The defiant
At the Adlershof-based Reiner Lemoine Institute (RLI), Christine Kühnel is working towards a future in which energy is 100 percent renewable
The German government just recently cut funding for the Climate and Transformation Fund. This affects Reiner Lemoine Institut (RLI), among many others. “The consequences are dramatic,” says Christine Kühnel, who has been the institute’s managing director since January. But she also adds: “I have been imbued with defiance.” Her parents were members of the anti-nuclear movement at Gorleben. Sustainable energy, protecting the environment—these things have been imprinted on her since her childhood and inspired her educational career, her work and her social commitments. “We need a clear perspective,” she says, “the energy transition cannot be successful without science and research.” The cuts have created great uncertainty, and applications have been halted—a fatal signal, including for the researchers and scientists at RLI.
Christine Kühnel studied engineering management with a focus on electrical engineering in Kiel. She subsequently completed her doctorate at Technische Universität Berlin. Following stints at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Research Forum Energy Transition project at the National Academy of Science and Engineering as well as Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH, she became head of the RLI administration in 2019 and then managing director, a position she shares with Kathrin Goldammer. Moreover, she is a volunteer at Hypatia, a non-profit organisation, which promotes exchange between women who work in the renewable energies and cleantech industries.
Kühne shares more with the engineer Reiner Lemoine than the dream of a nuclear-free world. Lemoines’ engineering collective “Wuseltronik” was an early pioneer of the generation of wind and solar energy and a trailblazer of what would later become the solar industry.
Charging infrastructures in supermarket parking lots, potential studies for heat storage, research data infrastructures, decarbonisation of the industry in Morocco, energy access in the Congo, and people-centred mobility offerings—the research interests at the institute are diverse. They usually concern the transformation of energy systems, how to design mobility with renewable energies in mind, or so-called off-grid systems in energy supply, which are facilities that are not connected to the public electricity grid and instead work with energy storage systems.
There are professional but also cultural reasons why she thinks RLI is the best place for working towards the energy transition: the work culture. “We value each other as people.” The institute staff is united by “the way we work together here”, without racism or sexism, and with an unwavering focus on renewable energies. The fact that most management positions are set up as dual leadership “evolved in this way and is now an important building block of our resilience.”
Coming from volunteer work, Kühne always “viewed the world through a certain lens”—often a critical one—, but always with the goal of setting new projects in motion from the community. “Technical aspects alone are not enough to make the energy transition successful,” she says. Especially in the media, she would like to see more positive examples, e.g., solar power plants on balconies. “We focus on possibilities at RLI.”
Rico Bigelmann for Adlershof Journal
Christine Kühnel - Reiner Lemoine Institut (reiner-lemoine-institut.de)