Sebastian Kießling
Co-Founder and Co-CEO of pyropower GmbH (Cottbus) and founder of the pyropower group. More than fifteen years of experience in developing industrial energy plants.
15+ years of experience
Sebastian Kießling has been developing and building decentralized energy systems for more than 15 years. His path leads from the externally fired micro gas turbine for industrial waste heat to Pyro-ClinX, the world's first system to combine pyrolysis, power generation and CO₂ storage in a single plant. He is one of the few entrepreneurs in Germany to have taken this technology from the first test rig to industrial series maturity.
Biography
Founding of Euro-K
In 2010, Sebastian founded Euro-K GmbH, a company specializing in the development of micro gas turbine systems.
Building an engineering network
In 2012, the group of companies was founded. From the very beginning, Sebastian Kießling was part of the founding team that developed an externally fired micro gas turbine for the utilization of industrial waste heat: a niche in which hardly any viable solutions existed worldwide at that time.
Berlin Brandenburg Innovation Award
The externally fired micro gas turbine (EFGT) technology received the Berlin Brandenburg Innovation Award for the first time: as a pioneering solution for a decentralized, efficient energy supply. This was the point at which a technical idea became an industrially viable product.
Founding of pyropower GmbH
With the founding of pyropower GmbH as the parent company, Sebastian Kießling and co-founder Lucie Töpfer bundled the group’s know-how. The goal: to combine pyrolysis and decentralized energy generation into one system that lets industry and municipalities start decarbonizing right away.
KfW Award Brandenburg
Under Sebastian Kießling’s leadership, pyropower realizes projects in Brandenburg, Bavaria, Hesse and Switzerland. The ClinX Heat and Pyro-ClinX systems are delivered in container format and run in 24/7 continuous operation. The pyropower group has also been recognized as KfW Award state winner and recipient of the Brandenburg founders’ prize.
Book publication "Innovation trifft Nachhaltigkeit"
Together with Lucie Töpfer, Sebastian Kießling published the book “Innovation trifft Nachhaltigkeit” (Innovation Meets Sustainability) with Haufe Verlag. Using technical fundamentals, case studies and decision models, it shows how companies can evaluate and implement climate technology economically.
VORSPRUNG business award of the Ostdeutsches Wirtschaftsforum
The Ostdeutsches Wirtschaftsforum (East German Economic Forum) honored the two founders of pyropower GmbH, Sebastian Kießling and Lucie Töpfer, with the VORSPRUNG business award, presented at the Federal Ministry of Finance. The jury recognized how the entrepreneurs combine energy security, economic viability and climate protection.
Industrial series maturity and market entry
Under the leadership of Sebastian Kießling and Lucie Töpfer, pyropower GmbH is implementing projects in Brandenburg, Hesse and Switzerland, among other places. The ClinX Heat and Pyro-ClinX systems are the flagship of the pyropower group.
Innovation reicht nicht. Die Umsetzung zählt. Wir bauen Anlagen, die nach zehn Jahren noch laufen, nicht Prototypen, die im dritten Jahr abgeschaltet werden, weil sich niemand mehr daran erinnert, wie das Ersatzteil zu beschaffen ist. Das ist der Unterschied zwischen einer guten Idee und einer Industrie, die sich verändert.
Sebastian KießlingCO-FOUNDER & CEO
Personality
What Drives Sebastian Kießling
Sebastian Kießling belongs to that generation of entrepreneurs who do not argue from a pitch deck, but from the test bench. Anyone who meets him at the site in Cottbus is more likely to find him in the hangar than at a desk, between heat exchangers, control electronics, and assembled containers. His standard: only make promises when the technology can keep them. Hardware cannot be rushed. Those who build plants think in years, not quarters, and build up know-how along with the product. This pragmatism shapes the entire organization: at pyropower, there are no concepts without substance, but plants that run, even in their fifteenth year of operation.
Technology Focus
Sebastian Kießling’s technical focus lies where energy efficiency becomes measurable: in industrial waste heat. High-temperature heat sources from 950 °C, which are continuously generated in glassworks, cement plants, or metal processing, are for him the largest untapped energy source in Europe. The externally fired micro gas turbine is his answer to this, a technology that converts waste heat into electricity without the turbine components coming into contact with the contaminated hot gas streams.
In parallel, he drives the integration of pyrolysis and power generation. With Pyro-ClinX, the world’s first system is created that couples both processes as an integrated overall system: woody residues become biochar produced to EBC requirements, and the resulting gases provide electricity and usable heat via the micro gas turbine. A closed loop in which CO₂ reduction in industry is achieved not through compensation, but through efficiency.