Simulating thermal energy community formation: Institutional enablers outplaying technological choice

Fouladvand, Javanshir; Rojas, Maria Aranguren; Hoppe, Thomas; Ghorbani, Amineh

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.117897

Cited by 20 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 123 publications

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“…However, the CIB methodology easily allows for an extension to include multiple actors. Modeling of multiple actors' behavior is core to agent-based modeling (ABM) and has been applied in some studies of individual or collective adoption of renewable energy technologies [24][25][26][27]. ABM represents dynamic aspects and interactions well but does so under predetermined rules that specify the internal dynamics [109,110].…”

Section: Discussion Of the Methodological Approach's Viabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our work, on the other hand, focused on actors and their active acceptance and implementation of mature technologies. Furthermore, the assessment of active citizen participation development in the future does not call for the precise technical design to be included, since as Fouladvand et al [27] found, the technology options in citizen participation in energy communities are secondary in relevance. Ultimately, the focus is on the deployment process in a broad contextual framework where actors and the deployment of sustainable energy supply in the residential sector generally are at the center of attention.…”

Section: Discussion Of the Methodological Approach's Viabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At present, no studies exist that identify transformation pathways for citizens' participation in general, and energy community participation in particular, for an entire country's society that does not focus on one specific renewable energy technology. Some agent-based modeling (ABM) approaches exist that identify specific cases of photovoltaic systems (PV) adoption by single households or as a community (e.g., [23][24][25][26]), or the formation of thermal energy communities [27]. In a recent study [28], transformation pathways for one German bioenergy town were described on an aggregated level using cross-impact balance (CIB) analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Future(s) of Energy Communities in the German Energy Transition: A Derivation of Transformation Pathways

et al. 2022

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Active participation of citizens in the sustainable energy transition—particularly in energy communities—is explicitly desired by the European Union and considered vital for a successful transformation of Europe’s energy system. Currently, energy communities, i.e., citizen-led groups generating energy from renewable sources can be found across Europe, though current numbers are small. However, it is expected that the majority of EU households will be active in some form in the generation of energy by 2050. In order to understand how such a development could come about, and if desired, how it could be ensured, we developed and applied a quasi-dynamic model using the Cross-Impact Balance (CIB) approach and with it analyzed and assessed such a transition in detail. Data for the CIB model was derived from case studies, interviews, three surveys including two discrete choice experiments, expert workshops, and complementary secondary data. A central consideration of the model is a differentiated representation of the heterogeneity of actors in society and their interactions. Main results obtained from the application of the model are possible transformation pathways of citizen participation in the energy transition of Germany. A key finding was that if current trends continue, a citizen-driven energy transition based on energy communities will unlikely be successful. We conclude that several framework conditions must change simultaneously from the status quo so that different social groups in society can be active in the generation of energy. These include changes such as the abolition of hindering regulations and the expansion of financial support schemes with a focus on lower socioeconomic groups. Furthermore, only in a combination of conducive social factors such as neighborhood cohesion and conducive social influence, as well as favorable economic conditions, can energy communities become an important player in Germany’s future energy system.

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Section: Discussion Of the Methodological Approach's Viabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussion Of the Methodological Approach's Viabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the Future(s) of Energy Communities in the German Energy Transition: A Derivation of Transformation Pathways

et al. 2022

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“…If the agent's motivations (i.e. energy independence, trust, environmental concern and economic benefits) are between 2 and 8 (i.e., the values are not extreme and not hard to change [11,21]), they will be updated leaning one value towards the interacting neighbour's opinion, this being for better or for worse. This form of social interactions is used at the beginning of each simulation step to update the motivations for each agent.…”

Section: Interactions Network and Adaptationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Energy Security: The Case of Dutch Urban Energy Communities

Fouladvand

Verkerk

Nikolič

et al. 2022

Springer Proceedings in Complexity

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Energy communities are gaining momentum in the context of the energy transition. Given the distributed and collective action nature of energy communities, energy security of these local energy systems is more than just security of supply and related to issues such as affordability and acceptability of energy to members of the community. We build an agent-based model of energy communities to explore their security challenges. The security dimensions we consider are availability, affordability, accessibility and acceptability, which are referred to as the 4As. The results confirmed that there is always a trade-off between all four dimensions and that although it is difficult to achieve a high energy security performance, it is feasible. Results also showed that among factors influencing energy security, the investment of the community plays the biggest role.

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“…We use agent-based modelling and simulation to identify the conditions that lead to the formation and continuation of an InCES. This approach has already proven to be an effective method to study bottom-up initiatives such as CESs (e.g., (Verhoog et al, 2016;Fouladvand et al, 2020;Ghorbani et al, 2020;Fouladvand et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial community energy systems: Simulating the role of financial incentives and societal attributes

Eslamizadeh

Ghorbani

Costa³

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Considering that the industrial sector consumes almost one-third of the energy demand globally, it is an urgent call to reduce the carbon footprints in this sector. Among different approaches to meet this goal, such as the employment of carbon capture technologies and increasing energy efficiency within industries, transitioning to renewable electricity (RE) would be another outlook to reduce the carbon footprints and increase the energy security of the industries. Collective power generation within communities has shown to be feasible and promising in the industrial sector, where groups of industries collaborate to generate energy and meet their energy demand. In this research, we investigated how the initiation and continuation of industrial community energy systems (InCES) among companies can take place and which financial incentives the government can introduce to support these initiatives. We built an agent-based model that incorporates cost-benefit analysis and cultural factors in the decision making process of industries, to assess the feasibility of initiating/joining an InCES by industries. This study shows that the FIT mechanism had the worst performance in incentivizing the establishment of an InCES among industries. In contrast, the TAX incentive showed the best performance in mobilizing the investments towards InCES. Similarly, the TAX incentive showed relatively superior performance in electricity generation, the number of established InCESs, and the number of companies joining each InCES. Despite the better performance of the TAX incentive, it was also the most expensive option for the governments as a significant share of the establishment costs of an InCES was put on the shoulders of the governments.

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Simulating thermal energy community formation: Institutional enablers outplaying technological choice

Cited by 20 publications

References 123 publications

On the Future(s) of Energy Communities in the German Energy Transition: A Derivation of Transformation Pathways

On the Future(s) of Energy Communities in the German Energy Transition: A Derivation of Transformation Pathways

Modelling Energy Security: The Case of Dutch Urban Energy Communities

Industrial community energy systems: Simulating the role of financial incentives and societal attributes

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