About trenkner consulting

I am 39 years old, married, with one son, all living together in Brussels (Belgium). 

In 2002, I joined the just created Brussels headquarters of the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF) as a project manager. Three years later, I took over the position of Secretary General and managed the office's growth to four full-time staff. I left in July 2009 to set up trenkner consulting and to continue supporting the growth of our industry—just from another angle.

During my time with ESTIF I have gained extensive insight into the solar thermal industry and established a wide contact network. I have seen the strengths of this young and dynamic industry and also some areas where the industry needs to work harder to make solar thermal the No 1 heating technology, which it should be.

From 1998 to 2002 I worked at LBD in Berlin, a management consultancy specialised in the old energy supply industry. I arrived just before the liberalisation of the German gas and electricity market came into force. The energy markets then were not unlike the solar thermal market today: Very dynamic, with several (big) new players but with interesting opportunities for smaller participants. We helped our clients define their role in the market and to take advantage of the new freedom.

A part of my work time is reserved for greenjobs.de, Germany's largest specialised job board for jobs in the environmental field. Together with a close friend, I co-founded this board in 2000. After 10 years as a pure non-profit project we decided in 2011, that we needed to increase the available mainpower to better serve our fast growing customer base. To this end, we set up a company, greenjobs UG (haftungsbeschränkt), which is now led by my friend Jan Strohschein, and which runs greenjobs.de. Furthermore, in March 2011, we opened a sister job board, exclusively for the renewable energy sector: eejobs.de. This project is a co-operation with the German renewables magazine Solarthemen.