Research Project REWARDS

Motivation

The importance of energy sovereignty and the resilience of the energy system has become the focus of the energy policy debate in recent months. Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine is leading to tectonic shifts and upheavals on a geopolitical and therefore also energy policy level.

With the absence of Russian gas supplies for Germany and Europe, something previously considered unthinkable has occurred. For the future, this means that further planning and development of the energy system must explicitly focus more on aspects that were previously considered almost unlikely to occur. This new situation is not limited to the aforementioned crisis, but should also be considered with regard to other challenges with similar risk profiles. This is particularly true in light of the fact that environmental aspects and the requirement for an affordable energy system must not only be prioritized in the medium and long term, but also harmonized with strategies for dealing with the newly identified problems.

A first challenge is the need for conceptualization of energy security. It is particularly necessary to address issues relating to energy sovereignty (in all its facets) on the one hand and the resilience of the energy system on the other. The need for conceptualization therefore also exists in energy system analysis, which is a central instrument for strategic and political planning and (uncertainty) assessment of transformation processes such as the energy transition. The second challenge is the need to be able to model aspects such as dependencies (raw materials, strategic goods, etc.), diversification (sources of supply, technologies, infrastructure, etc.), self-sufficiency (in a national or European context), vulnerabilities and reconstruction capabilities (e.g. after extreme events) with suitable instruments and, if necessary, beyond monetization.

Objective

One way of considering the aforementioned aspects of energy security in an energy system model is to consider uncertainties in a stochastic energy system model. The aim of this project is therefore to further develop and use suitable planning tools for a robust and sustainable energy supply strategy, taking into account existing short- and long-term uncertainties that have an impact with various time constants, especially on infrastructure solutions to be planned in the long term as well as technology and generation structures.

The following research questions are to be answered as part of the project:

• How can the terms energy security, resilience and energy sovereignty be conceptualized in such a way that they can be described, delineated and made accessible for numerical analysis and interpretation in a sufficiently consistent manner?

• How can the main triggers, entry paths and characteristics with regard to energy security, resilience or energy sovereignty be identified, categorized/structured and, if necessary, summarized in clusters?

• What are the requirements for energy system models that can be derived from this?

• How can relevant requirements and influences for the derivation of robust system development strategies be implemented in an energy system model with optimization under uncertainty and specifically in the scenario tree?

• What are the advantages and limitations (e.g. due to new vulnerabilities) of multilateral approaches (e.g. joint procurement and storage management in Europe) compared to unilateral approaches?

• What are the differences between an energy system optimized with a focus on ensuring security of supply compared to an "ideal" energy system that is strongly optimized in terms of costs?

• What trade-offs arise between energy security, environmental aspects and system costs?

From a methodological perspective and under the aspect of open source utilization, the following objectives are also to be realized to answer the research questions:

• Use of the already existing, scalable stochastic modelling and optimization framework EMPRISE for the multi-period transformation analysis of integrated supply structures in Europe under uncertainty and its extension by model endogenous consideration of critical aspects of energy security

• Open source exploitation of EMPRISE as an innovative energy system analysis tool with scalable approaches for optimization under uncertainty as well as necessary input and output data sets to enable transparent access to system analytical results for researchers and users

Role of the Fraunhofer IEE

As consortium leader of the REWARDS project, Fraunhofer IEE is responsible in particular for coordinating the project partners and managing the administrative organization. The EMPRISE framework including its sub-models, which was originally developed at Fraunhofer IEE, will be provided as an open-source model. In addition, the creation of detailed model documentation and tutorials is supported. During the development and quantification of the storylines relevant to energy security, their feasibility in the new model restrictions will be evaluated. During the creation of the new model restrictions, Fraunhofer IEE provides support in the identification of suitable mathematical approaches and by providing input data from the existing model landscape.

Collaboration

The project is divided into seven complex work packages with different objectives. In particular, it is being worked on by four funded project partners: Fraunhofer IEE, the Department of Energy Management and Power System Operation at the University of Kassel, Oeko-Institut e.V., and the chair of Energy Systems and Energy Economics at Ruhr University Bochum. The Department of Digital Transformation in Energy Systems at the Technical University of Berlin and the "Electricity Markets and Energy Systems Planning" research group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are associated project partners from academia. The electricity transmission system operator TransnetBW GmbH and the gas transmission system operator Thyssengas GmbH are associated project partners from industry.