Matthias Willenbacher
Matthias Willenbacher (* July 14, 1969 on the Schneebergerhof, community Gerbach ) is a German entrepreneur and pioneer in the field of renewable energy.
Willenbacher studied physics and founded in 1996 with Fred Jung the company juwi.
Together with his partner Willenbacher was honored in 2009 by the business magazine Capital as Greentech Manager of the Year. The consulting firm Ernst & Young awarded him the title Entrepreneur of the Year 2009.
Willenbacher is one of the featured protagonist in the film The 4th Revolution - Energy Autonomy and with his company one of the main financiers of this film.
In June 2013, his book My indecent proposal to the Chancellor, in which he offers to Angela Merkel to give his company shares to 500 community energy co-operatives in Germany, if the German Chancellor in 2020 penetrated a 100-percent, decentralized energy revolution. In the book Willenbacher outlines a relatively detailed master plan on how Germany could be powered 100% by electricity from renewable sources. Key points are an increase in full-load hours of wind and solar power plants as well as a mix of energy sources from 60 % wind, 25 % solar energy, 5% hydro and 10% from cogeneration plants, which are to be operated from sustainable sources.
As a co-editor with Claudia kemfert, Hartmut Grassl, Michael Müller and Gero Lücking Willenbacher writes regularly klimaretter.info a column in the online magazine. He argues, among other things for the true costs of fossil fuels and has the hidden environmental costs down, are not reflected in his view, the production price of electricity generation. It calls for a fuel tax for conventional power plants as an alternative to little effective emissions trading to accelerate the energy transition:
" This conventional power plants would finally properly involved in the costs of the remediation of environmental damage, the safe disposal of radioactive waste and the fight against pollution -related health damage. Then we create using the technology a better world: a world in which the power supply is only clean, in a mix of wind and solar energy, hydropower, bioenergy, geothermal energy. A world in which energy prices are low and remain stable over because wind and solar energy are all free and available indefinitely. "
According to the company Willenbacher is the first European who had a Tesla Roadster.
Publications
- Matthias Willenbacher: My indecent proposal to the Chancellor: Because the energy transition must not fail! . 1st edition. Herder Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3451309267.