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News from energy research: spring chickens and mature ideas

Unusual new projects are linking research for the energy transition with sustainability. For example, resource-conserving materials for batteries are being tested, as are other innovations to cut carbon emissions.

Budding famous researchers need to start practising early: “Jugend forscht“ is Germany’s best-known science competition for young people. Each year, the foundation Stiftung Jugend forscht e.V. aims to inspire young people with a thirst for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and to foster talent in these fields. There are 120 competitions for this across Germany.

The Economic Affairs Ministry also awards prizes to promising young ideas and offers a special Jugend forscht prize each year for ideas relating to the energy transition in the context of the 7th Energy Research Programme. In 2021, the special prize went to Mariella Benkenstein and Marit Kock: the two 17-year-olds from Louisenlund boarding school in Schleswig-Holstein have spent the last two-and-a-half years working on a lower-cost, green version of the “redox flow” battery. In this type of battery, the electricity is stored in conductive fluids contained in two separate tanks. In most cases, a solution of vanadium, the heavy metal, is used; its price fluctuates greatly and it can be poisonous. The two young researchers have now shown that this type of battery can also work using carbon dioxide in a solution and water.

More Regulatory Sandboxes for the Energy Transition launched

The Economic Affairs Ministry is using the Regulatory Sandboxes for the Energy Transition to foster particularly mature research concepts for the energy supply of the future. Eight of these regulatory sandboxes have now been launched. They focus on energy-optimised neighbourhoods, hydrogen technologies, and forging connections between the electricity, heat and transport consumption sectors. Two new regulatory sandboxes were added in May 2021:

In the DELTA regulatory sandbox, a team of researchers aims to connect up and optimise an urban energy system. The reason for this is that urban energy systems are of great importance if Germany is to attain its climate targets, since towns and cities have a high energy density and complex energy flows. This also implies that a lot of carbon emissions can be saved here. The DELTA team aims to cut carbon emissions via reduced consumption, more flexible electricity generation, and more efficient use of industrial waste heat. To this end, a residential area, an industrial site, urban utilities and public transport depots are to be connected by means of transmission lines and storage units for electricity, gas, heat and hydrogen, and the energy flows are to be optimised by means of digital controls.

In the Regulatory Sandboxes for the Energy Transition entitled “Large-scale heat pumps in district heating networks – installation, operation, monitoring and system integration”, experts are using large-scale heat pumps to integrate heat sources at differently structured sites into district heating networks. The research team wants to use the project to show how this can be done more efficiently and economically. In this way, they want to help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the supply of heat. At the same time, the experts are trialling the practicality of such pumps on-site. The background to this is the problem that large-scale heat pumps cannot yet be operated economically in Germany without funding, and there is a lack of knowledge about the best way to integrate them into the energy system.

Combining resource efficiency and the energy transition

A new field of research in the 7th Energy Research Programme of the Federal Government is the topic “Resource efficiency in the context of the energy transition”. Here, scientists are working on the entire life-cycle of technologies, products and materials which involve energy-intensive extraction or which are needed for the energy supply. The work is focusing on environmentally friendly recycling and the question of how a straight “life line” of projects can be turned into a circular cycle. In this way, energy technologies might be designed not merely to be renewable and low-carbon, but also to be sustainable. After all, an energy transition without sustainability is like a soccer game without goals. “SUMATRA” is the first research project to be launched in this field, starting in June.