Philipp Trotter wins ERC Starting Grant for IntegrateEnergy

07.10.2025|09:09 Uhr

As part of his Starting Grant, Philipp Trotter is developing a completely new approach to increase the effectiveness of energy programmes in Africa: the "IntegrateEnergy" project is developing a paradigm shift away from electricity access in isolation - i.e. the mere provision of electricity connections - towards the integration of energy supply into existing value chains. The integration of important key sectors such as agriculture, health, education and small businesses should enable a more efficient use of resources and lower losses in production and supply chains.

Over 570 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity. "Programmes from large donors such as the European Union, the World Bank and the African Development Bank invest billions in electricity connections, often without ensuring that the electricity is used specifically for productive and socially important applications. As a result, many systems remain underutilised, fail early or have a suboptimal impact on development work," reports Trotter. With his project, he wants to show how cross-sector synergies can be realistically and sustainably created on site.

Philipp and his team are focussing on local stakeholders from Uganda: using so-called co-production approaches, the acceptance, needs and requirements of integrative energy systems in various specific local contexts in Uganda are being researched in close cooperation with Ugandan stakeholders. "The findings are then translated into interactive, multi-criteria optimisation models to ensure the resource efficiency of the corresponding system designs," says Trotter, explaining the approach.  Another objective is to identify political and institutional frameworks that enable and promote cross-sectoral cooperation. In order to identify barriers to implementation and strengthen cooperation between the energy, agriculture, health and education sectors, the researchers are conducting accompanying analyses, among other things.

IntegrateEnergy will also design innovative business and financing models in which revenues from profitable energy applications co-finance social and community-orientated projects.

"We expect the project to provide impetus for a reorientation of international energy programmes and UN Sustainable Development Goal 7 - away from pure energy access and towards energy for sustainable development."