Country of origin: Germany and Seychelles
University: Europa-Universität Flensburg
Main supervisor: Prof. dr. Olav Hohmeyer
Industry partners: Statkraft (Norway), Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden)

To achieve the targets of the Paris Agreement, the global society and the EU will have to transition their energy system away from the dependency of fossil fuels and towards energy sustainable technologies.

Models and simulations of the energy system allow us to analyse and find insights on how to find the best methods to carry out the transitioning process. In the past, most models of the EU energy system have been closed to the public and thus haven’t been transparent to allow for thorough revision by the scientific community.

This research project will utilise open source methods to model the power, heat and transport sector of the EU-28 countries. It will also make use of flexibility options such as dispatchable loads within those respective sectors.

With the increase in variable renewable energy penetration into the energy mix, the role and importance of flexibility options, energy transmission between countries and storage in the energy sector will increase. The project aims at gaining insight on the possible arrangement, limitations and potential of utilising the technologies that are available today to achieve a carbon-neutral energy future for EU-28.

The target of this research is to improve our understanding of how the individual components of a sustainable energy system configuration interact and how they combine to maintain a robust energy system. By using open-source data and software, this research will be transparent to the public and can be accessed, utilised and improved upon by anyone. This open science methodology will hopefully improve public acceptance of scientific results of energy system models and also accelerate research in this field.