German President Joachim Gauck handed the € 500,000 DBU Environmental Prize, the most highly-endowed in Europe, to founder and board chairman of SMA Solar Technology AG (of Kassel) Günther Cramer, as well as to the researcher/entrepreneur duo of Dr. Andreas Bett and Hansjörg Lerchenmüller (both of Freiburg) at the end of October. Bett is the Assistant Director of the Fraunhofer Institut for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE); Lerchenmüller is the Managing Director of Soitec Solar GmbH.
For their groundbreaking technical achievements in photovoltaics and their personal dedication, the award recipients were cited for setting new worldwide standards and helping to introduce them globally, as the DBU elaborated in its remarks on the award decision. Through his systematic focus on research and development, Cramer successfully built the SMA from an initial small engineering company to a global player and market leader in technology, it was further stated; his firm is distinguished by its highly innovative solar inverters, by means of which direct current produced in photovoltaic systems is converted to alternating current. The DBU praised Bett and Lerchenmüller as the “prototype of the successful teamwork between scientific excellence and entrepreneurial courage”. Together they “blazed a path from a vision to industrial production” with their Concentrator Technology, which − with its high-efficiency multiple solar cells and special collecting lenses − uses sunlight far more effectively than the traditional silicon module
The President commended the recipients of the DBU Environmental Prize in the Leipzig Gewandhaus as exponents of something which makes him proud of Germany: ingenuity and enterprise in those who seek to transform the “wished-for” into the doable. He indicated that it is not enough to say the right things and speak of sustainability in politically correct terms. It must be politically desired, entrepreneurially shaped and then made socially acceptable, Gauck said.
