread between heating with fossil fuels and a decarbonized heating. I believe that CO2 emissions and emission savings must be rated with a financial value. Taxes or emissions trading schemes or others should ensure, that the cost spread is advantageous for zero-impact-solutions.