Genius and Hard Work for the Planet Goes Unrewarded in the World of Crony Capitalism and Crony Governance--The Case of Gregor Czisch
By Kevin Stoda, Germany
Gregor Czisch of Kassel, Germany worked almost a decade producing one of the most amazingly forward-looking and clear-thinking piecess of research any PhD student on the planet could ever be expected to produce.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2105061,00.html
In seven years, he produced a work that is the equivalent five or more doctoral theses for many others in his field. Now, Czisch's work is the basis for the 400 billion dollar North African Energy project, known as Desertec.
-i.e. the largest European and African energy development project undertaken. Yet, most of the time, Dr. Gregor Czisch is unemployed.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/gregor-czisch/3/96a/757
As a child, Gregor had not done well in school, so he put his hand to farming. Finally by the 1990s, Czisch had backed into the academic world of physics and engineering after finding work on a environmentally friendly farm too repetitive for him.
The goal of his dissertation was to use or take examples of existing technologies and prove mathematically that simply by placing regenerative energy plants on the specific geographic locations on the planet where they are the most effective or efficient, the entire continent of Europe could be supplied for about what it now pays out in energy costs on traditional petroleum and nuclear energy plants.
These regenerative plants included wind energy wherever the most wind is to be found on the planet, such as in Siberia, or solar energy where the sun shines the most on the planet, like in North Africa or the Arabian peninsula. Moreover, if there are geothermal opportunities, like in Iceland, geothermal energy is naturally the power plant source of choice.
Next, after figuring up the costs of optimal regenerative plants, Czisch needed to also calculate the costs of bringing that energy from these far-away points to the various cities and countries on the European continent-again by using existing technologies. By the time he was finished calculating and rechecking his calculations, Czisch had proven that Europe could, indeed, be taken care of through usage of existing alternative energy technology at a cost of about 4.65 cents per kilowatt of energy.
Czisch proposed his project and all its potential to Siemens back in 2006 but got turned down as Siemens was more interested in investing in nuclear power. Now, however, Siemens is showing great interest in the mega solar project Desertec, which had played a less significant role in Czisch's final pages of research findings
http://www.desertec.org/en/concept/studies/
For this reason, although many of Czisch's dreams are related to or wrapped up in what has now come to be known as Desertec megaproject, he is still very critical of the current 400 billion dollar project. This is because it totally neglects wind energy, which he saw as being an even cheaper source of energy than solar energy for many parts of the European continent.
http://www.risoe.dk/rispubl/reports/ris-r-1608_186-195.pdf
According to Felix Rohrbeck, who wrote a recent article in DIE ZEIT newspaper on Czisch and his research activies, entitled "The Uncompromising Visionary", Gregor Czisch had celebrated his dissertation a few years ago with a toast in which he said, "The proof that an intercontinental regenerative energy network can take care of Europe is at hand. Now, it is up to the politicians and the economists to get to work [on the project.]"
Rohrbeck then notes, "But, they [governments and economic leaders] are giving themselves a lot of time."
Besides being uncompromising with the facts, his dissertation advisor Dr. Juergen Schmid, notes that Czisch cannot be bribed into accepting the party line. For example, after his promotion, Schmid had helped get the new Dr. Czisch a seat on a government committee to work on environmental policy in Germany a few years back. Czisch claimed the figures the committee were using were inaccurate. Soon, Czisch found himself again out of work.
Hey, Planet Earth, does anyone want to hire this guy? I think the earth needs more uncompromising visionaries, don't you?
NOTE
Rohrbeck, Felix, "Krompomissloser Visonaer", DIE ZEIT, (29) Sonntag, 9. Juli 2009, p.20