What could a sustainable electricity supply in Lower Saxony look like in a few decades, and how can it be achieved? This is the focus of a new interdisciplinary joint project involving the University of Oldenburg and its affiliated Institute OFFIS, among others.
"Sustainable Energy Supply Lower Saxony" (NEDS) is the name of the project, coordinated by the University of Hanover, which will receive 2.5 million euros from the Volkswagen Foundation's Niedersächsisches Vorab programme over the next four years.
The research is based on the ambitious plan to supply the whole of Germany with electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050. The participating scientists from Oldenburg, Hanover, Braunschweig and Göttingen are pursuing a holistic approach, as previous models have mostly focussed on costs and ignored sustainability. Other analyses only consider selected technologies, for example. The NEDS project partners want to close the knowledge gaps in order to be able to draw a complete picture of a future and forward-looking electricity supply for the state of Lower Saxony.
For the NEDS scientists, "sustainability" includes not only the protection of nature and the environment, but also technical aspects, socio-economic effects and psychological issues, such as the acceptance of certain technologies. Together, they want to develop various criteria for this: in co-operation with the disciplines involved, such as high-voltage technology and energy informatics, production, environmental economics or psychology, but also together with consumers. They will be able to contribute their views at a public symposium in Hanover in November, which is also the official launch of the project.
Oldenburg post-growth economist Prof Dr Niko Paech, holder of the Chair of Production and Environment, sees the holistic approach as a decisive advantage of the project. He believes that this is so important "because it not only focuses on technical change, but also includes the necessary socio-ecological change in Lower Saxony's energy system".
Oldenburg computing scientists Prof. Dr Michael Sonnenschein and Prof. Dr Sebastian Lehnhoff emphasise the role of energy informatics as a cross-sectional discipline: it creates knowledge and system intelligence by intelligently bringing together the interdisciplinary models and scenarios of a sustainable power supply. Sonnenschein teaches environmental informatics at the University of Oldenburg, while Lehnhoff is an expert in smart grids.