“Anything that exists is possible” as Boulding’s first law prescribes. I was wondering why, in some places of the world, district energy systems were very flexibly integrated with the electricity system – while in other parts, they were not. So I set out to explore the existence of flexible sector coupling.

This resulted in the study that is the focus of today’s episode.

Anyone working with sector coupling and flexibility may benefit from listening in – if they can bear a 30-minute talk by me. Or else, dig directly into the resources referenced below.

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Scientific paper - Barriers to flexibility in the district energy-electricity system interface – A taxonomy

Policy brief – Barriers to flexibility

Interactive version – Play around at your own pace

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The Energy Transition Show with Chris Nelder is highly recommendable, and has recently hosted an episode with me as a guest (the upside is TWO middle-aged men chatting, instead of just ONE in this episode…). So give it a listen as well!

The FlexSUS project has received funding in the framework of the joint programming initiative ERA-Net Smart Energy Systems’ focus initiative Integrated, Regional Energy Systems, with support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 775970.

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome @DistrictEnergyD.

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A world premiere for your ears!

Nordic Clean Energy Scenarios by Nordic Energy Research is the most comprehensive study of decarbonisation of the Nordics so far – out 7 September 2021.

Energy Policycast is lucky enough to host two of the main authors, Klaus Skytte (CEO, Nordic Energy Research) and Kenneth Karlsson (CEO, Energy Modelling Lab and Senior Project Manager, Swedish Research Institute).

The study explores solution tracks to carbon neutral Nordics through 2030 and onwards to 2050. These tracks include electrification, power-to-X, bioenergy, carbon capture technologies in combination with bioenergy and behavioural change.

See the full study here: Nordic Clean Energy Scenarios

In the Peer Review section, Klaus recommends the study Renewable energy in the Nordics – state of the art of renewable targets in the Nordics and the Nordic Talks podcast. Additionally, The Nordic Energy Challenge 2021 is coming up in September 2021.

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome.

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Our music and jingles are based in energy technologies - see for yourself in this short clip.

Best wishes for the summer!

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome.

Please rate + share with your colleagues, so we can get fresh research into new ears and brains!

How does the beauty of the landscape, i.e. scenicness, play into the deployment of wind power? And how can we measure scenicness?

Those questions are addressed by Professor Russell McKenna and his co-authors in the study Quantifying the trade-off between cost-efficiency and public acceptance for onshore wind (working paper) and journal paper Scenicness assessment of onshore wind sites with geotagged photographs and impacts on approval and cost-efficiency.

Inspired by the Economist article Computer analysis of what is scenic may help town planners, the researchers applied the scenicness dataset ScenicOrNot to evaluate wind deployment in landscapes.

During the interview, we discuss Pablo Hevia-Koch's PhD thesis on acceptance costs. The Peer Review section discusses the study How much wind power potential does Europe have? Examining European wind power potential with an enhanced socio-technical atlas. And the comment to this from McKenna et al.: On the socio-technical potential for onshore wind in Europe: A response to Enevoldsen et al.  Also, the response by Enevoldsen et al. 

The study was authored by Russell McKenna of University of Aberdeen, previously Technical University of Denmark. Jann Weinand of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Ismir Mulalić of Copenhagen Business School, Stefan Petrović of Danish Energy Agency, previously Technical University of Denmark, Kai Mainzer of greenventory, and Tobias Preis and Helen Susannah Moat, both of Warwick Business School and The Alan Turing Institute.

What happens when old wind projects are replaced with new capacity? Associate professor Lena Kitzing from DTU Wind Energy discuss her recent study - Multifaceted drivers for onshore wind energy repowering and their implications for energy transition - showing previously unknown aspects of repowering. Also worth reading is the affiliated policy brief Multifaceted political and social drivers inform wind energy repowering decisions and potential.

The study was inspired by discussions in IEA's Task 26 on wind and co-authored by Morten Kofoed Jensen/Aegir Insights, Thomas Telsnig/JRC and Eric Lantz/NREL.  

In the Peer Review section, we discuss The 7 habits of Highly Effective People. 

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome.

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What should we do with waste - dump it nationally or ship across borders to burn? Does it make sense economically - and how about climate? This rare and very interesting topic is discussed by PhD Amalia Alonzo and Professor Marie Münster, based in their two studies The climate footprint of imports of combustible waste in systems with high shares of district heating and variable renewable energy and The economic value of imports of combustible waste in systems with high shares of district heating and variable renewable energy. The studies were co-authored with Ciprian Cimpan, Maria Ljunggren Söderman and Hans V. Ravn as part of the TOPWASTE project. 

In the Peer Review section, Marie recommends Harry van der Weijde/University of Edinburgh's webinars on energy and Dartmouth College's: Energy seminar series.

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome.

Please rate + share with your colleagues, so we can get fresh research into new ears and brains!

How will various degrees of deployment of data centres impact a small country’s energy system? In this 2020-interview, Stefan Petrovic, now special advisor at the Danish Energy Agency, explains a very interesting study on Denmark by Stefan Petrović, Alessandro Colangelo, Olexandr Balyk, Chiara Delmastro, Maurizio Gargiulo, Mikkel Bosack Simonsen and Kenneth Bernard Karlsson.

And he has some unusual - but useful - recommendations in the Peer Review-section of the episode...

• The study: The role of data centres in the future Danish energy system

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome.

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Are markets mature for trading green gases like biomethane? Tara Amirkhizi, PhD from DTU, gives a status and describe her research within the FutureGas project on markets for biomethane. 

• Florence School of Regulation's taxonomy on green gases

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome. 

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In today’s study, we take a look into the pockets of European citizens and find 176 BEUR of potential renewable financing. Enough to cut in half the investment gap of reaching 32% European renewable energy by 2030.

PhD researcher Cristian Pons-Seres de Brauwer from DTU Wind presents his and his colleagues' study Analysing the potential of citizen-financed community renewable energy to drive Europe's low-carbon energy transition.

Cris' study is part of the MISTRAL Project.

In the Peer Review section, Cris recommends the Volts blog by David Roberts. 

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark - comments welcome. 

Please rate + share with your colleagues, so we can get fresh research into new ears and brains!

Get dressed for the buzz on sector coupling with professors Brian Elmegaard and Marie Münster from Technical University of Denmark. 

We discuss our work on the white paper Sector Coupling: Concepts, State-of-the-art and Perspectives. The study was commissioned by the European Technology and Innovation Platforms on Smart Networks for Energy Transition - ETIP SNET.

Links to the topics discussed:  

• Numbers on electric storage (batteries) 8 GWh (IEA) - 12 GWh (Greentech Media). Danish pit thermal storages: 44 GWh heat (see White Paper).

• Radiolab

Sound design by Dea Cisar.

Hosted and produced by Daniel Sneum, Sustainability Division, Technical University of Denmark