Ecology is free!

“Ecology is free!” is a quote from an interview I once had with the founding CEO of STMicroelectronics, Mr. Pasquale Pistorio, when I met him in Paris/France in 1995. This interview, that I performed for the magazine “Industry Week”, mainly covered financials, profits, product roadmaps, management, market positions, investments, strategy etc. and he immediately gave an explanation, why he considered ecology to be “free”: “Curing will be more dangerous and more costly than prevention. The companies that get their act together in environmental protection will come up with a strong competitive advantage.”

I’d like to add another aspect: Electrical power “generated” by wind, solar, hydro or tidal power plants does not depend on the prices of fossil fuels as the energy itself is provided free of charge by mother nature. Furthermore, renewables are not involved in the raw fossil energy logistical nightmares in terms of usability of sea passages etc. Therefore, renewables significantly increase the energy supply resilience while decreasing the impact of political dependencies.

This independence from fossil fuels is not just a matter of energy sourcing, but also drives broader technological change across the entire energy ecosystem. As electricity becomes the dominant energy carrier, innovations in power electronics play a key role in how efficiently it can be converted, controlled, and applied. This evolution is clearly reflected in railway traction systems, which have undergone a remarkable transformation over the past decades. For example, already in 1923 the famous Ofoten Line to Narvik/Norway was electrified for greater efficiency.

However, even in 1995 you could still hear the clunking of notching up in locomotives, where large electromechanical devices switched high-power resistors to control/reduce the current, especially when the train started moving. Today, semiconductors in railway traction inverters have become a standard, and we all know the typical kind of humming. To hear a very special railway inverter sound, search for “musical scale taurus” on Youtube! Using SiC in the inverter enables engineers to increase switching frequencies, and in the long run locomotives will not be humming anymore. SiC inverters provide a higher efficiency, smaller size and weight and need less cooling. To learn more about SiC and GaN in many different applications, reserve December 1 and 2, 2026 in your calendar for bodoswbg.com. If you don’t want to wait that long, come to the Technology Stage in hall 4 at PCIM in Nuremberg on June 10 at 13:25 for SiC and on June 11 at 11:45 for GaN presentations.

Let me come back to trains for a second: Starting in Summer 2028 it will be possible to travel by train directly from Berlin/Germany (15 kV / 16.7 Hz) via Copenhagen/Denmark (25 kV / 50 Hz) and Gothenburg/Sweden (15 kV /16.7 Hz) to Oslo/Norway (15 kV / 16.7 Hz). Power electronics will enable us to travel emission free where before we had almost no choice but to take a plane.

For more than 20 years Bodo’s magazine is delivered by postal service to all places in the world. It is the only magazine that spreads technical information on power electronics globally. We have EETech as a partner serving our clients in North America. If you speak the language, or just want to have a look, don’t miss our Chinese version at bodospowerchina.com. An archive, of every issue of the magazine, is available for free at our website bodospower.com.

My green tip of the month: Consider using a train for both business and for private travel; I often work on the train, but I also enjoy reading, relaxing and streaming a movie. In Europe, you can even get North of the arctic circle by train– directly from Stockholm, which is well connected to Gothenburg.

Kind Regards,
Alfred