Philipp Blechinger was born on the 22nd of July, 1984 in Munich and finished his A-level at the Gymnasium Vaterstetten.
After that he completed his pre-degree studies in economics and engineering at the FAU Erlangen and worked at the consultancy Rödl&Partner during an internship. Following his interests in renewable energies he moved to the Berlin Institute of Technology and concentrated on energy- and resource-management. He deepened his knowledge by attending the Summer School of Renewable Energies in Jülich and by working at the engineering company teamfürtechnik GmbH. In addition he gets involved with the network SolarSolutionsNet e. V.. Furthermore he was employed as student research assistant at the department of energy management and the department of energy engineering at the TU Berlin. At the end of his studies he joined the University of Trinidad & Tobago doing research work for half a year. He published his results at the 5th Environmental Forum in Jamaica and in the peer-reviewed Journal "Energy Policy". Inspired by these experiences he wrote his final thesis about a techno-economic optimization of the energy and water supply system of a small Caribbean island and graduated with an excellent degree.
„Barriers and solutions to implementing renewable energies on Caribbean islands in respect of technical, economic, political, and social conditions"
Most of the Caribbean islands are facing two major challenges in power generation: the relatively high costs of energy and the high CO2-emissions caused by burning imported diesel fuel in power plants. Based on the very good natural conditions in this area, these challenges could be met by the implementation of renewable energies as cleaner and cheaper energy source.
The Caribbean area has a great technological and economic potential for using renewable energies for power generation or as heat source (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and wave power). Despite these promising natural conditions, only few renewable energy technologies are installed in this region at the moment.
The planned dissertation targets to find the main barriers to implement renewable energies on Caribbean islands in respect of technical, economic, political, and social conditions. The main objective is to identify the barriers and to provide guidance to overcome them.
The research work is divided into three sections. First the technological and economic potential of power generation by renewable energies should be identified. This analysis is performed based on the data of the Reiner Lemoine Institute, which are used to show the economic potential compared to the existing energy supply systems.
After that the methodology to evaluate the barriers is developed. These barriers are collected and weighted via literature reviews and expert interviews to get evaluation matrices for several islands.
Finally, the conditions on different islands with successful or failed projects are compared with the help of the matrix to give guidance for successfully implementing renewable energies.
