The PAC Scenario, representing the voice of the European civil society organisations and developed under the guidance of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe and European Environmental Bureau (EEB), shows that through energy efficiency gains, energy saving potentials and a massive build-up of renewable energy sources, a deep and rapid decarbonisation is possible. Open questions remain regarding infrastructural needs and technological solutions to complete this decarbonisation pathway while also optimising available resources.
This question was a starting point that in 2021 brought Renewables Grid Initiative (RGI) and Hitachi Energy together to better understand the infrastructural challenges and opportunities related to a decarbonised energy system. Months of discussions between both partners, several bilateral consultations with European stakeholders, and a number of modelling runs carried out by Hitachi Energy eventually yielded preliminary modelling results which we aimed to discuss with other energy system modellers, strategists and planning experts.
To that end, at the beginning of February 2022 RGI and Hitachi Energy co-organised an online Modellers’ Exchange Workshop ‘‘Accelerating full decarbonisation: Resource optimisation in energy infrastructure planning’’ that brought together more than thirty participants from across Europe and beyond. This report summarises the outcome of this workshop. It introduces the optimal capacity expansion planning model developed by Hitachi Energy, presents the main initial findings and gives an overview of the discussions held with the invited guests.
We believe that this is just a beginning of a very exciting journey that will not only allow us to address many questions and uncertainties related to an accelerated decarbonisation, resource optimisation, and increased security of the European energy system, but will hopefully grow into a broader collaborative endeavour. We are therefore happy to receive further feedback from the readers of this report and look forward to participating in deeper and targeted conversations in the upcoming months.
