Adrian Odenweller

Doctoral Researcher
Odenweller

Adrian Odenweller is a doctoral researcher in the Energy Transition Lab led by Prof. Dr. Gunnar Luderer at the Research Department 3 Transformation Pathways of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Within the Energy Transition Lab, he is part of the team on hydrogen, electrification and industry transformation, led by Dr. Falko Ueckerdt. His PhD addresses the role of sector coupling for the energy transition, including both direct and indirect electrification. Recently, Adrian focused on green hydrogen and hydrogen-based synthetic fuels (e-fuels), specifically regarding the market diffusion of electrolysers and techno-economic analyses of the green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap (see list of publications below). Furthermore, Adrian leads the development of the model coupling between PIK's energy-economy-climate model REMIND and the highly detailed power system model PyPSA-Eur.

Adrian has been a member of the Kopernikus Project Ariadne since 2020. From 2020 to 2023 Adrian received a PhD scholarship from the German Federal Environmental Foundation within the interdisciplinary programme "Environmental-social questions of the energy transition". In November and December 2022 he was a visiting researcher at Melbourne Climate Futures, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Adrian has a background in Physics (B.Sc.), Economics (B.Sc.) and Climate Sciences (M.Sc.). Before joining PIK he was a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (2018-2020), a visiting researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), University of Cambridge (2018-2019) and a trainee at the European Central Bank, DG Statistics (2017). Previously, Adrian was also a guest researcher in the research group CoSy-CC2 at PIK's Research Department 4 Complexity Science, supervised by Prof. Dr. Reik Donner (2016-2017).

Adrian is on Bluesky, LinkedIn and Mastodon.

    New highlight (January 2025)

    In a new Article and Policy Brief in Nature Energy, we define and quantify three key gaps of green hydrogen. We find that hydrogen has fallen dramatically short of expectations and will continue to face challenges due a lack of competitiveness. We therefore recommend a robust political strategy that supports green hydrogen, but is based on realistic expectations about its cost and availability.

    nature_energy_paper_policy_brief.png

    Department

    Transformation Pathways

    Lab

    Energy Transition

    Contact

    Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
    adrian.odenweller[at]pik-potsdam.de
    P.O. Box 60 12 03
    14412 Potsdam

    ORCID

    orcid.org/0000-0002-1123-8124

    • Since 09/2020: Doctoral researcher, RD3, PIK, Germany.
    • 11/2022 - 12/2022: Visiting researcher, Melbourne Climate Futures, University of Melbourne, Australia.
    • 06/2020 - 07/2020: Research Associate, Research Unit Sustainability & Global Change (FNU), University of Hamburg, Germany.
    • 10/2017 - 04/2020: M.Sc. Integrated Climate System Sciences, Cluster of Excellence CLICCS, University of Hamburg, Germany.
    • 01/2018 - 03/2020: Research assistant, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Department: The Land in the Earth System, Global Vegetation Modelling Group, Hamburg, Germany.
    • 10/2018-01/2019: Visiting researcher, Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG), University of Cambridge, UK.
    • 2017: Trainee, Macroeconomic Statistics Division, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany.
    • 2012 - 2017: B.Sc. Physics, University of Cologne, Germany. Thesis written at PIK.
    • 2012 - 2016: B.Sc. Economics, University of Cologne, Germany.
    • 2014: Semester abroad, Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary.
    • 2011 - 2012: Enrolled in MEng Civil Engineering, University College London (UCL), UK.

    Also see Google Scholar and ResearchGate.

    Work in progress / under review

    • F. Schreyer, F. Ueckerdt, R. Pietzcker, A. Odenweller, A. Merfort, R. Rodrigues, J. Strefler, F. Lécuyer, G. Luderer (in review): From net-zero to zero-fossil in transforming the EU energy system. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5579966/v1
    • T. Zurbriggen, N. Brazzola, A. Odenweller, F. Ueckerdt, J. Rogelj (in preparation): Assessing the Feasibility of Economy-Scale Direct Air Capture Deployment by 2050
    • A. Odenweller et al. (in preparation): REMIND-PyPSA-Eur: Bi-directional coupling of an integrated assessment model and an hourly power system model

    Journal articles

    • A. Odenweller, F. Ueckerdt (2025): The green hydrogen ambition and implementation gap. Nature Energy, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01684-7.
    • A. Odenweller, F. Ueckerdt (2025): An adjusted strategy is needed to ground green hydrogen expectations in reality. Policy Brief. Nature Energy, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01682-9.
    • J. Biehl et al. (incl. A. Odenweller) (2023): Wicked facets of the German energy transition – examples from the electricity, heating, transport, and industry sectors. International Journal of Sustainable Energy, https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2023.2244602
    • C. Gong, F. Ueckerdt, R. Pietzcker, A. Odenweller, W.-P. Schill, M. Kittel, G. Luderer (2023): Bidirectional coupling of the long-term integrated assessment model REgional Model of INvestments and Development (REMIND) v3.0.0 with the hourly power sector model Dispatch and Investment Evaluation Tool with Endogenous Renewables (DIETER) v1.0.2. Geoscientific Model Development, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-4977-2023
    • A. Odenweller, F. Ueckerdt, G. F. Nemet, M. Jensterle, G. Luderer (2022): Probabilistic feasibility space of scaling up green hydrogen supply. Nature Energy, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01097-4
    • A. Odenweller (2022): Climate mitigation under S-shaped energy technology diffusion: Leveraging synergies of optimisation and simulation models. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 178, 121568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121568
    • L. Baumstark et al. (incl. A. Odenweller) (2021): REMIND2.1: transformation and innovation dynamics of the energy-economic system within climate and sustainability limits. Geoscientific Model Development, 14, 6571–6603. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-6571-2021
    • A. Odenweller & R. V. Donner (2020): Disentangling synchrony from serial dependency in paired-event time series. Physical Review E, 101(5), 052213. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.052213

    Project papers and reports

    Op-Eds and interviews:

    News coverage:

    GermanyMitigationEnergyEuropeGlobalDecarbonization1.5/2°C limitRD3 - Transformation PathwaysPolicy adviceQuantitative MethodsREMIND
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