Just a year or two ago, LichtBlick, a Hamburg based supplier of environmentally friendly sources of electricity, was seen as a niche player in the energy sector, hardly known to the country’s conventional energy suppliers. Recently, however, representatives from large power groups such as E.On, RWE and EnBW have been flocking the company’s headquarters to see what the future holds for the power industry. LichtBlick CEO Heiko von Tschischwitz is convinced that in just a few years’ time the conventional energy market will have ceased to exist in its current form. Since the German Federal Government adopted its new non-nuclear energy policy, under which solar and wind power is being pushed into the market, the conventional energy suppliers’ business model has been faltering. Many power stations are now operating at below capacity utilisation and must be taken off line. At the same time, a growing volume of power is being produced on a decentralised basis […]