Keynote Smart Energy Systems – A European Perspective by Ariane Sutor , Siemens AG Joint ERCIM Actions

ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. Published quarterly, it reports on joint actions of the ERCIM partners, and aims to reflect the contribution made by ERCIM to the European Community in Information Technology and Applied Mathematics. Through short articles and news items, it provides a forum for the exchange of information between the institutes and also with the wider scientific community. This issue has a circulation of about 8,500 copies. The printed version of ERCIM News has a production cost of €8 per copy. Subscription is currently available free of charge. The European Union has adopted ambitious energy and climate change objectives to be achieved by the year 2020: greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 20% while the share of renewable energy is to be increased and energy efficiency to be improved by this amount. Furthermore, the EU has made a long term commitment to cut emissions by at least 80% by 2050. So far the current strategies are unlikely to achieve all 2020 targets; whilst the goal to increase the share of renewables seems to be attainable, we are likely to fail on the improvement of efficiency. Also, the strategies in place seem inadequate to meet the longer term challenges. Use of renewable energy is still limited because the development of efficient energy transport is lagging. The internal energy market is still fragmented and needs improvement regarding transparency, accessibility and choice. Fragmentation of national regulation limits companies to act on multinational markets and sets barriers to fair competition. The EU must take urgent action to select the right tools to make the energy change happen and to move towards a sustainable energy future. The current situation exhibits a number of major challenges. Large-scale renewable energy generation is currently largely based on wind, and plants may be installed far from existing power infrastructure, thus connection to the grid can present a challenge. Owing to the inherent variability and weather dependence of energy production and the limited capacity for energy storage, balancing supply and demand becomes also far more difficult. The deployment of distributed energy resources can mitigate the uncertainties connected to large plants and at the same time exploit the potential of dispersed resources, although the integration of distributed energy resources is extremely challenging both from a market and a technical point of view. Decentralization supports scalability and robustness and facilitates access to the energy market for prosumers, …