WS25/26

Course Aims:

Students can describe, analyze, and evaluate the role of developing and emerging countries in global energy systems as well as their local and regional challenges, peculiarities, and opportunities. You can explain and apply energy-related macroscopic concepts such as economic development and path dependency. Students understand macroscopic concepts as well as political programs and efforts related to energy in developing and emerging countries and can contextually classify and evaluate measures and developments, especially against the background of the term energy poverty and its characteristics. Students are familiar with various off-grid technologies and can choose between them, including the use of suitable methods of integrative planning. Finally, students can act better in group projects, understand the process of development cooperation and can understand and design central elements in it, and are aware of their responsibility for global as well as local sustainable development.

Course Content:

Global energy (long-term scenarios, determinants of the world energy system, energy in developing and emerging economies); Sustainable development (SDGs, growth and development theory, Hartwick rule, resource dependency, and diversification, case studies); Energy poverty and access (definition, empirical data, generation and consumption patterns of low-income households, subsidies for fossil fuels and reforms, the role of energy efficiency, case studies); Rural electrification and off-grid technologies (off-grid technologies, computer-assisted planning of off-grids including the basics of mixed-integer optimization, economics, and management in off-grids, the practice of development cooperation); Project phase (e.g. off-grid design, development cooperation, business case).

Course Aims:

The overall qualification goal of the module is to enable the students to plan, implement, and successfully complete projects economically, efficiently, and according to modern agile and classic management methods. They understand the project or product life cycle and, based on the mediating classic and agile project and product management methodology, they can create, analyze, interpret and evaluate individual essential building blocks of project management and apply them future-oriented. They will learn about challenges in ensuring quality (quality management), opportunities, and threats in development and implementation (risk management), and the principles of identifying user needs (requirements management). Furthermore, the students learn the roles, tasks, and processes in modern project management, as well as the special features and challenges in stakeholder management, and can implement this in the future in a communication and information management strategy. Also, the students are aware of the similarities and differences between individual and multi-project / project portfolio management.

Course Content:

At the end of the course, the students can act in the mediated roles in agile and classic projects, understand the essential project management processes, can generate central management documents themselves, and can apply and further deepen the methodology in future projects.

This module is an introduction to business studies. It covers the most important principles of business studies taking into account social responsibility and sustainable development. The module engages with the latest research and encourages a critical and reflective approach in providing a foundation in business studies for subsequent modules. Students will be able to define the main features of business studies, apply problem-solving skills to case studies using different fields of knowledge and present options for optimizing the energy sector.