TÜV SÜD is an international company headquartered in Germany that offers testing, inspection, and certification services across industries like manufacturing, energy, and transportation. It helps businesses meet regulatory standards and manage technical risks in over 50 countries.
As societal priorities shift from safety and security toward sustainability, TÜV SÜD has had to evolve its focus across key technologies. Where do you currently see the greatest areas of growth and impact?
Our core mission remains centered on trust, safety, security, and the objective evaluation of technologies and their associated risks. At the same time, we closely follow evolving priorities, both societal and customer-driven. Over time, we’ve seen waves of focus: from connected products and wireless technologies, which introduced new security risks, to more mature platforms that gave rise to the need for safety and security from cyber-attacks.
Safety and security remain a challenge, but there’s now an additional emphasis on sustainability. As technologies like grid compatibility, battery safety, and large-scale energy storage gain importance, we see a shift in risks emerging. People want to be safe, yes, but they also demand technologies that contribute positively to the environment, too. Energy transformation is one of the most active areas within a much broader approach to sustainability.
As energy storage systems and high-capacity batteries become more widespread, the risks they pose in real-world environments are growing. What are the most critical safety challenges you’re focused on in 2025?
The risks we see are evolving alongside technological development. As we move to larger energy storage systems and powerful batteries, there’s a concern about their behavior when in close physical proximity to people. In the event of a failure, such as an explosion or fire, the consequences could be severe.
This is why we make significant investments in advanced testing and simulation capabilities. At our battery labs in the US, Germany, China, and elsewhere, we subject systems to mechanical, thermal, electrical and environmental stress tests, including crush tests, thermal abuse, salt spray tests and overcharge tests. To make new technologies successful and enable real progress, risks must be managed with mitigation plans, fail-safe mechanisms, and contingency systems to prevent significant harm.
With renewable power generation still advancing slowly and government support declining in many regions, what’s holding back faster progress, and can rising consumer demand realistically fill the gap?
Some regions are advancing well, especially in developing not just power generation, but the entire ecosystem, including storage, grid compatibility, and usability. Technological improvements in energy storage systems have made renewable energy more reliable and viable. That said, the pace of power generation projects remains slow. This slowdown is largely due to a decline in government support and subsidies, which historically played a key role in enabling the energy transition. Without that, something else has to step in—whether that’s consumers willing to support sustainable solutions and pay more for them, companies acting on stakeholder pressure, or technological innovation that improves the economics. Green energy isn’t always economically competitive with fossil fuels, and that mismatch needs to be addressed through new institutional support or financial incentives.
In some markets, awareness of sustainable solutions and energy transformation is increasing steadily. In others, sentiment has shifted slightly. Right now, the level of urgency differs by region. So, while there’s more conversation and interest around sustainability, the consumer pressure globally isn’t yet strong enough to fill the gap left by retreating government subsidies. But it's an important driver, and one with the potential to gain momentum over time.
While some sustainability standards are gaining global traction, gaps remain, especially around emerging technologies. How realistic is true global harmonization and alignment?
There are already measurement standards used by companies to assess their sustainability performance—ISO standards, VERRA impact assessments, and so on. In the supply chain, standards like ISO 45001, 14001, and 50000 are already widely adopted.
However, with emerging technologies such as hydrogen, we see significant standardization gaps. We developed the CMS 70 and CMS 77 standards to track and certify blue and green hydrogen, filling a gap where no robust frameworks, such as Europe’s CertifHy™, previously existed.
As an energy carrier, hydrogen will be a critical part of a sustainable energy mix, and for it to succeed, standards must evolve to match. So, we’re seeing increasing standardization in ESG reporting, but independent validation and verification methods are still under debate, with different practices across regions—financial auditors in some, third parties like us in others.
What would you say to those who perceive digital verification to be just another layer of compliance?
Without embracing digital verification, the integrity and scalability of the sustainability system could be at risk. Manual data collection is simply not reliable enough and not sustainable enough. As digital methods allow us to collect, verify, and validate data efficiently, physical verification remains essential.
We’re working with partners to develop and provide digital solutions, using our auditing experience to ensure data credibility. The goal is to build a trustworthy, primarily digital system for validation and verification—one that balances efficiency with reliability. Without that, organizations would drown in manual processes and slow adoption.
As technologies rapidly advance, how does TÜV SÜD balance market speed with rigorous certification?
There’s always tension between speed and thoroughness, and there are always bad actors trying to game the system. This is where independent organizations like TÜV SÜD come in. Unbiased evaluation is the foundation. Digital tools are helpful, but certification and testing still require physical verification by experienced experts, especially when it comes to safety. With sustainability claims, some level of exaggeration might sneak in, but if the system becomes too easy to cheat, it loses credibility. Safety is different—you can't afford accidents. For example, an explosion in a large plant or an energy storage system not only causes immense material damage, but also a significant loss of trust.
A clear example is the battery technology mentioned above. Every developer must ensure batteries are safe under extreme stress. You can't test that safely in the field; you have to simulate it in a lab. That’s what we do. We perform destructive testing in controlled environments to see how batteries behave under extreme conditions. These batteries are becoming more powerful, so their potential for harm increases. And the technology is also becoming more stable, and that’s largely thanks to the rigorous testing we do. This allows manufacturers and consumers to use these products with confidence, whether in vehicles, homes, factories, or data centers.
How can energy-intensive sectors like AI and data centers optimize their design and power systems to reduce carbon impact without risking performance or uptime?
We need data centers. Society consumes more data than ever, and that will only increase. But these centers are incredibly energy-intensive and not particularly carbon-friendly, so the focus must be on their environmental footprint. That starts with design—using energy-efficient materials, sustainable building techniques, and advanced cooling solutions such as water-based systems.
Next is sourcing energy; data centers can’t afford downtime, so they need continuous, reliable power. That’s where large-scale energy storage comes in, enabling greater use of renewable energy even if you can’t meet 100% of the demand. Finally, it’s about ongoing monitoring and the integration of new technological advancements to further reduce the footprint. There are international standards arising to address this challenge. For example, TÜV SÜD assesses the environmental sustainability of data centers according to the Data Centre Maturity Model (DCCM) which is based on the European standard CLC/TS 50600-5-1.
