Pathfinder – Exploring future demands, assessing potential for innovations to meet those demands and identifying barriers to their deployment.
Pan-European, co-ordinated from Germany
Bayer MaterialScience (BMS)
Karen Perrey (BMS)
Industrial Symbiosis
Laborelec / GDF Suez (GDF)
On the path forward towards a decarbonized future, renewable energy plays a central role. It is clear and current reality that increasing shares of renewable energy (i.e. wind and solar based) result in increasing volatility of electricity supply and its market behavior. In order to develop a new dynamic equilibrium of supply/demand balances, sufficient ability for energy storage and/or flexibilization of demand are required. As satisfying storage systems are not economically available and probably will not be within a short- until midterm perspective, flexible operation of huge electricity/energy consumers could be an attractive, pragmatic and feasible opportunity.
The FlexInd project will identify opportunities for flexibilization of major energy consuming industries and evaluate promising options. This includes the differentiation in: existing opportunities, options for debottlenecking (brown field) as well as exploring general concepts for green field investments. It will be the basis for individual private investment decisions and furthermore, it will be a tool for macro-economic optimization of a sustainable supply/demand in Europe. In addition, indications will be given for further innovation that is required.