2011/2012 Fellow | BSW-Solar (Germany Solar Industry Association) | Berlin
My BUKA fellowship was life-changing for me, and it has paid dividends beyond my own personal experience too. During my 2011-2012 fellowship hosted by BSW-Solar (the German Solar Industry Association), I had the honor of presenting on my work at the international Greenbuild conference, put on by the US Green Building Council, as well as at the EU-wide PVSEC conference on solar energy (for which I also had a paper published). I further presented to staff at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany and at the California Public Utilities Commission, and collaborated with Deutsche Bank on a report.
I also had two follow-on fellowships. The first, in 2016, was hosted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. My coauthors and I issued a joint report, Transportation Electrification Policy in California and Germany: https://joannagubman.com/2016EVStudy.pdf. The second, in 2019, was hosted by Agora Verkehrswende. My coauthors and I issued the first comprehensive German-language study of e-scooter sustainability, urban impacts, and policy best practices: https://www.agora-verkehrswende.de/veroeffentlichungen/e-tretroller-im-stadtverkehr/ (German) and https://www.agora-verkehrswende.de/en/publications/shared-e-scooters-paving-the-road-ahead/ (English). Both reports have since been used by industry and researchers worldwide.
Other collaborations included hosting a high-level delegation of Baden-Württemberg’s environmental/political leaders at my employer, the California Public Utilities Commission, for a presentation as part of the 2018 Global Climate Action Summit. I also regularly facilitate transatlantic connections in the field of sustainability, whether for visiting German professionals or for fellow Californians who move to Germany. With California and Germany geographically so far apart, there are few transatlantic connections despite numerous formal partnerships. My presence as a bridge supports dozens of others in information exchange and spreading of best practices, and this is something that I do entirely voluntarily and on my own time as a result of the experiences and bonds I developed over my three fellowships in Germany. This is surely one of the cheapest and most collaborative forms of diplomacy that exists – so I am deeply disappointed in the claims that there is not enough budget for this program.
