Incorporating Safety-II in future gas systems

This article studies safety management in future gas systems. It is structured around the compatibility of its technological and institutional coordination. We identify how the current mode of safety management is not in harmony with increasingly complex technological and institutional arrangements, and combine safety science with...

Exploring industrial community energy systems: A missing link in the industrial energy transition?

The transition to renewable energy sources affects all sectors of society, including the industrial sector. Besides climate policy ambitions and other concerns regarding the social and environmental acceptability of energy provision, the transition to renewables may also improve the availability and affordability of energy services. The latter...

Strategic uses for ancillary bioenergy in a carbon-neutral and fossil-free 2050 European energy system

Biomass is a growing renewable energy source in Europe and is envisioned to play a role for realising carbon neutrality, predominantly using dedicated energy crops. However, dedicated biomass is controversial for reasons including its competition with food production or its land-use and emissions impacts. Here we examine the potential role of a...

Energy Security of Thermal Energy Communities

This thesis aims to support the design and implementation of energy-secure thermal energy communities (TEC) by investigating their technical, behavioural and institutional settings through a collective action perspective. The thesis shows that energy-secure TEC initiatives are collective energy systems with particular characteristics and...

Chances for the upscaling of living-cost neutral renovations in the Netherlands

Many multi-owned condominiums need an energy renovation, but in practice the number of such renovations is low. Dutch policy emphasizes the need to search for cost-neutral renovation solutions. This study therefore examined how the number of living-cost neutral renovations of buildings owned by assemblies of homeowners in the Netherlands can be...

Policy instruments for energy-efficient renovations at district level

IEA EBC Annex 75 aims to investigate, amongst other policy for reducing carbon emissions and energy use in buildings at district level, combining both energy efficiency measures and renewable energy measures. Particularly policy instruments deployed at the local level targeting owners and investors could increase residential building renovation...

On the discovery and enactment of positive socio-ecological tipping points: insights from energy systems interventions in Bangladesh and Indonesia

Notions, such as leverage points, sensitive interventions, social tipping points, transformational tipping points, and positive tipping points, are increasingly attracting attention within sustainability science. However, they are also creating confusion and unresolved questions about how to apply these concepts when dealing with urgent...

Design principles for efficient photoelectrodes in solar rechargeable redox flow cell applications

Recent advances in photoelectrochemical redox flow cells, such as solar redox flow batteries, have received much attention as an alternative integrated technology for simultaneous conversion and storage of solar energy. Theoretically, it has been reported that even single- photon devices can demonstrate unbiased photo-charging with high solar-to...

Warping NMPC for online generation and tracking of optimal trajectories

Generation of feasible and optimal reference trajectories is crucial in tracking Nonlinear Model Predictive Control. Especially, for stability and optimality in presence of a time varying parameter, adaptation of the tracking trajectory has to be implemented. General approaches are real-time generation of trajectories or switching between a...

The geopolitics of renewables; exploring the political implications of renewable energy systems

This paper explores the potential political implications of the geographic and technical characteristics of renewable energy systems. This is done through a thought experiment that imagines a purely renewable based energy system, keeping all else equal. We start by noting that all countries have access to some form of renewable energy, though...

The geopolitics of renewables: A mere shift or landslide in energy dependencies?

Renewable energy sources are often hailed as the panacea for a plethora of challenges associated with the use of fossil fuels. Partly for good reasons; while the utilization of renewables diminishes energy scarcity and lowers various kinds of pollution, their potential to address energy related geopolitical tensions among producer, consumer, and...

Keeping an eye on reliability: The organizational requirements of future renewable energy systems

The reliable operation of energy infrastructures is more than just a technical matter. It is also dependent upon the organizational structure that enables and constrains entities in their management of operations. Yet this lesson seems forgotten in our planning of future renewable energy systems. There, focus is on technical development, market...