What is it about?
Does it take a lot of energy to live a fulfilled life? If so, who will do without it in the future? What are the accepted consequences of the energy transition and how do we deal with them (ethically)?
These questions were addressed by a group of technical and commercial students from Siemens Energy last Tuesday in our WvSC educational program on technology ethics.
In the context of a wide-ranging topic impulse by Steffen Höllein, the students did some real pioneering work and developed three supporting principles and the ten commandments of energy ethics in small groups.
The students were able to deepen their thoughts on this in the second part of the day in an ELSI workshop with Hannes Hölzl and Lina Figueiredo from YOUSE GmbH. Using the example of the wind turbine, ethical, legal and social challenges under aspects of participation, justice, safety, transparency and other aspects were worked out, evaluated with regard to their questionability and concretized.
➡️Das Result
The students
– now have a scientific method at hand to specifically evaluate ethical issues surrounding a product
– are sensitized to the fact that it is important to think about people in a user-centered way during product development, and
– are proud of the principles and ten commandments of energy ethics they have developed.
We would like to thank the students for their openness and stamina (dealing with ethical issues all day can be very exhausting 🤯) and hope to have given them a few valuable things for their future.
