The Roads to Carbon Neutral - Season 4 - Episode 2 - NASH Renewables: Harnessing Algorithms to Drive Renewable Energy Projects

Christoph Lauenstein : Running is really a special time that I only have for me. Sometimes I just like to not think of anything at all. Then it’s also the opportunity to think about something that is quite complicated and needs a lot of thought.

Hamburg is actually my home town. You really feel the spirit of renewables there. Wind turbines, those majestic things… They are a massive sign of progress for me. Therefore looking at them in the morning, when I go for a run, gives me a lot of confidence in us, as a society, turning the page.

There are more options to design one particular wind farm than there are atoms in the universe. So, with Nash, it’s trying to figure out, through algorithms, the optimal way to build a wind or solar farm. So you place something, let’s say set a location, then you can say what the shape of the location is. You can then start to place wind turbines, make sure that distance is big enough. And then the software basically calculates everything else: energy production of the turbines, how much that energy is worth in the power markets, and gives you a full economic calculation of the wind farm.

And if we can make renewables a more profitable investment, and that’s what we aim to do, then more renewable power plants will be built, accelerating our decarbonization journey, helping us achieve net zero. Getting the stamp of TotalEnergies for this new way of thinking of course brought our company massively forward. TotalEnergies On is an electricity start-up accelerator. It purely focuses on helping you engage with the TotalEnergies organization, with all the stakeholders, with all the teams that are hard to access otherwise. They’re trying to help you understand the strategy of the Company. And that’s of huge value. Unheard-of value, so to say.

Daniel Luecht : We’re actually here at Station F, the world’s biggest accelerator and start-up community. TotalEnergies has an office here, which is great. Christoph Lauenstein : We started the process of applying and then got invited to the pitch, which was a massive deal for us.

Daniel Luecht : So if you apply first for the program, you’re among 200 start-ups, and then it boils down to 30 pitching directly to the jury.

Christoph Lauenstein : And then you have eight minutes to make a dent in people’s imagination, at the end of the day.

Daniel Luecht : Ten will be selected to join batch 4, batch 5 and to actually be invited to cooperate with TotalEnergies.

Christoph Lauenstein : The single most critical success factor for start-ups is timing, not idea, not execution: timing. And with a program like TotalEnergies On, you can basically force timing. We went into the program as an early-stage start-up and came out as a fully integrated part of a massive company like TotalEnergies.

Daniel Luecht : We got invited to the next jury session, and so we are sitting in the jury, judging, understanding, and trying to get the value out of the start-ups pitching to us. That was quite an honor.

Christoph Lauenstein : Of course, it’s a big thing if you are able to combine your professional life with something that has meaning. If you can also combine that with building up a company, creating employment, building up a team, you know you’re doing something that has the potential, at least, to create or contribute to a better world. That’s big.