What are the best infrastructure and market for energy?

The robust energy infrastructure that we enjoy today is crucially important to the public and industry alike. But tensions are emerging in the form of climate change, the decline in the security of supply of raw materials for energy production, the increasing fluctuations in the prices of these energy feedstocks, a shifting product portfolio and evolving geopolitical relationships.

Will we switch to decentralised electricity production? Is it advisable to privatise public utilities? What is the more effective way of curbing CO2 emissions: a tax on CO2 emissions or the current CO2 emission rights trading system? Can we forearm ourselves against energy price and supply uncertainties? What role does public acceptance play? Do we think Dutch, European or global? These developments demand strategic assessments and a new energy infrastructure and energy market.  

In the ideal scenario, the energy market and infrastructure are either easily adapted or impervious to the unpredictable changes that lie ahead. The most important attributes are flexibility and robustness. 

 

How is TU Delft contributing?

Technology-based policy research

With the aid of models, simulations and gaming, the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management is studying the dynamic long-term behaviour of infrastructures in different scenarios. The study includes both the technical infrastructures (cables, pipes, equipment) and the social and economic aspects (legislation and regulations, institutions, market systems). Among the research themes are: 

CO2

Energy market models indicate that a CO2 tax is a considerably cheaper and more effective instrument for reducing CO2 emissions than the present emission rights trading system. Read more about the research. 

Electricity

Measures aimed at making the energy supply more sustainable, decentralised electricity generation, the fragmentation of the electricity networks and suppliers, privatisation, European market integration. The electricity sector is undergoing fundamental changes. For example, households that install solar panels can soon become electricity producers and electric cars may possibly be used for storing electricity.

Many of these developments require the networks to be made more intelligent by means of smart metering. In this situation it is particularly important that we continue to safeguard the privacy of consumers and the safety and stability of the infrastructure as a whole. 

How these changes take place and how government steers them are important research questions. The possibilities that government has to influence the numerous players in the electricity market, each of which only controls a small part of it, are mainly indirect. 

TU Delft is investigating these change processes at all levels of scale: from households to European markets, both in the short term (e.g. the optimisation of electricity production in households) and the long term (e.g. the reduction of CO2 emissions). 

Synthesis gas

The multi-fuel synthesis gas infrastructure offers a promising design for a new energy infrastructure. Under this system, gasifiers produce synthesis gas − the common energy carrier − from an optional mix of coal, oil, gas, biomass and waste streams. Synthesis gas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen which can be converted into electricity, heat, fuel for the transport sector and bulk chemical products. In addition, it is possible to capture CO2 pre-combustion, meaning that the carbon dioxide is extracted from the synthesis gas before it is burnt, which is more efficient than post-combustion capture of CO2 from chimneys.

A synthesis gas infrastructure can provide the Netherlands with a robust, sustainable and flexible energy infrastructure which is less dependent on specific feedstocks and fluctuating raw material prices. Read more about the research.

Ethical aspects of energy

What innovations in energy systems require in order to be successful ­− apart from coordination and alignment with energy demand, the institutions and the market system − is public acceptance. A very different set of public values may operate at regional level than at national level. An example of this phenomenon is the reaction of the inhabitants of Barendrecht to the Dutch government's plans to store CO2 under their town. But ethical questions also arise in other areas. How, for example, are such public values as security of supply, affordability and sustainability to be safeguarded in a privatised utility sector? Read more about the research.

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