Two papers with the participation of COAST staff were presented and published at the 28th IEEE ICE/ITMC & 31st IAMOT Conference IEEE.
At the end of the COBEN project, Antonia Krebs and Björn Koch examined the role of enablers in a community-based energy initiative (Civic Energy Initiative), analysed their function and relevance and summarised them in the publication "Enabling the citizen-driven renewable energy transition". Antonia Krebs presented the work on site at the conference in Lille in June 2022 and answered questions from the audience.
Abstract
Community energy structures do not only present a crucial alternative to the current predominant fossil-based energy landscape, but also create additional economic, social, and environmental benefits to the communities involved. However, it is often challenging to get citizen-led renewable energy initiatives off the ground due to complex regulatory and policy contexts, limited access to information and finance, and the existing centralised fossil-based energy market structures. This can hinder the successful uptake of community-driven renewable energy systems. To foster the renewable energy transition, various enablers are needed to overcome those barriers in the development of community energy business models. To establish a robust support structure for the uptake of civic energy, this paper identifies enabling factors, based on five years of piloting over 30 various civic energy business models throughout seven European states. A review of these enabling factors has revealed five main civic energy enabler clusters: Legal frameworks, Knowledge, Finance, Management, and Acceptance. This paper analyses the civic energy enablers' functions and relevance for the successful development of community-based energy initiatives and recommends next steps forward.
Fernando Peñaherrera, Maria Davila, Alexandra Pehlken and Björn Koch have taken a closer look at the environmental impact of battery electric vehicles from a criticalityperspectivein their publication "Quantifying the Environmental Impacts of Battery Electric Vehicles from a Criticality Perspective". The results show how the inclusion of the criticality of raw materials in the methods of an impact assessment affects the outcome of the analysis of whether battery electric vehicles are an environmentally sustainable alternative to vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Abstract
Electric vehicles have become the most promising alternative to internal combustion engine cars for the current mobility transition from fossil-fuels. Within them, battery electric vehicles appear to be the chosen technological solution, which mostly use lithium-ion batteries. This has increased the demand for such batteries exponentially, and consequently for the raw materials to manufacture them. To assess the sustainability of this transition, holistic analyses are required, for which Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are used. Nevertheless, LCA runs short in evaluating the impact of critical resource consumption. The recommended indicator by the European Commission is the Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), but it is insufficient. To address this gap, this paper presents a solution by applying a set of indicators which considers criticality of materials. It uses two methods to characterise the consumption of critical raw material: the Criticality Weighted ADP for the Economic Importance (CWADP) and the weighted GeoPolitical-related Supply Risk (GeoPolRisk/P). To exhibit the functionality of these methods, a case study is presented for transportation of passenger cars, including internal combustion vehicles, and three types of battery electric vehicles. For the battery electric vehicles, three different types of lithium-ion batteries are taken into account. The results show how including criticality of raw materials in the impact assessment methods changes the outcome of the analysis on whether battery electric vehicles are an environmentally sustainable alternative to internal combustion vehicles. Both methods show that battery electric vehicles have a higher consumption of critical raw materials. While battery electric cars present a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of up to 77% per km of transportation, the use of economically important critical materials is increased up to 210%, and the use of critical materials with supply risk is increased up to 163%. The increased use of critical materials could cause potential problems with concurring markets for use of precious metals and create raw material supply chain bottlenecks for lithium and cobalt.