Julian Balkowski is a researcher at the Borderstep Institute. He is an industrial engineer as well as a project manager for renewable energies and energy efficiency for residential and non-residential buildings. His scientific interests include the climate and environmentally relevant effects of modern digitization technologies in the context of the energy industry as well as the sustainable transformation of the ICT sector.

At the Borderstep Institute, he supports projects in the research area of digitisation and green IT. The focus is on topics such as the energy efficiency of data centers and digital technologies for the heat transition.

Among other things, he is investigating scenarios and proposed solutions for the future telecommunications structure in the CO 2030 project. With growing data traffic and power consumption, this should ensure secure operation of networks under changing climate conditions and contribute to a more flexible energy system.

Julian worked as a consultant for the BMWK in the Export Initiative Energy. Through the East Asian Association in Hamburg, he represented the initiative in the South and East Asian region. He also worked as a sales and project manager in the field of software development in Hamburg. Here he learned how the digital economy brings together and promotes sustainability and digitalization of industry, energy and logistics.

As Co-Speaker for Sustainability & Digitalization of the German Association of IT SMEs (BITMi e.V.), Julian Balkowski is committed to knowledge generation and transfer on the sustainability transformation of ICT SMEs.

The topic of sustainability has occupied Julian since his student days. After his bachelor’s degree in International Business Administration at the Viadrina, he completed a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Management with a focus on renewable energies at the Hochschule Mannheim, participated in international events such as the Youth Future Conference of the Right Livelihood Foundation, and worked in initial research groups.

Fascinated by languages and different cultures, Julian is often drawn to foreign countries. He studied International Business at the Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul as a PROMOS scholarship holder from 2012 to 2013.