PHOTON International - The Photovoltaic Magazine

On Dec. 4, the NGO Eurosolar and the German Development Bank (KfW) awarded the 2002 European Solar Prizes in 11 categories. KfW board member Detlef Leinberger and Eurosolar president Hermann Scheer presented the awards, which are honorary rather than financial.

	© Oliver Klempert
Hermann Scheer, Eurosolar president congratulates the architect Rolf Disch for winning the 2002 Eurosolar Prize in the category Personal Commitment.

The Industrial and Commercial Company award went to Frank Asbeck, founder and board spokesman of SolarWorld AG in Bonn, Germany, as an innovative entrepreneur in the area of PV. A special award for Personal Commitment was won by architect Rolf Disch, for his devotion to solar home architecture, and Prof. Bent Sørensen of Denmark, who has supported renewable energy for the past 30 years after working as a nuclear physicist. Richard King of the USA received an award for Special Non-European Activities, for the self-sustaining solar village in the government district of Washington, DC (see PI 12/2002, p. 24).

Other prizes awarded were: in the category of Cities and Municipalities, to the Samsø Renewable Energy Island (Denmark) and the nuclear-free municipality Windhaag (Austria); in the category of Owners/Users of Renewable Energy Installations, to the Institute for Marketing and Trend Analysis (Austria) for their plus-energy office building; in the category of Local and Regional Associations, the Energy Agency of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia for their public relations work on behalf of renewable energies; and in the Solar Construction category, to the Beddington Zero Energy Development Project (UK) and the architecture office of Beat Kämpfen (Switzerland) for designing the »Sunny Woods« six-family house.

Eurosolar, headquartered in Bonn, was founded in 1988 as a nonprofit European association for solar energy and works independently of political parties, institutions, commercial enterprises, and interest groups. Its European Solar Prize has been presented in nine categories since 1994.