A week in Brandenburg – Seeing a programme grow…

It is great to work with a client over multiple years, to then see how they progress, and if they are on track with plans we made earlier. In the past this was mostly with my chemical company clients, but since 2016 I have had the pleasure of accompanying one part of the German Energy Solutions Initiative, which is run by GIZ as the Project Development Programme. Importantly, this programme seeks to develop a win-win: it aims to reduce CO2 emissions in emerging economies, by showing companies there how big the financial savings can be, when they switch to renewable energies – not to mention increasing their reliability of supply. Indeed they can also show how the quality solutions for this are made in Germany/Europe.

This week I had the pleasure of animating their knowledge sharing, team building, and country
strategy development process for a week. A first striking feature being that it now involves over 50 people from nearly twenty countries: easily double the size and scope of before. Moreover, back in 2016, the focus was on developing a few projects in PV, and of hammering out a process for judging what leads are worth taking forward. This is now ancient history with loads of PV projects in the pipeline and a standardised, increasingly digitalised, process. And the scope has changed: the energy transition is not only about PVs: now the project is developing green H2 projects, pushing energy saving and the use of process heat. Finally, the programme is not just a programme, but a cluster – the main commissioner is moving forward, but other commissions have been picked up, such as to develop PVs for training establishments in Nigeria.

In any case bravo to the entire team for the progress made, and a pleasure to be with them all again!