Oldenburg's energy research receives millions in funding: the university is involved in four sub-projects in the EFZN program “Transformation of Lower Saxony's Energy System”. 

The aim of the project is to strategically develop Lower Saxony's energy research by 2030. In a team of 180 researchers at 15 universities, universities of applied sciences and other partners in Lower Saxony, Oldenburg scientists will be researching solutions for a climate-neutral future over the next five years. The university is involved in four research platforms and the transfer program, playing a leading role in three of them. One of the four research platforms is the real-world laboratory “Reallabor 70 GW Offshore Wind” (funding amount: 16.9 million euros), in which the planned expansion of wind energy in the German North Sea by 2045 is analyzed and monitored holistically from a socio-technical perspective. The spokesperson is the Oldenburg physicist Prof. Dr. Kerstin Avila from the ForWind Center for Wind Energy Research, the coordinator is ForWind Managing Director Dr. Stephan Barth. In the real laboratory, the researchers will work out development paths for achieving the planned 70 gigawatts of offshore capacity and translate these into action strategies for sustainable expansion in cooperation with the wind industry.

In the real-world laboratory, ICBM scientists from the “Marine Sensor Systems” working group are involved in a sub-project investigating the effects of offshore wind energy on the marine environment. “Offshore wind farms change current and wave fields, which can have an impact on the marine environment and biodiversity,” explains ICBM scientist Andrea Lübben. “We will conduct several measurement campaigns at sea to record how hydrodynamics, water quality, water stratification and sediment transport change.” The results will be used to develop critical hydrodynamic and ecological reference values for representative wind farm areas as part of an impact assessment. “Together with our project partners, we want to develop concepts to reduce the negative effects on the one hand and increase the ecological added value of wind farms and protected areas on the other,” says ICBM scientist Dr. Thomas Badewien.