Renewable Energy (RE)
For the decades to come, energy-related issues will pose increasingly important challenges in a manifold of social and environmental relations and systems. It bears strong linkages to many if not all Millennium Development Goals. In particular, the organisation and implementation of central and decentralised renewable energy supply systems can address the challenges.
Oldenburg University (UO) already looks back on a strong tradition in renewable energy research and teaching. From the very beginning, many of these research and teaching activities have been closely linked to the developing world. Consequently, one important objective of the Developing Sustainability Network is the mutual exchange between RE High-Tech research and methodologically advanced and resource intensive teaching on the one hand, and appropriate and sustainable applications on the other hand, including transfer and outreach activities. The research agenda in the field of renewable energy is no longer exclusively and once and for all defined neither by the academia nor by application demands from industrialized countries alone. It rather follows scenarios of intelligent combinations and mutually beneficial exchange between different stakeholders and industries as well as along its planning and running processes (Gibbs et al. 1994). Given this multitude of options and combinations, a magnitude of research challenges emerges.