Nationwide, funds of about 846,000,000 euros are used for energy research at research organizations, and universities use funds of up to 672,000,000 euros. Baden-Württemberg accounts for the lion’s share of the total budget of the research organizations, at around 32 percent.

This is the result of the data deposited in the “Map of Energy Research”, which was created by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the cooperation of the Karlsruhe-based PRODATA Datenbanken und Informationssysteme GmbH. The map, which is intended to create transparency about energy research in Germany, provides an overview of invested budget and the number of employees working on the topic for each individual federal state and can also be read for regions or individual cities.

With the help of the “Map of Energy Research”, citizens can now obtain transparent information about the monetary and human resources invested in energy research. Not only research societies but also higher education institutions (universities and universities of applied sciences) are highlighted. For example, it shows that about 32 percent of the energy research funds used by research companies nationwide are allocated to Baden-Württemberg, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria.

The topics here range from the provision of energy, for example, to the production of energy. solar or bioenergy to energy distribution and storage to the efficient use of energy or other sub-areas such as systems research and education and training. The “Map of Energy Research” was presented for the first time by Federal Minister Prof. Dr. Johanna Wanka at a press conference on March 4, 2013.

“The energy transition is one of the great challenges of our time, which can only be mastered through the cooperation of society, business, science and politics,” says Thorsten Heftrich, managing partner of PRODATA GmbH. “We are pleased to be able to support the federal government in this endeavor and create transparency by providing complete data collection services as well as the technical setup of the map.”

For the project, PRODATA not only surveyed research institutions and universities about the funding they had received, but also developed a software solution that visualizes the collected data in the form of maps, diagrams or lists of results. These can also be exported as a PDF. In this way, citizens as well as politicians or those directly involved in research are able to select and display granular results according to federal states, towns and surrounding areas, topics and keywords.

The data collected and made available online draw on self-reported data from the research organizations and universities surveyed in 2010 and 2011. An update of the data is planned.