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Georg Hackl: The optimiser and his living room

High mountain peaks and crystal-clear lakes – Schorsch Hackl, the legendary luger, has always remained true to the Berchtesgadener Land. As an active sportsman, he called the Königsee luge run his living room and, today, he trains future luge legends in his role as national trainer. Only one thing worries Georg Hackl: The snow in winter no longer comes as reliably as it did in his childhood. But what can such a successful luger do in the battle against climate change? Quite a lot – for example in his home.

For the three time Olympic and World Champion, it’s clear: ‘When people want to go on using this amazing planet, something has got to change. And, of course, we must all start with ourselves.’ Always solutions-oriented, Hackl now works on the reduction of his ecological footprint with the same unflagging energy he invested in the optimisation of his lugers. His first choice as a partner? Viessmann.

Finding the best solution together

Viessmann has supported the winner of multiple Olympic and world champion titles in solo and team events for more than 25 years. Not only as a sponsor, but also as a technical specialist, for instance with the high-quality steel for the runners of his lugers. For his own home, Hackl chose a sustainable, energy-saving heating solution: Geothermal collectors in his garden extract heat from the ground and use a heat pump to convert it into heat energy that makes his living room cosy and warm. ‘It still uses electricity.’ explains the Berchtesgadener, ‘But only a quarter of the power from fossil fuels we would otherwise use. There’s another amazing thing: I also have a photovoltaic system up on the roof.’ It generates solar power and feeds it to a power storage unit where it’s available whenever we need it. This means that Hackl can turn up the heating any time he likes without any CO2 emissions – as he says, ‘almost completely free-of-charge’, because he naturally no longer needs to buy any heating oil. 

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The image shows Georg Hackl standing on a footpath in his home town.
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An optimistic view of the future 

This environmentally friendly heating concept is by no means the end of the road for Schorsch Hackl’s commitment to climate protection. The legendary luger is also a forceful campaigner for the use of sustainable technologies such as biogas. Hackl believes that a switch to renewable energies is unavoidable – a must, but also an opportunity for everyone who embraces promising ideas at an early stage: ‘The sooner we make the change, the better it will be for our climate and our environment – and the better it will be for us all.’