Hubert Aulich looks back on a long career in the PV sector. From 1974 onward, he worked for Siemens AG’s research department, then from 1988 to 1991 he was the managing director of PV Electric – a joint venture between Siemens Solar GmbH and US solar pioneers Arco Solar. In 1992, he was made managing director at Siemens Solar, and in 1997, with his associate Friedrich Wilhelm Schulze, he founded PV Silicon GmbH, a manufacturer of silicon wafers for the solar industry. In 2002, the company merged with British Crystalox to become PV Crystalox AG, a wafer manufacturer that aimed to pro- duce its main resource – silicon – independently. The latter did not work out, but the plan did show Aulich’s ambitions to tackle prob- lems head on. The scarcity of silicon was very real at the time, as was the monopoly of a few producers in the segment. After his time at PV Crystalox, Aulich took his pension – but he did not retire: he has started up a new project and is aiming to provide all people with clean drinking water. We met him at his new company, SC Sustainable Concepts GmbH, in Erfurt, Germany. 

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