Volker Handke

The person

Volker Handke has been working at the IZT in the "Energy, Climate & Infrastructure" research department since 2000. He works mainly on the topics of energy, resources and emissions. His research focuses primarily on renewable energies, energy efficiency and the rational use of energy. He focuses on the relationships between technical and social systems as well as sustainability assessment. He also analyses material flows and the use of raw materials in order to investigate resource-economic issues and quantify future requirements. In order to assess environmental and energy policy developments, Volker Handke also analyses emissions and develops energy and emissions scenarios.

Since 2013, Volker Handke has also been a visiting scientist at the Institute for Heterogeneous Material Systems at the Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Energy. There he is investigating the influence of the purity of semiconductor raw materials on the performance of photovoltaics.

In the 1990s, Volker Handke was at the Institute for Energy Technology at the TU-Berlin, where he worked on the planning and construction of regenerative energy systems, operational environmental protection and the sociology of technology in engineering education.

After training as a skilled worker in the construction industry in the 1980s, Volker Handke completed a diploma course in technical environmental protection at the Technical University of Berlin, specialising in waste management, air pollution control and environmental chemistry.

Expertise

• Energy and energy forecasts, emissions and emissions scenarios
• Resources
• Material flow analysis
• Sustainability assessments
• Scenario technique (explorative/quantitative/normative)