A model-based approach to long-term energy planning: the case-study of the Turin Airport

Abstract

Urged by the concerns relating to climate change and the energy crises, several companies and industries have been undertaking a deeply transformation of their energy system. Energy planning, especially with a long-term perspective, has assumed a renewed importance. The traditional approaches about energy planning, typically relying on a single-project analyses and a short-term vision, appear today unsuitable for evaluating the disruptive transformation of the energy system. In this paper, we propose an energy system optimization approach, based on a detailed energy planning, and we discuss its application to an energy intensive industry: airports. In the context of the European TULIPS project, the energy system of the fellow airport of Turin was modelled in the open-source OSeMOSYS framework. The model was then validated on a set of reference years of operation of the airport. The results of the modelling exercise showed minor variations with respect to real-world data, with a percent error well below 2.5%. Having assessed the ability of the model to reproduce the behavior of the energy system, future studies will be devoted to the development of a decarbonisation roadmap for Turin Airport.