Fundamental study of a greenhouse gas emission free energy system.

The emission of CO2 as the most important greenhouse gas may be reduced by avoiding the use of fossil fuels and, if the latter is not possible, by limiting its use and capturing and sequestering CO2. In the present research proposal the aim is to investigate in a fundamental way the question whether it is possible to supply all end energy as demanded by the overall society, without emitting any greenhouse gas. As a key element of the study, the "tension field" between centralised production of useful end-energy "products", on the one hand (including transport, distribution and storage of those carriers), and distributed (i.e., local) production on the other hand, has to be addressed in a profound way. Especially interactions on the system's scale between different energy sources, energy carriers and energy services to be provided to society must be addressed and carefully dealth with. The vision enunciated in this study is a dominantly electric society at the end-consumer level, wherever possible and justified. Clearly, the demand for electricity is expected to increase because of its user friendliness and because of ever more stringent environmental constraints, both local and global. Furthermore, electrifying society in an intelligent way will lead to a more rational use of the primary energy sources. Electricity will have an ever more prominent role in the energy supply chain. The essential characteristics of the different energy sources to generate electricity have to be taken into account. Furthermore the electricity grids, moving towards more "Smart Grids", have to be studied with the aim for CO2 free supply. If the analysis points towards that direction, then other networks for natural gas, CO2, heat-distribution and possibly also hydrogen, will be integrated in the system, also based on an "intelligent" interaction philosophy. As essential energy services, heating and cooling of buildings, on the one hand, and (mobility-related) transportation, on the other hand, have to be conceptually included in a comprehensive manner in this envisaged greenhouse-gas-free energy system. For transportation all modi have to be treated. Different models have to be developed to describe the overall energy systems and all interactions involved, with focus on operational aspects. An exergetic/energetic analysis provides the steady state solution. If storage, in all elements of the chain, is included, time plays an essential role. Storage as such is the element that fundamentally links all three energy carriers/services (electrivity, heating/cooling and transportation). For the electrical system, the steady state and quasi steady state are insufficient as the instantaneous power equilibrium has to be addressed as a key prerequisite for secure operation. This can lead to restrictions regarding energy storage systems. The project must carefully study the necessity of long distance electrical transmission capacity in order to transport electric energy from far away energy sources to the demand centres as this distance will substantially increase in the future. Demand side participation is a corner stone of the system study. As a final element, the robustness of the different systems has to be treated: the effect of the failure of one or more system elements on the security of supply as a whole or on fulfilling the energy demand for critical end users in particular. The project consists of eight interacting work packages, each focusing on specific or aggregated parts of the energetic supply chain: ° WP 1: Energy technologies and system integration ° WP 2: Energy services in buildings ° WP 3: transportation ° WP 4: Networks ° WP 5: Active demand participation ° WP 6: Model integration and analysis for CO2-emission free system ° WP 7: Energy and exergy analysis of whole chain scenarios ° WP 8: Examination of a local and European case

Keywords:Energy systems, Greenhouse gas

Disciplines:Electrical power engineering, Energy generation, conversion and storage engineering, Modelling, Multimedia processing