Resilient Energy System Infrastructure Layouts for Industry, E-Fuels and Network Transitions

About

The energy transition faces many uncertainties, but planning tools are often deterministic. Our proposal will develop the first truly multi-vector energy infrastructure planning tool that represents this uncertain environment, both at a regional and national as well as the European level. We will build on the existing widely-used, open-source, sector-coupled energy planning tool for Europe, PyPSA-Eur, and add stochastic optimisation capabilities as well as a deeper representation of industry transformation, e-fuel conversion, biomass and carbon capture infrastructure. We will look at uncertainties that include the cost of fuels and technologies, hydrogen availability, network expansion delays for electricity, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, value chain restructuring in industry, imports of e-fuels and secondary materials, renewables build-out and social acceptance. We will examine novel computational techniques to address stochastic problems in a performant way. For this proposal, we have assembled a team of leading academic researchers and need-owners from industry who are at the cutting edge of energy system modelling. We will demonstrate the capabilities of our planning tool in several case studies for resilient infrastructure planning, together with our need-owners in France, Germany, Sweden and Finland. We plan several workshops and training events with a broader circle of need owners and stakeholders to ensure a wide uptake of our innovative project results.

Deliverables

D1.1: Project website
D1.2: Project data management plan

Workshops and training events

• Workshop with North Rhine-Westphalia industry stakeholders: Project introduction and research goals, online 08 October 2024
• Workshop with North Rhine-Westphalia industry stakeholders: PyPSA-Eur model: overview and applications, online 08 October 2024
• Workshop with North Rhine-Westphalia industry stakeholders: How does uncertainty impede industrial transformation? (German), online 08 October 2024

Research talks

• RESILIENT Kick-off meeting: Methanol for hard-to-electrify sectors, Berlin 22 February 2024
• Insight Harvesting Workshop of the CETPartnership projects: Building Resilient Energy Infrastructure: Hydrogen, Import, and Carbon Management Strategies, online 16 October 2024
• CETPartnership workshop on flexibility in integrated industrial energy systems Energy flexibility from industrial process heating - Relevance, system impacts and ways forward, online 6 November 2024
• Energy resilience symposium Resilient strategies for the European energy system. A case study on 2030 EU policy targets, Stuttgart 11-12 November 2024

Project communication, media and public outreach

• CETpartnership TRI1 2022 Project Leaders meeting: RESILIENT project overview, 20 October 2023

Partners

• At the Technical University of Berlin (TUB), the department of Digital Transformation in Energy Systems is the lead developer of the open energy system modelling framework PyPSA and the high-resolution model PyPSA-Eur of the European sector-coupled energy system. The group leverages cutting-edge research from a variety of disciplines to understand the most cost-effective pathways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy system. The department will lead the project overall, as well as the integration of new modelling features and the training of need-owners.

• The team at University of Pisa (UNIPI) is the core developer of Structured Modelling System (SMS++), an open-source modelling framework that supports advanced decomposition techniques to break down computational requirements for large-scale stochastic optimization problems. It will be a key partner to integrate SMS++ as an backend of PyPSA, needed to enhance its computational capabilities.

• Fraunhofer ISI offers extensive experience in energy system modelling, in particular with respect to long-term energy demand from sectors including industry, and the impact of variable renewable energies in the power system. At Fraunhofer ISI one of the leading industry transformation models, FORECAST, which has been used in several German and European projects, will be integrated into PyPSA-Eur to model fuel and process switching in each industrial sector.

• Chalmers University of Technology provides extensive expertise in the modelling of energy systems, model-based analyses of cost-effective usage of biomass in the energy system for achieving climate targets, as well as modelling of renewable fuels and carbon dioxide capture, usage, transport and sequestration (CCUTS), and are long-standing contributors to PyPSA-Eur. Chalmers will leverage their expertise on the most suitable applications of restricted biomass potentials, and the role of CCUTS infrastructure across different sectors.

• Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) is one of the leaders in the research of net-zero energy systems with its own energy system model LUT-ESTM applied to energy transition studies for dozens of countries across the globe, LUT-ESTM can be used as a validation tool in this project. LUT will bring a global perspective to model the worldwide trading of hydrogen and derivative chemicals and materials, as well as trade-offs between imports and domestic supply. LUT will also study the role of sustainable point sources of CO2 on the production of e-fuels, e-chemicals and other carbonaceous materials with emphasis on Finland.

• TransnetBW is a transmission system operator based in southwest Germany that specialises in the secure and reliable supply of electricity. With extensive experience in the energy industry, it has conducted several studies investigating net-zero energy systems using PyPSA-Eur. They will help the consortium define relevant uncertainties for planners, and play a leading role in the demonstration studies.

• Électricité de France (EDF) is the second world’s leading multinational electricity company, particularly well established in Europe. Its business covers all electricity-based activities from generation to distribution, including energy transmission and trading activities. EDF Research and Development develops models for short to mid-term operation as well as long-term planning of energy systems at national and European levels and performs techno-economic studies for evaluating impacts of regulations, analysing transition scenarios, evaluating economic stakes of new models, and analysing investments in production and storage facilities.

• IN4climate.NRW is the initiative for industry transition towards climate neutrality under the umbrella of the state agency NRW.Energy4Climate. IN4climate.NRW works as a think tank and as a working platform for and with industry, science, and the state government. They will build a bridge to industry needs and federal-state strategies for carbon management and hydrogen.

• Stockholm Exergi is an energy company providing district heat and power and waste incineration in Stockholm, with a pioneering carbon capture research facility that is planned for full-scale operation in 2026 to capture 800 kilotons of biogenic carbon dioxide. They provide extensive expertise and data validation for modelling bioenergy with carbon capture.

• ABB Finland (associated) is one of the leaders in electrification and automation, providing technology and knowledge to dozens of projects contributing to the energy transition of Europe. ABB leads the promising BalticSeaH2 hydrogen valley and will bring the perspective and the knowledge of current state of the art of e-fuels production projects in Europe. ABB will join the consortium as an associated partner and will support the data collection, scenario definition and result analysis in terms related to e-fuels production.

Impressum

Dr. Fabian Neumann
Dr. Iegor Riepin
Bobby Xiong
Prof. Dr. Tom Brown
Technische Universität Berlin Fachgebiet Digitaler Wandel in Energiesystemen
Institut für Energietechnik
Fakultät III
Einsteinufer 25 (TA 8)
10587 Berlin