Municipal Energy System Planning: New Approaches, Applications and Future Research Needs

Dear Colleagues,

There is a wide scientific consensus on the need to decarbonize the energy system, which is responsible for over 90% of greenhouse gas emissions. Around 80% of the global population lives in cities, where they spend much of their time in buildings. In addition, large capacities of renewable energy technologies are installed decentrally, especially by private individuals, farmers, and energy cooperatives. Whilst the heating/cooling sector is a prime target for decarbonisation because of its significant proportion of energy demand, traditionally distinct energy vectors such as gas, electricity, and heat are becoming more integrated. Decentralised multi-energy systems are therefore key for a successful energy transition, but several challenges still need to be overcome. For example, the wide variety of available measures as well as the number of involved parties result in a high degree of complexity, which makes energy system models indispensable. These models are able to quantify the trade-offs and interactions between individual measures, as well account for different actor’s perspectives.

As well as techno-economic approaches to model energy systems, researchers are increasingly aiming to consider social dimensions of energy futures. Substantial progress has been made recently in understanding, for example, how individuals perceive the energy demand and savings associated with typical measures, the socioeconomic factors that affect how households spend their time and invest in energy-related products, the unequal impacts that rising energy prices may have on different socio-economic groups, and attitudes towards different low-carbon technologies. Especially in the context of the longer-term energy transition and scenarios, there is a  need to improve our understanding of these dimensions.

Hence, there is a large and growing literature on socio-technical energy transitions, with substantial attention devoted to the interaction of overlapping systems (e.g., social, financial/economic, energy-political, technical, etc.). Some approaches specifically address the weaknesses encapsulated in normative neoclassicial economics frameworks (for example, the perfect economically rational behaviour of agents within perfect markets, with homogenous anticipations of the future), thereby representing a more realistic depiction of transition pathways that emerge in reality. In addition, expert elicitation can be employed in order to reduce the possible range of future scenarios and better understand the associated risk and uncertainty.

Some of the energy system analyses carried out in this context increasingly account for public acceptance and therefore feasibility beyond the purely technical, for example, in terms of the visual impact of onshore wind in Austria, Baden-Württemberg and Denmark. Another approach to account for user preferences is to combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Here, too, future improvements should incorporate more satisfactory considerations of uncertainties, as well as accounting for differences in perspectives between central decision makers in the community and individual households.

This Special Issue focusses on these important areas of research for enabling the energy transition within municipalities. Contributions are especially but not only encouraged to address the following topics:

• Reviews of energy system planning tools and approaches for municipal energy systems;
• New, transferable, preferably open-source models and methods for municipal energy planning;
• Approaches to GIS analyses of resource potentials for low-carbon energies in municipalities;
• New methodological frameworks to include quantitative and qualitative approaches to modelling;
• Innovative methods to include different perspectives within energy modelling tools;
• Applications and validations of new and existing municipal energy planning tools in real-world environments;
• Monitoring of municipal energy concept implementation for improved modelling methods;
• Addressing problematic sectors such as transport and industry within a municipal planning context;
• Development and assessment of new business models for decentralised low-carbon technology deployment;
• Coupling of municipal energy planning tools with additional and/or different approaches at multiple scales, in order to align objectives and pathways, as well as other sectors such as water, land, and air quality;
• Use of remote sensing methods to derive input data for municipal energy planning;
• Standardising approaches to municipal energy planning based on common data formats;
• Addressing specific challenges in municipal energy system modelling:
  • Accounting for energy infrastructure;
  • Availability or insufficient quality data;
  • Reconciling competing and/or contradictory objectives;
  • Dealing with uncertainty throughout the modelling process.

Prof. Russell McKenna
Dr. Stefan Petrović
Guest Editors

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• municipal energy planning
• energy system modelling
• model coupling
• GIS
• sector coupling