Baiting with aha effects

Energy manager Simon Hamperl arises enthusiasm for energy efficiency in Adlershof

Energy managers are active in many fields. At their companies, they analyse the energy supply from the supply contract to waste disposal. Simon Hamperl’s arena is considerably more extensive – 420 hectares, 1,000 companies, 22,000 people. Hamperl is the energy manager for the largest science park in Germany.

Adlershof has set itself an ambitious goal. Its energy strategy is targeting savings in primary energy of 30 percent by the year 2020. Concepts and strategies have become one. The implementation, however, often turns out completely differently. “Door to door slogs,” replied Simon Hamperl, when asked about his core assignments, explaining that energy efficiency does not always meet with resounding success. Everyone in Adlershof, wether student, entrepreneur, researcher, or visitor, falls within his target group – everyone who uses energy. “If you consume,” said the mechanical engineer, “you can first find saving-potential and then use it.”

There are countless means and ways to achieve this – especially at a location like Adlerhof where research, education, and business have been repeatedly enriching each other for more than two decades now. Simon Hamperl assumed his duties in 2014. He sees in his work the location’s clear cut profession of loyalty to energy matters. His post was a deliberate outcome of the location’s government-funded energy strategy and the implementation of its provisions. Hamperl had already encountered energy matters during his mechanical engineering studies, at a time when renewable energies were becoming the focus of increasing public attention. As he himself claims, not without humour, he was “cast” specifically for this role. In the “sustainability mecca” Freiburg, he had taken his Master’s degree, after which he gathered experience at a Fraunhofer Institute and abroad. Hamperl, however, is far from seeing himself as a solo combatant championing Adlershof’s energy policies. “I am not a solitary,” he said. “One person can’t manage it alone. We need everybody’s commitment at the location.”

So what’s the solution? Hamperl is quite pragmatic: “The best solution hits the purse.” Effective enticements for companies are claims of cost effectiveness or constantly changing legal constraints in the energy field. But, he added, they must first be made to know it exists. And it is precisely here that Hamperl sees the greatest potential at the location. Events are to fill knowledge gaps, dispel misunderstandings, demonstrate business benefits – and the appeal made the more desirable through aha effects, and not PowerPoint drawls. “Baiting” and then “inserting the seed”, and presenting the diverse range of products and measures, for instance during an LED tour. “There is so much energy knowhow at the location, all we have to do is induce everyone to make use of it together.”

By Rico Bigelmann for Adlershof Special