Subtopic Technology case studies

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

CCS is regarded an attractive option for decarbonising energy supply and for climate protection allowing to maintain the extraction of fossil fuels. Critics fear that the technology is too costly, that environmental burdens are too massive and that deploying CCS prevents the rapid switch to renewable energies.

A case study on CCS aims at assessing the technical, environmental, economic and societal potential of the technology as an important element of a German energy transition strategy. Accordingly, the focus is on the interdependencies and repercussions to the energy system, e.g. resource demands, emissions and costs as well as supply security. Additionally, special attention is given to societal concerns by acceptance analysis.

Refused Derived Fuels (RDF)

Energy conversion processes using RDF are still no constituent part of the energy system. The power plant concept under investigation aims to develop a medium-sized competitive CHP (20–50 MW) using either RDF solely or jointly with other energy carriers like geothermal energy. A main impediment of the new technology is the fact that the relevant supply of energy carriers is fluctuating over the year, diverges regionally and is of varying quality. The study focuses on the analysis of economic impacts as well as the material and energy flows, the environment effects and resource availability of different variations of the concept on selected regions emphasising especially the competitive, i.e. non-energy use, of the possible inputs.

In the future, other (technical) options, e.g. electric mobility, could be taken into consideration.