Work in the main area of energy research aims at providing technologies for a long-term and environmentally compatible energy supply of a steadily growing world population.

Fuel cells are a promising technology for energy conversion. They directly convert the chemical energy of their fuels, such as natural gas, methane or hydrogen, into electric energy. In this way, theoretical efficiencies of up to 70 % can be achieved. Further advantages of fuel cells are low emissions of CO₂ greenhouse gas - a consequence of the favourable efficiency - and hardly any emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides. Several fuel cell types of similar design and function are currently competing with each other. They differ above all in the materials used, the type of electrolyte and the operating temperatures, which are between 60°C and 200°C in the low-temperature range and between 600°C and 1000°C for the high-temperature fuel cell - the so-called solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC).

The Research Centre's R&D activities for the latter concentrate on the technical feasibility of the "Jülich substrate concept", an SOFC system for decentralized cogeneration with an electric power output of 20 kW.

Work for the low-temperature fuel cell - especially for the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEFC) - is oriented to the development of system and process proposals and the resulting components. In parallel, the development of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is being pursued as an efficient and low-emission drive system for motor vehicles.

Fossil-fired power plants will also furnish a considerable contribution to global energy supply in the 21st century. Efforts concentrate on significantly increasing their efficiency. Efficiencies of over 60 % are to be achieved, in particular, for gas and steam turbine power plants with more than 100 megawatt power output. In the field of gas turbines, especially new material systems play a central role in addition to improved cooling technologies and reliable methods of component design. In the Jülich R&D project on material systems for power plants, important work is being carried out for new high-heat-flux material systems for fossil-fired power plants and future nuclear fusion reactors. The spectrum ranges here from newly conceived single materials through the action of structure and function in various composite materials up to the realization and testing of components for power plants.

Among the renewable energies, the direct photovoltaic conversion of solar radiation into electric energy is an important option for future energy supply. The production costs of photovoltaic modules must be clearly reduced, however, to enable photovoltaics to markedly contribute to covering globally growing power requirements. Due to their small requirement of high-purity materials involving expensive and energy-intensive production, their low and thus energy-saving production temperatures as well as fully automated process flows, thin-film solar cells promise to involve more favourable production costs than the currently prevailing technology which uses thick, crystalline silicon wafers. Work at Jülich on photovoltaics is aimed at novel concepts for thin-film silicon cells based on intensive materials research and a process technology for low-cost industrial mass production. The substrate materials used are primarily glass, but also metal and plastic foils.

Another nearly inexhaustible source of energy could be controlled nuclear fusion. This difficult task is being intensively dealt with worldwide. Hot gases (so-called plasmas) of more than 100 million degrees, consisting of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, must be generated and kept together for a sufficiently long time. At the same time, the energy produced in fusing the nuclei must be extracted for use. The Jülich R&D project on nuclear fusion and plasma research concentrates on key topics relating to the control of a fusion plasma: plasma-wall interaction, energy and particle transport and the control of instabilities. Work is closely associated with Dutch and Belgian fusion research within the framework of the Trilateral Euregio Cluster (TEC) and embedded in the EU's fusion programme.