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Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. However, in this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating individuals on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. This paper exemplifies an educational practice to create awareness on sustainable energy transition by playing a “serious” game, the We Energy Game. Concretely, this qualitative study aims to analyze communicational and educational aspects of the game by making use of a validated framework for serious games analysis, and to expose the opinion of players after maintaining group discussions. The analysis reveals a detailed insight of narrative elements, messages, and gameplay mechanisms, but also educative aspects to be considered by teachers if they are interested in putting the game into practice in their classes. The group discussion reveals that the game has been more successful in achieving cognitive (understanding/knowledge) and affective (emotion/interest and concern) engagement than in motivating attitudinal or behavioral engagement.

Abstract:The dairy sector in the Netherlands aims for a 30% increase in efficiency and 30% carbon dioxide emission reduction compared to the reference year of 1990, and a 20% share of renewable energy, all by the year 2020. Anaerobic Digestion (AD) can play a substantial role in achieving these aims. However, results from this study indicate that the AD system is not fully optimized in combination with farming practices regarding sustainability. Therefore, the Industrial Symbiosis concept, combined with energy and environmental system analysis, Life Cycle Analysis and modeling is used to optimize a farm-scale AD system on four indicators of sustainability (i.e., energy efficiency, carbon footprint, environmental impacts and costs). Implemented in a theoretical case, where a cooperation of farms share biomass feedstocks, a symbiotic AD system can significantly lower external energy consumption by 72 to 92%, carbon footprint by 71 to 91%, environmental impacts by 68 to 89%, and yearly expenditures by 56 to 66% compared to a reference cooperation. The largest reductions and economic gains can be achieved when a surplus of manure is available for upgrading into organic fertilizer to replace fossil fertilizers. Applying the aforementioned symbiotic concept to the Dutch farming sector can help to achieve the stated goals indicated by the Dutch agricultural sector for the year 2020.

With the integration of Intermitted Renewables Energy (I-RE) electricity production, capacity is shifting from central to decentral. So, the question is if it is also necessary to adjust the current load balancing system from a central to more decentral system. Therefore, an assessment is made on the overall effectiveness and costs of decentralized load balancing, using Flexible Renewable Energy (F-RE) in the shape of biogas, Demand Side Management (DSM), Power Curtailment (PC), and electricity Storage (ST) compared to increased grid capacity (GC). As a case, an average municipality in The Netherlands is supplied by 100% I-RE (wind and solar energy), which is dynamically modeled in the PowerPlan model using multiple scenarios including several combinations of balancing technologies. Results are expressed in yearly production mix, self-consumption, grid strain, Net Load Demand Signal, and added cost. Results indicate that in an optimized scenario, self-consumption of the municipality reaches a level of around 95%, the total hours per year production matches demand to over 90%, and overproduction can be curtailed without substantial losses lowering grid strain. In addition, the combination of balancing technologies also lowers the peak load to 60% of the current peak load in the municipality, thereby freeing up capacity for increased demand (e.g., electric heat pumps, electric cars) or additional I-RE production. The correct combination of F-RE and lowering I-RE production to 60%, ST, and PC are shown to be crucial. However, the direct use of DSM has proven ineffective without a larger flexible demand present in the municipality. In addition, the optimized scenario will require a substantial investment in installations and will increase the energy cost with 75% in the municipality (e.g., from 0.20€ to 0.35€ per kWh) compared to 50% (0.30€ per kWh) for GC. Within this context, solutions are also required on other levels of scale (e.g., on middle or high voltage side or meso and macro level) to ensure security of supply and/or to reduce overall costs.

Countries around the world are expected to speed up the process of an energy transition towards cleaner energy solutions as a way to achieve sustainability and fight against climate change. Education plays an important role in this process, informing and increasing understanding on the benefits and challenges of energy efficiency and renewable energy, especially among young people. In search of innovative approaches, there is increasing attention for game-based learning as an innovative education strategy among scholars and practitioners. In this paper, we present "We-Energy Game" as an innovative educational strategy which makes use of game-based learning to create understanding on the challenges in the provision of affordable energy from renewable sources for an entire town. In addition to introducing the game, a study is presented on the effects of the game on students´ awareness on the energy transition, self-efficacy, and collective efficacy. For that purpose, a survey is conducted with 100 bachelor (Dutch and international) students aged between 18 and 30 years old, at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, before and after playing the game. We also conducted a group discussion with a smaller group of students to understand their opinion about the game. Results reveal an increase in awareness about the energy transition: in a smaller degree, we observe slightly increase in collective efficacy compared to self-efficacy. From the group discussion, findings reveal that the game makes students reflect on the complexity of the process and need for collaboration among different stakeholders.