Energy Policycast

“Anything that exists is possible” as Boulding’s first law prescribes. I was wondering why, in some places of the world, district energy systems were very flexibly integrated with the electricity system – while in other parts, they were not. So I set out to explore the existence of flexible sector coupling.

This resulted in the study that is the focus of today’s episode.

Anyone working with sector coupling and flexibility may benef...

A world premiere for your ears!

Nordic Clean Energy Scenarios by Nordic Energy Research is the most comprehensive study of decarbonisation of the Nordics so far – out 7 September 2021.

Energy Policycast is lucky enough to host two of the main authors, Klaus Skytte (CEO, Nordic Energy Research) and Kenneth Karlsson (CEO, Energy Modelling Lab and Senior Project Manager, Swedish Research Institute).

The study explores solution tracks ...

How does the beauty of the landscape, i.e. scenicness, play into the deployment of wind power? And how can we measure scenicness?

Those questions are addressed by Professor Russell McKenna and his co-authors in the study Quantifying the trade-off between cost-efficiency and public acceptance for onshore wind (working paper) and journal paper Scenicness assessment of onshore wind sites with geotagged photographs and impacts on appro...

What happens when old wind projects are replaced with new capacity? Associate professor Lena Kitzing from DTU Wind Energy discuss her recent study - Multifaceted drivers for onshore wind energy repowering and their implications for energy transition - showing previously unknown aspects of repowering. Also worth reading is the affiliated policy brief Multifaceted political and social drivers inform wind energy repowering decisions a...

What should we do with waste - dump it nationally or ship across borders to burn? Does it make sense economically - and how about climate? This rare and very interesting topic is discussed by PhD Amalia Alonzo and Professor Marie Münster, based in their two studies The climate footprint of imports of combustible waste in systems with high shares of district heating and variable renewable energy and The economic value of imports of ...

How will various degrees of deployment of data centres impact a small country’s energy system? In this 2020-interview, Stefan Petrovic, now special advisor at the Danish Energy Agency, explains a very interesting study on Denmark by Stefan Petrović, Alessandro Colangelo, Olexandr Balyk, Chiara Delmastro, Maurizio Gargiulo, Mikkel Bosack Simonsen and Kenneth Bernard Karlsson.

And he has some unusual - but useful - recommendations in...

Are markets mature for trading green gases like biomethane? Tara Amirkhizi, PhD from DTU, gives a status and describe her research within the FutureGas project on markets for biomethane. 

• Florence School of Regulation's taxonomy on green gases
• James Buchanan: An Economic Theory of Clubs
• Tara's Florence School of Regulation article Status quo of renewable gas markets in the EU
• Ecofys describes the term "chain of custody": Analys...

In today’s study, we take a look into the pockets of European citizens and find 176 BEUR of potential renewable financing. Enough to cut in half the investment gap of reaching 32% European renewable energy by 2030.

PhD researcher Cristian Pons-Seres de Brauwer from DTU Wind presents his and his colleagues' study Analysing the potential of citizen-financed community renewable energy to drive Europe's low-carbon energy transition.

Cr...

Get dressed for the buzz on sector coupling with professors Brian Elmegaard and Marie Münster from Technical University of Denmark. 

We discuss our work on the white paper Sector Coupling: Concepts, State-of-the-art and Perspectives. The study was commissioned by the European Technology and Innovation Platforms on Smart Networks for Energy Transition - ETIP SNET.

Links to the topics discussed:  

• Numbers on electric storage (bat...

Which transmission architecture is the most beneficial to integrate large shares of renewable energy in the North Sea region? And what are the consequences of the planning horizon when planning such a system towards 2050? 

PhD researcher Juan Gea-Bermudez from DTU Management elaborates these questions in the study Optimal generation and transmission development of the North Sea region: impact of grid architecture and planning horiz...

Research associate Holle Wlokas/Stellenbosch University presents her research on renewable energy in South Africa and beyond - including the TENTRANS project.

In the episode, Holle recommends this social performance podcast.

Illustration: The multi-talented Luigi Bottecchia

Host and producer: Daniel Sneum (dasn@dtu.dk)/DTU Management's Sustainability Division

Music: Raindrops by morgantj (c) copyright 2009 Licensed under a Creative...