Committee

Oeko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology) is a registered non-profit association. The General Assembly is the Institute’s key decision-making body. It comprises all active members, whereby staff automatically receive the status of an active member. The General Assembly elects the seven external members of the Committee on an honorary basis by secret ballot, for a term of two years. The following also have voting rights on the Committee in addition to the Committee members: A representative of the coordination team, the CEO, and one staff representative from each of the institute’s three offices – Freiburg, Darmstadt and Berlin.

The Committee appoints the CEO and the Members of the Executive Board, the divisional heads and the chair of the Committee. The Committee heads the association, transferring tasks to the Executive Board and the coordination team.

The current members of the Committee are

Dr. Barbara Praetorius
First Chair of the Committee
works for the German Association of Local Utilities (Verband kommunaler Unternehmen, VKU), where she is responsible for the Strategy & Energy Sector Policy Division. An economist and political scientist, she previously spent many years working in climate and energy research and in policy consulting at the German Institute for Economic Research (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, DIW). Dr. Praetorius undertakes regular adjunct lecturing at Freie Universität Berlin and at Humboldt University, Berlin. She became a member of the Oeko-Institut Committee in June 2009.

Dorothea Michaelsen-Friedlieb
Second Chair of the Committee
works as a business consultant for non-profit organizations and has been a member of the Committee since 1996. She has a particular commitment to personnel issues, and is the Committee’s women’s officer.

Stefan Alt
is a member of the Committee as staff representative of the Darmstadt office. He is a scientist working in the Nuclear Engineering & Plant Safety Division.

Dr. Hannah Förster
is the staff representative of the Berlin office, where she works in the Energy and Climate Division.

Rita Kappeler-Keller
is member of the Committee as staff representative of the Freiburg Head Office. She is working in the Accounting Department.

Anton Lutz
joined Oeko-Institut Committee in 2011. He is co-director of KWA Contracting AG in Bietigheim-Bissingen (Baden-Wuerttemberg). KWA is an energy contracting agency which finances, builds and operates eco-friendly power plants. Prior to KWA Anton Lutz worked for the Energy Agency for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg (Klimaschutz- und Energieagentur Baden-Württemberg), as CEO for the Energy Agency for Sachsen-Anhalt (Energieagentur Sachsen-Anhalt), and at the University of Stuttgart where he was engaged in solar heating research.

Thomas Rahner
became a member of Oeko-Institut Committee in 2011. Rahner is a lawyer specialised in administrative law, who focuses most notably on environmental, building, planning and municipal law. From 1994 to 2005 he was mayor of Biebesheim in southern Hesse. He has also gathered many years of experience in committees, having previously served, for example, on the committee of a waste management company and on the supervisory board of a housing construction cooperative.

Michael Sailer
is CEO of the Oeko-Institut. His main fields of work include reactor safety and waste management. A chemical engineer, he is a member of several commissions and committees, including (since 1999) the German Environment Ministry's Reactor Safety Commission, (since 2005) the Euratom Scientific and Technical Committee and (since June 2008) the newly established Nuclear Waste Management Commission.

Nadia vom Scheidt
has been working for over ten years at national, European and international level in public administration, with a particular interest in the issues surrounding the information society, good governance, and civil protection. With a degree in history, political sciences and public law, Nadia vom Scheidt is also qualified as a mediator.  She became a member of the Oeko-Institut Committee in June 2009.

Ulrike Schell
has been working at the Consumer Association of North Rhine-Westphalia (Verbraucherzentrale NRW) since the mid-1980s. She is currently head of its Food and Environment Division and is responsible, amongst other things, for the planning and implementation of environmental and climate protection and resource conservation projects. As a member of the advisory committee for the "Social-ecological research" programme at the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), her focus is most notably on research projects relating to sustainability and consumption.

Ulrike Schell was previously a member of Oeko-Institut Committee from 1986 to 1990 and re-joined it in 2011.

Kathleen Spilok
is a freelance science journalist covering environment and energy. She further works as project coordinator for the environment and technology division of the Baden-Württemberg Chamber of Crafts. A chemical engineer, she previously worked as technical assistant at the German Federal Environment Agency UBA, where, among other things, she contributed to the Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag on the "Protection of Humanity and the Environment" and headed a range of projects. She became a member of the Oeko-Institut Committee in April 2010.

Christof Timpe
represents since 2009 the management team on the Committee. He is Head of the Energy & Climate Division.