Overview
The challenge of the project consists of developing models, methods and technologies to assist decision makers and companies in making the Portuguese Centro Region truly sustainable as far as energy and mobility are concerned.
The project addresses energy and mobility issues for sustainable regions, structured along five main work packages, dealing with smart use of energy in cities, sustainable mobility, energy efficiency in buildings, clean energy supply, and sustainability assessment and planning for sustainability.
Strongly rooted on a solid background of collaborative work within the research team and new challenging R&D avenues for which an interdisciplinary approach is a keystone, the R&D carried out in the EMSURE – Energy and Mobility for Sustainable Regions project encompasses the following main topics:
- characterisation and modelling of energy resources, both supply-side and demand-side resources;
- design and assessment of integrated energy management strategies taking into account the electric grid, local generation, thermal and electric (including electric vehicles) energy storage and interruptible/shiftable loads;
- modelling and simulation of an energy management system able to manage one's home or small business energy usage in real-time endowed with algorithms to coordinate the energy demand, energy storage, local generation and selling back to the grid according to price signals, comfort requirements, weather conditions and renewable availability;
- models and decision support tools for retrofitting planning of existing buildings;
- technological solutions and assessment methods for near-zero energy buildings;
- assessment of the geothermal potential for power production in target areas in Centro Region;
- models for studying the feasibility of production of biofuels from forest residues;
- transport network planning models and methods; land use transport simulation;
- new urban transportation modes and services planning; traffic engineering design;
- road maintenance management models and methods.
The studies on these topics required the sustainability assessment of planning models and methods in order to evaluate thoroughly the potential merits of scale implementation besides pilot projects.
This sustainability assessment required the conceptual development of new methodological approaches, thus fostering theory and methodology advances, in the areas of multi-criteria decision analysis, extended life cycle assessment, multi-objective optimisation, cost-benefit analysis, input-output analysis as well as energy-based economic growth and capital budgeting decisions.
Funding
Results
Project results have been disseminated in a number of scientific papers, books, thesis and reports. Main references are available on the following URL:
http://www.uc.pt/en/efs/research/emsure/publications