Award presented to climate researcher and rust protection company
Zinc and rust, heat and soil: the German Environmental Award is presented in recognition of research and pioneering work in these areas.
Osnabrück (dpa/d.de) – Award for innovative climate research: the German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, DBU) presents this year's German Environmental Award in recognition of new findings on the Earth's climate system and a low-resource galvanising process.
The award is presented to the Swiss climate researcher Sonia Isabelle Seneviratne, as well as to Lars Baumgürtel and Birgitt Bendiek as the management team of the steel galvanising company Zinq from Gelsenkirchen.
The winners are sharing the award that is worth a total of 500,000 euros and will be presented by the German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Chemnitz on 26 October.
As a climate researcher, Ms Seneviratne explores the ways in which soil humidity, plants and the atmosphere interact. "We know, for example, that evaporation, which on average returns two thirds of all precipitation on continents to the atmosphere, plays an important role in the event of drought and that soil humidity is one of the key variables of the climate system," said DBU Secretary General Alexander Bonde.
The DBU reports that the Zinq company has developed a galvanisation process (microZINQ) that prevents rust damage, and has had the process patented.