Game Changers 2023: Empowering Students for the Energy Transition

The Chilean-German collaboration programme Game Changers 2023 is designed and aims to empower university students to develop solutions to current energy issues. The goal in this alignment is to foster active agents of change who are capable of creating new business models related to the energy transition.

Through a programme that includes classes, guided technical visits and incorporation into business networks, as well as student exchanges between the University of Concepción in Chile and the Technical University Deggendorf in Germany, the initiative seeks to promote synergies between students from both countries so that together they can find solutions to local and global problems and needs.

According to Rodrigo Fortune, Project Manager for Energy and Mining Projects at AHK Chile, Game Changers aims to provide them with the necessary tools to develop the entrepreneurship "mindset". "The objective is to help them generate essential links and networks so that they are able to identify opportunities and problems, but also provide sustainable solutions. In that sense, our focus is on promoting a direct relationship between Chilean students and German companies interested in opening thesis opportunities or internship positions for them", he explained.

The first milestone of this second edition took place in May, when German students from the Technical University of Deggendorf travelled to Chile to exchange experiences and form working teams with students from the University of Concepción, developing proposals for innovation projects based on different challenges of Chilean startups in the energy sector, to be presented later in Germany.

In this second stage, the Chilean students travelled in the last week of September to the city of Deggendorf, in the region of Bavaria, to continue sharing knowledge about the energy transition.

"One of the fundamental aspects of the project is the comparative gap in the energy sector that exists between Chile and Germany. And although our country has shown remarkable progress in recent years, there is still a high drop-out rate among energy start-ups, either due to lack of funding, networks or technology. In this context, the need to accompany students to empower them and turn them into key actors in the development of the energy transition is evident," explains Rodrigo Fortune..