15 April 2011 | General
Reflecting on Sustainable Energy
This week was the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2011 (EUSEW) and hundreds of events have been organised in 44 countries to mark this important part of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign. COST reflects on its support...
This year’s events covered a range of issues, including: energy efficiency, renewable energy solutions (e.g. biomass, solar, and wind energy), reductions of greenhouse emissions, and sustainable energy for transport. EUSEW 2011 largely focused on "Energy efficiency" as a main policy theme and the message contributed to the recently adopted EU Energy strategy 2020 and Energy Efficiency Plan.
The COST contribution
This week has prompted us to look at the support COST has given to the area of energy sustainability and efficiency in building for the future through its COST Actions or otherwise.
Within the TUD Domain, COST Action 356, which finished in January 2010, worked towards the definition of a measurable environmentally sustainable transport, designing harmonised and scientifically sound methods to build better environmental indices by using existing European indices, and to build methods to be applied to the decision-making process of the transport sector in the different European countries.
In 2009, COST ran a significant interdisicplinary science initiative on the energy-water nexus - managing the links between energy and water for a sustainable future. This event series highlighted the importance of cooperation within Europe and with countries from around the world, incorporating scholars, policy makers and people from within the industries. It laid down policy recommendations and research projects as part of the results of the event.
Harnessing the weather as a means to provide sustainable energy is clearly a key component in planning for the future. Within the ESSEM Domain, COST Action ES1002 is looking to this future and how to meet its demands. As wind and solar energy is strongly dependent on highly variable weather processes, increased penetration rates will also lead to strong fluctuations in the electricity grid which need to be balanced and proper and specific forecasting of 'energy weather' is a key component for this. The Action is due to end in November 2014, and their two projected main outcomes look exciting: firstly, to develop dedicated post-processing algorithms coupled with weather prediction models and measurement data especially remote sensing observations; secondly to investigate the difficult relationship between the highly intermittent weather dependent power production and the energy distribution towards end users.
Other successful ongoing examples are COST Action FP0902 on Development and Harmonisation of New Operational Research and Assessment Procedures for Sustainable Forest Biomass Supply for the FPS Domain as well as the ICT Domain's COST Action IC0804 on Energy Efficiency in Large Scale Distributed Systems.
As EUSEW 2011 draws to a close, it is important to reflect how far we have come in Europe in the vital area of sustainable energy in order to be able to plan for our future, whilst recognising that there is still work to be done.
COST is proud to have supported Actions and events dealing with this topic, and looks forward to the strides that, together, we are going to be able to make to ensure the realisation of this week's slogan: "Smart energy for a sustainable future".
