“I would love for more U.S. companies in the CCU, hydrogen or biomethane field to connect with European companies. I am very open to talking about joint projects in these sectors.” ~Dr. Stefanie Kesting , Division Director and Speaker of the Board of Energy Solutions at NEUMAN & ESSER (NEA) GROUP; Managing Director of Arcanum Energy Systems GmbH & Co. KG and of NEA GREEN GmbH & Co. KG, both part of NEA GROUP
As a recognized energy economist, Dr. Stefanie Kesting manages companies for hydrogen and biomethane solutions. Related to CCU, Stefanie has been the Founding President and Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of CO2 Value Europe since 2017, and she is still a Board Member until today.
Her previous roles include Group Innovation Director of Uniper SE, Manager at E.ON Connecting Energies and Global Director for Sustainable Solutions at DNV KEMA, as well as positions at E.ON SE, E.ON Ruhrgas AG and the Energy Institutes of Cologne and Bremen University in Germany.
How do you do all the things that you do? Do you sleep? Are you phenomenally well organized?
Haha – I hear this question very often, but it is not magic. Quite the opposite has been always true for me: enough sleep is key for having a high energy level. Also, good organization and planning helps, as does delegation and fostering effective teamwork. These strategies enable me to focus on the tasks for which I am primarily responsible and that I want to bring to successes. I also only commit to additional or voluntary positions that somehow fit my schedule, and ideally are even synergistic with my main jobs.
Last but not least, I learned – mainly during my time in the Netherlands – that breaks from time to time are as important as reaching goals. This recharges your batteries and ensures that you keep reaching goals, with fun and satisfaction, and in a sustainable way for yourself as well.
What is the very simplified explanation of what you do?
I am responsible for the structuring and implementation of new, green business lines into an almost 200 years old international, family-owned machine construction business. In my day-to- day life, I therefore very practically lead and drive a business transition from a fossil world toward CO2-free energy solutions.
Today, I am responsible for the scale-up of biomethane and hydrogen solutions, both technologies and energy carriers that are well-suited to replace fossil oil and gas. This includes a lot of teamwork on different levels: in parallel, the economic business cases must be developed, while still the products are being standardized on a technical level, to make them ready for scale-up in our production. In addition, our existing international sales teams need a lot of support and training: to sell new products and services globally, everything starts with an excellent understanding of the new products in our own offices. This sometimes goes very fast and easily, and sometimes, however, it takes a lot of convincing and finding compromises, for example when the market in a certain country is still not very well developed, or the office is already overloaded with a lot of other tasks.
As a nice synergetic balance to these daily challenges, I am also active in additional green technology fields, including first and foremost, the utilization of CO2 in manufacturing chemicals, building materials or alternative fuels. As a Supervisory Board member, I also support other companies that want to scale up their clean energy solutions.
My responsibilities and projects take me pretty much all over the world, so I meanwhile spend a lot of time traveling again, although this also produces some CO2 unfortunately.