Habeck visits the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing:
focus on hydrogen technologies and wind energy

Minister Habeck is visiting the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin today. He will be learning more about two centres of excellence on hydrogen and wind energy run by the Institute. As part of its mandate to improve safety in technology and chemistry, the Institute is focusing on technologies which progress the transformation of industry and the energy transition.

Minister Habeck thanked the staff of the Institute for their hard work and stressed the following point: “The restructuring of our economy is an urgent task for our age – the last few months have made this more than obvious. To achieve this, we need innovation which delivers more sustainability, environmental protection and climate change mitigation, but also more safety. The BAM is doing research into this, and thus making an important contribution to the transformation, which it then passes on directly to the scientific and business communities. The Institute’s work on hydrogen and wind energy in particular is helping us to progress these key enabling technologies for the energy transition.”

Together with Professor Dr Ulrich Panne, the President of the BAM, Minister Habeck is signing a target agreement between the Economic Affairs and Climate Ministry and the BAM defining the main areas of work and the goals for the coming years. The focus here is particularly on forward-looking topics like hydrogen technologies, wind energy, electrical energy storage, additive manufacturing and nanomaterials.

“The target agreement creates a good framework for the BAM’s work. Our two centres of excellence in particular – H2Safety@BAM and Wind@BAM – can give an effective and safe boost to the energy transition. We are helping to ensure that future hydrogen pipelines and other infrastructure can be designed to be H2-ready, and that the technology is in place for the roll-out of higher-capacity wind turbines,” said Professor Panne.

The BAM is a scientific and technical agency of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, employing around 1,600 people. The Institute pools its expertise in centres of excellence. The H2Safety@BAM centre of excellence brings together scientists covering safety along the entire value chain of modern hydrogen technologies and is advancing the market ramp-up via the transfer of knowledge and technology. For this purpose, a unique testing infrastructure in Germany is being built on a 12 km2 site to the south of Berlin. The Wind@BAM centre of excellence concentrates not least on the durability and stability of large, high-capacity wind turbines and does research into ways to avoid large amounts of carbon emissions during the construction of these turbines.

Further information:
www.bam.de
https://www.bam.de/Navigation/EN/Topics/Energy/Hydrogen/hydrogen.html
https://www.bam.de/Navigation/EN/Topics/Energy/wind-energy/safety-of-wind-turbines.html