Content presentation of the 4th Boysen-TUD-RTG - Cluster F

Impact H2 green

Disciplines involved

Process engineering, landscape architecture, landscape planning, environmental sciences, computer science, economics

Motivation and goals of cluster F

The special feature of this cluster is the example of a reference energy park Autarkic Energy Park, which is used here centrally by all subprojects (SP) and which also represents a cross-cluster connecting element between all participating TP of the 4th Boysen-TUD-RTG. A sustainable hydrogen economy on a large scale - in the sense of a future GreenGas deal - is based on the sufficient availability of green hydrogen from renewable energy (RE) sources, especially wind and solar energy. The essential prerequisite for this is the exploitation of all wind and solar potentials from a technological-systemic, landscape, ecological and economic perspective for energy supply. It is unclear what the scope and impact of this will be on the technical system and the integrability of the generated power, and what interventions in the landscape and ecosystems will be associated with this. These must be assessed in advance as best as possible to avoid potential risks and minimize negative impacts.
This raises a number of systemic, logistical, technical and economic issues. In addition to the impact of the wind and PV plants themselves, questions/consequences regarding expansion, sustainability especially with regard to the materials used and their recyclability, ecological effects, impact on the atmosphere, soil and water balance, the readiness of companies and the impact on the landscape should be answered. To this end, transparent and resilient framework conditions must be defined and simulation models developed for forecasting and subsequent monitoring.

Scientific added value sought in the cluster

In the cluster, the technological-systemic, landscape and ecological impacts are considered cumulatively in an innovative way. The results are combined across subprojects and in an integral sustainability monitoring concept for the evaluation of different RE expansion scenarios. In this way, local and regional expansion potentials are determined, taking into account technological-systemic, landscape and ecological limits.

The subprojects in detail

Cluster F combines a total of five subprojects (SP F1 to SP F5).

In SP F1 - Technological-systemic impact of the hydrogen economy, the first step is to analyze the technological-systemic impact of the further expansion of renewable energies (RE) (wind and PV) for a green hydrogen economy. In a second sub-step, the material and raw material requirements for the further expansion of RE are determined. For this purpose, sustainability concepts and concepts for recycling, as well as for suitable processes and plants will be developed. In the third step, the direct interaction of wind and PV plants with each other as well as with the environment will be investigated. For this purpose, thermodynamic evaluations of exemplary wind and solar projects using the example of the Autarkic Energy Park will be used, taking into account local conditions. The Chair of Energy Process Engineering of the Faculty of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the TU Dresden (Prof. Michael Beckmann) is responsible for the technical supervision.

The use of green hydrogen will be associated with a further expansion of RE. In SP F2 - Landscape and energy transition, empirical investigations will be carried out to determine which factors significantly influence the acceptance of wind energy and PV plants in the landscape and which innovative possibilities exist for an acceptable landscape design. From this, suitable planning strategies for a landscape-related implementation of the hydrogen strategy are to be derived on the basis of the Autarkic Energy Park. This sub-project is supervised by the Chair of Landscape Planning of the Faculty of Architecture at the TU Dresden (Prof. Catrin Schmidt).

In SP F3 - Cumulative effects of renewable energy development on biodiversity spatially-explicit models are developed to predict and assess cumulative ecological effects of renewable energy development. This includes effects on biodiversity, e.g. on planning-relevant species (groups), and on ecosystem properties, e.g. structural and functional connectivity. To this end, spatio-temporal properties and inter- and intra-annual ecosystem dynamics will be considered and captured using remote sensing, which can then serve as the basis for assessing and forecasting cumulative impacts. This innovative assessment approach is expected to significantly improve the design of new renewable energy facilities and allow ecological impacts in the best possible way - without standing in the way of the overall expansion targets for RE. Here, too, close cooperation with the other subprojects on the basis of the aforementioned Autarkic Energy Park plays an important role, so that concrete expansion concepts and scenarios can be taken into account.  The Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at the TU Dresden (Prof. Anna Cord) is responsible for the technical supervision.

The SP F4 - Monitoring concept "Sustainability of H₂ production" evaluates, with the help of metrics on simulation specifications, the sustainability of regional energy networks. Metrics are measures that determine values at inputs and outputs of the simulated energy network, for example minimum input quantities or output quantities. Such energy metrics thus allow questions to be asked about the efficiency of the RE used and answered by the simulation. Based on this, sustainability metrics allow to ask and answer questions about the sustainability of an energy grid and thus to make sustainable decisions for the realization of regional energy grids, especially how the use of RE can be increased in them. In this process, the impacts of the other sub-projects of the cluster are recorded and, at the same time, the energy and sustainability metrics are fed back to them. The self-sufficient energy park serves as a reference example. For simulation, acausal (undirected) simulation languages, such as context-aware Modelica, Dymola and context-aware Petri nets based on them, are used. These languages enable for the first time the modeling of regional energy networks with variable system structures, which is extremely important for the sustainable deployment of RE and goes beyond the state of the art in research. This SP is technically supervised by the Chair of Software Technology of the Faculty of Computer Science at TU Dresden (Prof. Uwe Aßmann).

The fifth SP F5 - Entrepreneurial Impact on Sustainability in the H₂- Economy examines whether the impact on sustainable development, in particular on large-scale sustainability transformation, is addressed by the activities and entrepreneurial approaches, such as business models, of companies in the hydrogen economy. Furthermore, based on the empirical findings, this subproject will elaborate possible theory-based further developments from which companies in the hydrogen industry can derive recommendations for action. The Junior Professorship in Sustainability Assessment and Policy of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the TU Dresden is responsible for the technical supervision of this subproject (Prof. Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva).