Design­ing the ener­gy turnaround

We humans will con­tin­ue to design and use prod­ucts in the future. They should be beau­ti­ful and afford­able and make every­day life eas­i­er. They stand for sta­tus or inde­pen­dence. We humans like to invent, pro­duce and con­sume and always will. To be able to pro­duce these things that ful­fill our wants and needs, but also to secure our lives, we need ener­gy — lots of ener­gy. The glob­al hunger for it is enor­mous and grow­ing inex­orably. That’s why solu­tions are need­ed that will con­tin­ue to meet the grow­ing demand for ener­gy in the future and at the same time lead us out of the cli­mate and ener­gy crisis.

Decar­boniza­tion and decentralization

Decar­boniza­tion and decen­tral­iza­tion of ener­gy sys­tems is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound cli­mate that sta­bi­lizes world peace. Espe­cial­ly sun­light and wind, as the largest renew­able ener­gy sup­pli­ers, flanked by hydropow­er, bio­mass and geot­her­mal ener­gy, are avail­able to us free of charge world­wide, and the renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies to use and store these resources are also becom­ing increas­ing­ly afford­able. So there should no longer be any rea­son to leave ener­gy pro­duc­tion and sup­ply entire­ly in the hands of a few large com­pa­nies. Top-down sys­tems have nev­er pro­vid­ed room for rad­i­cal change. Bavar­i­an ener­gy pol­i­cy also relies on cit­i­zens, munic­i­pal­i­ties and com­pa­nies and their will­ing­ness to devel­op local val­ue cre­ation systems.

Here, design can play a deci­sive role in inter­ac­tion with oth­er dis­ci­plines and future tech­nolo­gies in order to pro­mote inno­va­tions with which a sus­tain­able, secure and afford­able ener­gy tran­si­tion can suc­ceed. One for­ward-look­ing approach is the devel­op­ment of closed-loop sys­tems, which the Munich-based start­up Sono Motors has been research­ing for some time and demon­strates how cli­mate-friend­ly mobil­i­ty can work. The team of engi­neers, design­ers, tech­ni­cians and indus­try experts has brought the Sino elec­tric car, which is suit­able for every­day use and charges itself using ener­gy from the sun thanks to pre­cise­ly inte­grat­ed solar cells on the sur­face of the car body, to mar­ket matu­ri­ty. By 2023, the first Sinos are expect­ed to be rolling on our roads, made only with renew­able ener­gy, of course, and designed to be shared rather than owned. How­ev­er, the solar pan­els devel­oped by the com­pa­ny also enable seam­less inte­gra­tion into all types of vehi­cles, allow­ing exist­ing vehi­cles to be equipped with solar pan­els as well. The Solar Bus Kit is a com­plete and effi­cient solar retro­fit solu­tion for diesel bus­es. Opti­mized for the most com­mon 12-meter bus types known from the pub­lic trans­port sys­tem, the kit makes a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to reduc­ing diesel con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions, there­by achiev­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals faster.

Design and solar ener­gy are not contradictory

In order to increase the use of regen­er­a­tive ener­gies, it is worth­while to focus on areas that have not been of great impor­tance so far, such as the gen­er­a­tion of solar ener­gy through vehi­cle sur­faces, but also bicy­cle and pedes­tri­an paths or glass panes can be used to con­vert sun­light into ener­gy. The Dutch com­pa­ny Solar­Road inte­grates solar mod­ules into con­crete ele­ments that are pro­tect­ed by a cen­time­ter-thick lay­er of safe­ty glass. These mod­ules are installed on bike paths and the ener­gy gen­er­at­ed is fed into the pow­er grid. It gets excit­ing when this elec­tric­i­ty can also be used direct­ly to pow­er e‑scooters or e‑bikes rid­ing on them. But the cost of oper­a­tion, main­te­nance and repair must also be con­sid­ered and exam­ined in such future concepts.

The Amer­i­can com­pa­ny Ubiq­ui­tous Ener­gy has devel­oped a tech­nol­o­gy that also allows win­dows and glass facades to be used as ener­gy pro­duc­ers with­out the smart solar win­dows dif­fer­ing from con­ven­tion­al ones. This is an impor­tant mate­r­i­al inno­va­tion that both helps reduce CO2 emis­sions in the con­struc­tion indus­try and helps meet the increased ener­gy demands of smart home systems.

The free-form mod­ules made of organ­ic pho­to­volta­ic film from the Bavar­i­an com­pa­ny Opvius, which has since been tak­en over by the French group Armor, also offer sus­tain­able as well as aes­thet­ic archi­tec­tur­al solu­tions in which the archi­tec­ture dic­tates the design lan­guage of the pho­to­volta­ic sys­tem and not, con­verse­ly, an exist­ing tech­nol­o­gy deter­mines the appear­ance of build­ings and facades. The Solar Trees of the Ger­man Pavil­ion at EXPO 2015 in Milan, where this organ­ic pho­to­volta­ic sys­tem was used, show that com­plete­ly new build­ing typolo­gies can devel­op from this.

Design­er Mar­jan van Aubel, who has long been explor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of inte­grat­ing solar tech­nol­o­gy into every­day objects, also shows how inde­pen­dent ener­gy cycles gen­er­ate added val­ue on both a large and small scale. In her solar glass col­lec­tion, each drink­ing ves­sel is equipped with inte­grat­ed solar cells. In a spe­cial­ly designed dis­play case to store the ves­sels, the ener­gy is trans­ferred and stored. Like a bat­tery, the piece of fur­ni­ture can emit elec­tric­i­ty, for exam­ple for charg­ing elec­tri­cal appli­ances in the home.

Micro­bial fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy also offers fur­ther pos­si­bil­i­ties for an off-grid ener­gy sys­tem. Here, the nat­ur­al pho­to­syn­the­sis process of liv­ing plants is to be used as an ener­gy source to gen­er­ate clean elec­tric­i­ty. It is an enchant­i­ng idea when urban parks and green spaces turn into self-suf­fi­cient sources of light in the future and show us the way in every respect.

Design to cool the earth

Still very fresh and raw, yet pow­er­ful, is the idea of Lumobags, a project con­ceived as part of the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary inno­va­tion work­shop “Sci­ence Moon­shot” dur­ing MCBW 2022 with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Munich-based design stu­dio N+P. In this vision, alu­minum-coat­ed sand­bags are placed on large sur­faces world­wide. With the help of the Lumobags, enough solar ener­gy is to be reflect­ed to coun­ter­act the CO2-induced green­house effect. Per­haps anoth­er future project that, in con­junc­tion with many oth­ers, can make a con­tri­bu­tion to over­com­ing the cli­mate and ener­gy cri­sis, even if the devel­op­ers and design­ers see it only as a bridg­ing tech­nol­o­gy that should at least give soci­ety a respite from glob­al warm­ing. One thing is cer­tain: we still need a lot of ideas, con­cepts and visions that will only have a pos­i­tive impact if there is a con­stant trans­fer of knowl­edge, bot­tom-up strate­gies and inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing. But crises, as we know, have always spurred mankind on to new inno­va­tions and great inventions.