This week, Dr. Philipp Blechinger of Reiner Lemoine Insti­tute will present on Global Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion Sce­nar­ios and Cur­rent Research Needs on Wed, Nov 20th’s RAEL lunch sem­i­nar in Read­ing Room of Bar­rows 310. The detail is attached.

Pizza and salad will be served.

Global Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion Sce­nar­ios and Cur­rent Research Needs

Philipp Blechinger, Reiner Lemoine Insti­tute, Germany

More than 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple need access to elec­tric­ity until 2030 to achieve SDG7 con­sid­er­ing cur­rent pop­u­la­tion growth. Grid exten­sion as con­ven­tional solu­tion for elec­tri­fi­ca­tion will fail to sup­ply all these peo­ple until 2030. Sus­tain­able Energy for All can only be achieved with a mix of grid exten­sion, mini-​​grids, and solar-​​home-​​systems. We mod­elled dif­fer­ent global sce­nar­ios, invest­ment needs and related GHG emis­sions, which are pre­sented in this lec­ture. In addi­tion, cur­rent research work on elec­tri­fi­ca­tion plan­ning of RLI is pre­sented and fur­ther research needs are discussed.

Philipp is an inter­na­tional expert in renew­able ener­gies and rural elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. He holds a PhD in engi­neer­ing from the TU Berlin. Cur­rently he is head of unit Off-​​Grid Sys­tems at Reiner Lemoine Insti­tut. Here he man­aged and con­ducted a wide range of inter­na­tional projects on energy access and island energy sup­ply. Exam­ples include the rural elec­tri­fi­ca­tion plan­ning for Nige­ria and the sup­port to the Depart­ment of Energy of the Philip­pines to improve elec­tri­fi­ca­tion efforts.

Apart from that he con­tin­u­ously pub­lishes and shares research results on con­fer­ences and in sci­en­tific jour­nals (>50) act­ing as reviewer and co-​​editor as well. He is also selected mem­ber of the Arab-​​German Young Acad­emy of Sci­ences and Human­i­ties (AGYA). Dur­ing his field­work, he vis­ited many Caribbean coun­tries: Bar­ba­dos, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Vin­cent & the Grenadines, and Trinidad & Tobago. In addi­tion, he worked on the Cook Islands, the Philip­pines, in Tan­za­nia, Nige­ria, and Zambia.

This lec­ture is pre­sented in the frame­work of the Cali­for­nia–Berlin Exchange and Research+ (C-​​BEAR+) - an exchange pro­gram for researchers work­ing on energy access and renew­able energy topics.