2023-07-28 13:06:13
Kai Schiefelbein didn’t have too much choice when he was young, had left university behind and wanted to convert his scientific enthusiasm into a job. Maybe two or three companies in Germany were suitable for him, he says. Those who, like him, believed in the heat pump, in its potential and its superiority over other heating systems when it comes to efficiency and environmental friendliness. It was a niche back then. Nerds hung around here, and the heat pump was not yet a buzzword as it is in many places today, but an enticing, technologically convincing alternative to heating with gas or oil. Schiefelbein, an engineer through and through, was always convinced of her.
The wiry man in his mid-fifties, born in 1967, is now sitting in one of the most exposed positions in Germany when it comes to heat pumps. He is Managing Director of Stiebel Eltron – the company he decided to join in 1997 after studying mechanical engineering in Essen. At just 29 years old. It was one of the few addresses at the time where the heat pump was taken seriously. That’s why Schiefelbein wanted to go there. In Holzminden, at the company’s headquarters in southern Lower Saxony, he explains that he’s basically done everything for his employer: research, sales, the renovation of a plant in Slovakia. Among other things.
#life #heat #pump