Vanessa, Maren, Jan and Lukas are trainees at häwa. In administration, in production, in the warehouse - and they are looking forward to gaining an insight into all areas of the company over the course of the three years. But energy management? "Somehow we didn't have that on our radar," says Maren, "we pressed the button and the light went on."

But for an electricity-intensive company like the switch cabinet manufacturer häwa, every kilowatt hour counts. Solar panels have been installed on the roofs for years, producing around one million kilowatt hours of electricity a year - as much as 400 single-family homes. They already have an impressive record, "but we thought there was still room for improvement," says Jan.

And so they formed the häwa energy scout team, held two workshops on climate change, greenhouse gases and raw material reserves within six months, and came to the conclusion that the old neon tubes in the punching hall, press brake hall and training workshop should first be replaced with LEDs. To do this, they counted the lamps, drew them on the floor plans of the halls and measured the light intensity, efficiency and energy consumption.

At the häwa site in Bad Wörishofen, which has already switched to LED, thermal imaging cameras were used to document how much heat a neon tube generates compared to an LED. "We got to the bottom of the issue," says Lukas, "because that's the only way to understand the connections." The four trainees can now present the results at the IHK in Ulm.

"I am delighted that we are training such committed young people," says Dr. Georg Härdtle, member of the häwa Management Board and responsible for energy management. "This is also because we have more and more customers who are specifically asking about the carbon footprint of a company or a specific product, for example. The purchase decision often depends on this."

Many other measures from the Energy Scout project are currently being implemented or will be in the coming months. For example, presence detectors for lighting control, linking ventilation systems to light switches and, above all, further sensitizing employees. One of the common goals could be, for example, to produce switch cabinets using 100 percent green electricity. "We still need around 300,000 kilowatt hours a year to achieve this," says Dr. Härdtle, "and we could do that with 3,000 more square meters of solar panels." Would? "We can do it in the medium term, I'm convinced of that." as