SURE

Improving the resilience of Switzerland’s energy supply: possible transition pathways as well as future disruptive events, related uncertainties and the implications for the energy system and society.

In view of a system transformation to a much higher renewable energy share, the proposed project addresses the need for an integrated assessment of sustainability and resilience, treating the multiple dimensions of environment, use of natural resources, public health, economics, security of supply, and social well-being. Extending existing research in this field, a novel quantitative model- and data-based framework will be developed and applied based on combining holistic systemic approaches, comprehensive indicator databases, energy infrastructure and system modelling, and representing social and policy aspects.

Focusing on Swiss national developments as well as selected regional case studies, resilience will be analysed with a long-term perspective (including 2035 and 2050 as focus years) with a scenario approach that simulates transition pathways as well as future disruptive events (using shock scenarios with disruptions at different temporal scales), related uncertainties and the implications for the energy system and society.

The results feed into a stakeholder-informed multi-objective decision analysis to develop strategies and measures to design the energy system more robust against disruptions and to allow for rapid recovery in case a disruption takes place. The project’s output will be manifold including a web-based platform backed by the comprehensive analytical framework that helps a broad audience to understand interdependencies of the various dimensions of sustainability and resilience in a prospective way as well as it aims to illustrate the trade-offs between competing objectives related to a sustainable and resilient energy sector transformation. Ultimately the project will provide recommendations and guidelines to policy makers, technology developers and businesses on the design of their respective strategies towards a more sustainable and resilient energy future.

Cooperation Partners:

Verband Schweizerischer Elektrizitätsunternehmen
Verband der Schweizerischen Gasindustrie
Avenergy Suisse AVENER Association
GAZNAT SA GAZNAT
World Energy Council Switzerland
swisscleantech SCT Association
Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE)
Ticino Cantonal office of air, climate and renewable energies
Ticino Cantonal office of Energy
Azienda Elettrica Ticinese AET Canton
Enerti SA ENERTI
Associatioon TicinoEnergia
Parliamentary commission on Environment, Land planning and Energy
Schweizerische Bundesbahnen
Industrielle Werke Basel IWB
City of Zurich
Department der Industriellen Betriebe

I am contributing to this research with my doctoral project under the supervision of Prof. Claudia Binder and Dr. Aristide Athanassiadis.