Green hydrogen increasingly the focus of study and research

Expertise from Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences also flows into the book ‘Energy Technology’

Hydrogen is considered an important building block for the energy transition. For this reason, companies will also need significantly more specialists who are familiar with the many possible applications of the gas. Prof Dr Carsten Fichter teaches and researches renewable energies at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. Hydrogen is one of his current areas of specialisation. He recently published the tenth edition of the standard work ‘Energy Technology’ as co-editor together with Prof Dr Richard Zahoransky. From the coming semester, students specialising in marine technology and wind energy on the Bachelor's degree course in Engineering will also benefit from his expertise. They will then learn more about how hydrogen can be used as an energy storage medium, among other things.  

Scientists at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences realised many years ago that hydrogen technologies are a field with great potential. Research projects such as ‘Green Gas for Bremerhaven’, ‘IWAS’ and ‘H2BPMM’ are examples of how science is working with companies to find solutions for the energy transition. Prof Dr Carsten Fichter has been working on hydrogen for around eight years. In 2019, he co-developed the North German Hydrogen Strategy.He is particularly interested in how the gas can be used to store energy from the sun and wind.‘In order to be able to switch to renewable energies, electricity must also be available when the sun is not shining or there is no wind. Hydrogen is well suited as a storage medium and is significantly better than battery storage in terms of resource consumption and storage duration.It's only the economic viability that is still a problem,’ he says. 

Many researchers agree that the topic of hydrogen is likely to become increasingly important in the future. This also means that companies will need more skilled labour in the future. For this reason, energy storage should also be given more space in the education of students at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. This is one of the reasons why the content of the specialisation in marine technology and wind energy in the Bachelor's degree programme in engineering has been revised. ‘Previously, the specialisation was called Maritime Technologies. However, it was not clear that it also included wind energy. As a result, we weren't able to attract as many students interested in this area.We hope that the new name will change this. Hydrogen plays an important role as an energy storage medium and will be taught in a separate module in future,’ says Prof Fichter.

Students in Bremerhaven and at other universities can now read about many of the new findings in a single work. According to Prof Fichter, the book ‘Energy Technology’, published by Springer Verlag, is a standard work. Even as a student, he worked with one of the first editions. Today he is a contributor himself. The book was recently completely revised.‘The 10th edition contains the discourse between new and conventional energy technologies.Students therefore get an overview of the entire technical development, so to speak, but also current political discussions and experiences from teaching and research in one book,’ explains the professor.Further information on the book can be found at https://link.springer.com/book/9783658445096.

The application phase for degree programmes for the winter semester 2025/26 is currently underway at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences. Applications for Engineering and all other open-admission degree programmes can be made via the university's own application portal ecampus.hs-bremerhaven.de. The application deadline is 15 August 2025. Applications for the admission-restricted Bachelor's degree programmes in Digital Media Production, Physician Assistant and Social Work can only be submitted via the portal www.hochschulstart.de by 15 July 2025. Special regulations also apply to the practice-integrated dual study programmes. 

Further information on the degree programmes offered by Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences can be found at www.hs-bremerhaven.de/study.

(Translated by deepL.com)