Emden Sustainability Award
Competition for a student project relating to sustainability
In cooperation with the Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences, Stadtwerke Emden is awarding the 4th Emden Sustainability Award for an outstanding student project or thesis in the field of sustainable development, endowed with 500 euros, as well as two special prizes for special individual achievements as defined in the call for entries, each endowed with 250 euros.
Students interested in participating in the competition should contact their mentoring lecturer. Submissions are then made by the mentoring lecturers or by Prof. Michael Schlaak. We look forward to your work!
The Emden Sustainability Award is awarded to an outstanding student project or thesis in the field of sustainable development. It is preferred for the topic of the thesis to come from the following areas:
- Resource conservation
- Education for sustainable development
- Renewable energies
- Energy efficiency
- Climate change mitigation
- Sustainable digitisation
- recycling of valuable materials
- as well as the economy and society a new perspective for sustainable regional development
Sustainability award 2024
This year's main prize of 500 euros goes to Michel Grüther, whose bachelor's thesis focused on the integration of a special sailing system and a Flettner rotor on the Green Water Taxi developed at the university. This has already been used to transport passengers and small loads off the East Frisian Islands. Grüther's work focuses on the development and construction of a suitable foundation for the sustainable auxiliary drives.
Hauke Hoops received a special prize worth 200 euros. The graduate from the Sustainable Energy Systems course dedicated his bachelor's thesis to the creation of a concept for electricity and heat generation at the Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences from a techno-economic and ecological perspective. Both the feasibility - which Hoops has been proving since last year as the university's new climate protection manager - and the possibility of making the simulations available to other institutions were taken into account.
Patrizia Völz dealt with the topic of "Sustainability as a subject of social work" in her final thesis in the Social Work degree program. She received a special prize of 150 euros. She investigated the extent to which the profession can make a realistic contribution to promoting sustainability within the profession and in society.
Emma Simon and Anna Schmidt, who are studying Business Management at the university, also received prize money of 150 euros and an award for their project "Biogas for Ghana". With the support of the university's Institute for Project-Oriented Teaching (Ipro-L) and Emden city council member Abdou Ouedraogo, the prizewinners developed a concept for the implementation of mini biogas plants in rural areas of Ghana as a cost-effective and sustainable source of energy for households, schools and healthcare facilities.
Sustainability award 2023
The main prize of 500 euros went to Kerstin Wunder, a graduate of the Applied Life Science Master's degree program, for her final thesis at the Faculty of Engineering. For the first time this year, there were also two special prizes, which Maximilian Zarte, Söke Sabelus and Robin Terbrüggen accepted during a press event at Stadtwerke. Maximilian Zarte is missing from the group photo.
Kerstin Wunder dedicated her Master's thesis to the topic of "Detailed investigations into effective phosphorus recovery from biogas digestate with consideration of economic efficiency". Phosphorus is a finite resource that is an important component of fertilizers, for example in agriculture. As there are maximum limits for fertilizing the soil with certain nutrients, it makes sense, for example, to separate the excess phosphorus from the rest and recycle it as a resource. Kerstin Wunder has achieved this using various methods.
Maximilian Zarte received a special prize of 300 euros from the competition for his dissertation on sustainable production processes. In his work, he developed a concept to support production planning based on sustainability and supplemented it with a real-life case study. On the one hand, this enables the evaluation of several production planning targets, taking into account economic, ecological and social aspects, and also provides information on how a high degree of sustainability can be achieved.
Soeke Sabelus from Leerhafe and Robin Terbrüggen from Varel examined samples of microplastics found on honey bees as part of their project work. The students used Raman spectroscopy, in which light scattered from solids is recorded. Sabelus and Terbrüggen chose this topic because of the increasing amount of microplastics in the environment. In addition to environmental toxins and mite infestation, this is another important stress factor with regard to bee mortality, as the students emphasized. Both are in their fourth semester of Engineering Physics, a cooperative degree course offered by Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences together with the University of Oldenburg. They received the Stadtwerke's creativity prize of 200 euros.
Sustainability award 2022

The "Stadtwerke Emden" has awarded the 2nd Emden Sustainability Prize to two students from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences. The prize, worth a total of 1000 euros, went to Uwe Aden and Sören Ottjes, who dealt with the topic of "Drainage through small wind turbines" in their project work.
In their work, Aden and Ottjes, who are studying electrical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences, addressed a highly topical issue. The rise in sea levels caused by climate change is leading to an increasing demand for pumping capacity to drain the East Frisia region, which is largely below sea level. The specific aim of the project work was to investigate whether decentralized pumping stations of the Emden drainage association could be supplied with electricity in a technically feasible way via small wind turbines installed on site. To this end, the locations were also evaluated and the economic viability of the project examined. Uwe Aden and Sören Ottjes developed a model that couples the precipitation-dependent pumping behavior of the pumping stations with the energy supply from the wind and thus provided answers to their original question.
Sustainability award 2021
Our graduate Kai Rösken from the electrical engineering course received the first Emden Sustainability Award in 2021 for his instructive bachelor's thesis:
In it, Mr. Rösken dealt with the development of a freely accessible computer program that makes it possible to design battery storage systems for photovoltaic systems more effectively - and thus produce more green electricity.
Currently, planners and installers are generally reliant on commercial software programs when designing battery storage systems. In order to remove this barrier to access and thus implement more battery storage systems and consequently more photovoltaic systems, an open-source design tool is being developed at the university as part of the PIEG-Strom research project. Kai Rösken has made a significant contribution to the creation of this freely accessible tool with the battery model he has implemented.
Proposals for the competition can be made by lecturers from the university who have supervised the academic work. The responsible lecturers must submit a one-page recommendation (short report) which makes clear:
- which of the above areas the work refers to analytically and strategically
- to what extent the candidate has dealt with the topic in a targeted and creative way
- whether the work develops perspectives for implementation or promotes regional development
- that the work has been carried out with academic care and meets the general standards
Submissions of student work must be made in digital form and include the short report in addition to the proposed work. Submissions are accepted by the university's Sustainability and Social Responsibility Coordinator.
Students in the Sustainability Certificate:
You also have the option of submitting your sustainability-related work separately to Prof. Michael Schlaak (michael.schlaak(at)hs-emden-leer.de) for review.
All submissions will be reviewed and weighted by an expert jury consisting of representatives of the Advisory Board for Sustainability/the University, the Stadtwerke Emden, the City of Emden. The award ceremony will take place at Stadtwerke Emden.
