On Saturday, 4 November 2023, the ‘Night that creates knowledge’ took place at Leibniz University from 18:00 to 24:00. There was a very interesting programme in Herrenhäuser Straße 2A.
The programme started at 18:15 with a panel discussion on ‘Renewable energies - wind power, solar and co: participation and profit for all? The panel consisted of Ms Julia Zilles, scientific coordinator of the social sciences research line at the Energy Research Centre of Lower Saxony (EFZN) in Göttingen, Mr Werner Backeberg, former mayor of Uetze and member of the regional assembly of the Hanover region, and Mr Lothar Schulze, Head of Policy at juwi GmbH in Hanover and founding member of Windwärts. Thus, the municipal level, a project developer and the scientific community were represented. The event was moderated by Prof Dr Rainer Danielzyk. It was an exciting discussion on the participation of the affected communities and the population in the profits from renewable energy generation, which could have lasted even longer.
This was followed at 19:15 by an experiment by Prof Dr Ann-Kathrin Koessler's working group entitled ‘Collective action for a better (environment) world - What's so difficult?’. This interactive hands-on activity with the support of Dr Adrian Vargas Lopez experimentally demonstrated the challenges and behavioural strategies involved in dealing with common goods. Areas of application were then identified and possible solutions discussed.
The events in the Kika lecture theatre concluded at 22:15 with a presentation on the ‘Centres of the Balkans - Centres of the Future?’ The examples of Thessaloniki and Skopje were presented by Dr Falco Knaps, Dr Nora Mehnen, Jonas Lamberg and Prof Dr Rainer Danielzyk. This lecture was well attended even at this late hour.
Two interactive events organised by Prof. Dr Christina von Haaren's working group also took place throughout the evening: ‘The Sound of Nature - an acoustic journey through nature’ and ‘Vision:En 2040 - your ideas, your energy transition’. At the first event, visitors were able to experience various sounds of nature - especially bird calls. Later, they were able to find out whether the ‘visual environments’ (landscapes) in combination with different ‘soundscapes’ lead to different experiences. Under the guidance of Zhu Chen, Manuel Beißler and Xuan Guo, the participants shared their impressions, ideas and opinions in a survey. At ‘Vision:En 2040’, visitors were able to simulate the expansion of renewable energies up to the year 2040 on an A3 touch monitor. Under the guidance of Malte Viergutz, interested parties were able to plan and discuss the energy landscape of the future for their home communities in the Hannover Region. All in all, it was a very interesting evening with great interest in the events.
