The energy transition poses major challenges for decision-makers. Energy systems analysis supports energy planning and decision-making by generating insights into energy systems, for instance through energy systems models. At the same time, many decision-makers and stakeholders are involved in the energy transition, all of whom have different and potentially conflicting interests. This results in further complexities for decision-making, which many traditional energy systems models with a purely techno-economic focus cannot address adequately.

The “Multi-criteria energy systems analysis” group therefore develops and applies methods for considering multiple decision criteria in energy systems analysis to support decision-making for the energy transition. In particular, it advances and uses approaches from operational research, e.g. multi-objective optimisation and modelling to generate alternatives, and links them with energy systems optimisation models ranging across sectors and scales. We also use these approaches to inform the development of new technologies with low technology readiness level by inverting traditional energy systems models, i.e. by transforming highly uncertain input parameters into decision variables.

Five multi-criteria approaches used in energy systems modelling, based on the link between criteria and optimisation problem

1 / 5

Pareto fronts between costs, carbon emissions and thermal comfort (PPD) for a residential building and three different clothing scenarios (blue, grey, red)

2 / 5

Modelling to generate alternatives (MGA)-like methods reveal a broad range of alternative solutions with diverse system designs that achieve almost the optimal objective value(s)

3 / 5

Illustration of the newly developed method MGPA that links multi-objective optimisation and modelling to generate alternatives to explore diverse solutions slightly “behind” the Pareto front

4 / 5

In the MOIn project, we invert energy system models to deal with the enormous uncertainty of new technologies with low Technology Readiness Level and inform developers about system needs

5 / 5

Previous

Next