New management for the northern real-world lab

Obituary for Professor Werner Beba

Mike Blicker will be the new project coordinator of the Norddeutsches Reallabor (Northern German real-world lab, NRL), a joint project on the use of green hydrogen in practice. To test different paths to a climate-neutral energy system, more than 50 partners from commerce, academia and politics have joined forces to form this real-world laboratory, which will be supported by the German ministry for economy and climate protection (BMWK) as well as ministry for transport and digital infrastructure (BMDV). The environmental engineer and process engineer had provisionally taken over the director function after the unexpected death of the previous project coordinator, Professor Dr. Werner Beba, and was before that his deputy. Moreover, Blicker was a research member of the NRL working groups “Wärme und Quartiere” (heating and neighborhoods) as well as “Industrie,” and he was part of the management of the HAW research project X-Energy.

Prof. Werner Beba established the Norddeutsches Reallabor, and managed it with great commitment and personal conviction. At the same time, he was director of the Competence Center für Erneuerbare Energien und Energieeffizienz (CC4E) at the university of applied sciences Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg (HAW). In February of this year, he passed away at the age of 66 after a serious illness. His successor as director of the CC4E will be Hans Schäfers, who since 2017 has been Professor for intelligent energy systems and energy efficiency at HAW Hamburg, and within the NRL was already leading the working group “Gesamtintegration” (overall integration). The environmental engineer and former energy consultant Schäfers will now also be a new member of the NRL project direction group, a position likewise held by Werna Beba.

Beba, born in Bremen 1956, after his studies at the military academy Helmut-Schmidt-Universität in Hamburg, joined the management of the media corporation Gruner+Jahr, where he worked, among other things, as managing director of the publishing house. In 2008, the economist moved over to HAW Hamburg, took over as chair of marketing there and founded the CC4E, an interdisciplinary center that works on the system integration of renewable energies including storage and sector coupling. With his communication talents, the former media manager succeeded in getting very different people from research, business and politics interested in the necessity of the energy transition and climate protection.