In total, 233 nominations from 20 countries of the world were submitted in 2020, and the number of unique applications for nominees was 78. In 2019, 39 unique applications were submitted from 12 countries.

The shortlist of applicants was composed based on international expertise. Since 2019, the Prize has been awarded in three nominations: Conventional Energy, Non-Conventional Energy, and New Ways of Energy Application. Five applicants from each category made it to the shortlist.

This time, the number of nominations was almost equal: Non-Conventional Energy – 29, Conventional Energy – 27, New Ways of Energy Application – 22. 

The shortlist for the Global Energy Prize 2020 looks like this:

Conventional Energy Nomination:

Richard J. Goldstein (USA) – “Heat power engineering. For major advances in optical measurement systems for fluid velocity and temperature, development of cooling designs widely used in high performance gas turbines, novel and important measurements in thermal convection, and major leadership roles in the engineering community”

Demin Wang (China) – “Exploration, production, transportation and processing of energy resources. For inventing a set of world-leading layered mining and testing technologies, represented by ‘Songliao method’, ‘eccentric water distribution, production distribution process’ and “current limiting fracturing process””

Carlo Rubbia (Italy) – “Nuclear energy. For the general commitment in the field of energy to achieve a better world sustainability”

Zhao Yang Dong (Australia) – “Electric power industry. For outstanding and sustained contribution in operation, control and cybersecurity of smart grid”

Jinliang He (China) – “Electric power industry. For fundamental research and development of advanced electric power transmission technologies”

Non-Conventional Energy Nomination:

Peidong Yang (USA) – “Renewable energy. For pioneering semiconductor bio-hybrid systems for artificial photosynthesis”

Adolf Goetzberger (Germany) – “Renewable energy. For lifetime achievement as a pioneer in renewable energy and founder of the largest European Solar Energy Research Institute”

Jay Keasling (USA) – “Bioenergetics. For developing a simple and much less expensive microbial-based synthesis to be used in developing countries”

Piotr Zelenay (USA) – “Fuel cells and hydrogen energy. For pioneering contributions to fundamental research, technology development and commercial production of fuel cell catalysts and devices”

Masahiro Watanabe (Japan) – “Fuel cells and hydrogen energy. For proposing several novel concepts in bimetallic alloy catalysts, which are now being used in commercialised co-generation systems and fuel cell vehicles”

New Ways of Energy Application Nomination:

Eli Yablonovitch (USA) – “Efficient energy use. For his fundamental contributions in the fields of photovoltaics, semiconductor lasers, and photonics, and their translation in technologies for more efficient solar energy exploitation and telecommunications”

Nikolaos Hatziargyriou (Greece) – “Efficient energy use. For outstanding and sustained contribution in operation and control of microgrids”

Xinghuo Yu (Australia) – “Efficient energy use. For outstanding and demonstrated contribution in new ways of energy application in cyber-physical environments”

Andrew Bruce Holmes (Australia) – “New materials used in modern energy engineering. For leadership in the field of organic electronic materials synthesis and device applications for energy efficient organic and polymer light emitting diodes and thin film solar cells”

Henrik Lund (Denmark) – “Efficient energy use. For creating the advanced energy system analysis software EnergyPLAN, which is a freeware used worldwide that have form the basis of more than 100 peer reviewed journal papers around the world.”

Мedia contact information:
Anna Butkovskaya
butkovskaya@ge-prize.org