It is now widely acknowledged and agreed upon that the energy transition process must necessarily involve different sectors in an integrated way in order to take full advantage of the energy produced from an increasing share of renewable energy sources. Designing integrated energy systems based on energy transformation and storage technologies in different energy carriers (e.g., electricity, gas, heat) is thus essential to achieve ambitious sustainability goals. This requires modeling tools capable of (i) characterizing the area under consideration, (ii) representing the connections between different energy carriers and land resources, (iii) assessing the performance of different technology mixes against multiple indicators, and (iv) identifying a priori the most efficient solutions considering multiple sustainability aspects.
Against this backdrop, the main objective of the activities carried out in this three-year period was to develop a modeling chain composed of different tools aimed at supporting decision makers in territorial energy planning at the local scale. These tools include TOTEM (Territory Overview Tool for Energy Modelling) for energy characterization of the territory; the Calliope model for identifying optimal planning solutions with respect to environmental and economic sustainability objectives; and an MCA-CBA analysis tool for evaluating Pareto optimal alternatives.
In particular, building on what had already been developed in previous years, during this year we focused on improving the modeling chain through (i) the development of additional modules of TOTEM and its web version, (ii) the completion of the wizard to connect TOTEM to the Calliope model and visualize the results of the multienergy analysis, and (iii) the inclusion of the MCA-CBA analysis tool within the modeling chain.
In addition, we focused on the implementation of the case study related to energy planning in Sulcis Iglesiente. Not only did the results obtained (included in a Geohistory accessible from the Energy and Territory Geoportal) provide an overview of the most sustainable energy system development alternatives for the specific case study analyzed, but they also allowed us to verify the real effectiveness of the modeling chain to deal with territorial energy planning issues in a robust and structured way.