At today’s session of the UNECE Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency in Geneva, the groups’ Vice-Chair and EEP Head of International Affairs and Strategy Stefan M. Buettner explained representatives of member countries of the United Nations Regional Commission for Europe (UNECE), businesses and NGOs about the need to incorporate flexibilisation of the energy demand into the energy transition equation.
“With the increasing volatility of supply due to an increasing share of renewables in the mix it is an impediment to consider measures of energy flexibility alongside the ambitions to increase energy efficiency”, so Buettner. With support of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, EEP explores in the SynErgie-Project routes to a synchronized and energy-adaptive production technology for the flexible adjustment of manufacturing processes to a volatile energy supply.
Together with more than 90 partners – 40 from industry – the SynErgie-consortium explores what types of potentials exist in what form, how often and in what sectors. This is to identify flexibility potentials that are technologically feasible, economic and implementable.
Mr. Buettner further lines out that “the flexibility potentials within the aluminium industry alone add up to 13,200 MWh – equivalent to 1/3 of Germanys’ total pump storage capacity. According to the Energy Efficiency Barometer of Industry (#EEBarometer), the appetite for flexibility increases with company size and varies a lot across manufacturing sectors.”
Already now, so Buettner “3 out of 4 companies in the automotive sector do already consider energy flexibility of future relevance for their company. Also the demand-sides’ view on energy flexibility and energy efficiency need to be explored better across borders and language which is why we use the opportunity today to launch the #EE Barometer for companies in the Russian language area.”
Activating the demand side and helping them to overcome barriers to investment into energy efficiency played an essential role in the discussion during which EEPs EEFIG-member Mr. Buettner summarized the outcomes of the latest #EEFIG meeting on industrial energy efficiency that EEP helped to shape. Concluding the two-day meeting of the UNECE group of experts on Energy Efficiency (#UNECE GEEE), the group appreciated that the exchange with EEFIG has been initiated and looks forward to the further implementation of the work plan and the 9 th Forum on Energy for Sustainable Development in 2018.
Tapping into the energy flexibility potentials to make the best out of a changing energy system (#SynErgie), identifying in collaboration with the industrial demand-side what matters (#EEBarometer) and finding solutions to challenges on the technical level (#EEFIG) and in implementation are topics the Institute for Energy Efficiency in Production (EEP) continues to be committed and a competent partner in.
