Prof. Dr. Olav Hohmeyer

Professor Hohmeyer (born in 1953) studied Economics and Informatics at Tougaloo College, Mississippie, USA from 1974 to 1975. From 1975 to 1980 he studied Economic Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany. He earned his Doctorate, which was on the social costs of energy use, in 1989 externally with Professor Hickel at the University of Bremen. From 1980 to 1982 he worked at the University of Oldenburg on the determinants of household energy use. From October 1982 to the end of 1993 he worked with different scientific focus areas at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Karlsruhe. From 1987 to 1992 Professor Hohmeyer held the position of Deputy Head of Department and was involved in the establishment of the Department of Technical Change at the ISI. From 1992 to 1993 he was the Deputy Head of Department for the Department of Energy and Environment for ISI and responsible for the coordination of economic research in this field. From 1994 to June 1998 Professor Hohmeyer was working as the Head of Research for the Department of Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management at the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim.

Since July 1998 Professor Hohmeyer holds the professorship for Energy and Resource Economics at the University of Flensburg. For his research work Professor Hohmeyer received many scientific awards, which also led to his inclusion in the Who’s Who in the World and the Who’s Who in Science and Engineering. Since 1996 Professor Hohmeyer is Lead Author, Review Editor and serves as Vice Chair for the Working group III of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during the course of this period in 2007. Currently Professor Hohmeyer coordinates the preparations for the new IPCC Special Report about the possibilities of using renewable Energy sources for the mitigation of climate change. Since July 2008 Professor Hohmeyer is a member of the German Advisory Council on the Environment.