Press

The Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI asked more than 200 manufacturing companies in Germany about their resilience to crises following the Corona lockdown in spring 2020. A resulting study, which has now been published, shows how important Industry 4.0 technologies are for the resilience of companies – and which sectors proved to be more resilient than others.

It is half a century since the Fraunhofer ISI was founded in 1972. To mark this occasion, around 200 guests from research, politics, business and society came together on Thursday at the ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe to celebrate the Institute's 50th anniversary. The numerous guest speakers included Joanna Drake from the European Commission, Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and Mario Brandenburg, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF. They all acknowledged the high relevance of Fraunhofer ISI's research - not only over the past 50 years, but also for the future.

Future climate policy assigns hydrogen and H2 synthesis products great importance. But how could the demand for hydrogen develop globally? A new meta-study coordinated by Fraunhofer ISI addresses this question and re-evaluates more than 40 energy system and hydrogen scenarios within the HyPat research project. The study provides statements on the range of possible future developments of hydrogen demand, globally, in the EU, and China until 2050, and differentiates between various demand sectors. The focus is on scenarios with ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The space and water heating sector accounts for almost one third of Europe’s final energy consumption and is still dominated by fossil fuel use, most importantly natural gas. A new data set, developed in the context of the study “Renewable Space Heating under the Revised Renewable Energy Directive“ by TU Wien, Fraunhofer ISI, e-think, Öko-Institut and Viegang Maagoe reveals that, in the EU27, natural gas supplies almost 50 percent of space heating. The dependency on natural gas, however, varies strongly across countries, ranging from 0 to 90%. The study aims to provide a better information basis for policy design targeting decarbonization, and the newly published open data set that contains summaries for all EU27 countries allows users to explore the structure of space heating demand and supply in these countries.