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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Sustainable Energy Systems
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1392761
This article is part of the Research Topic New Trends in Energy-Economy-Environment System View all 22 articles
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Environmentally sustainable and economically viable processes and energy systems are imperative to a successful energy transition. Often, design configurations are derived from a global perspective, in which the individual needs and interests of actors within the system are overlooked. This work proposes an approach for designing a system considering its entire scope and acknowledging the individual actors within the system. System solutions are generated from the perspective of a universal decision-maker who is aware of the whole system, and the obtained solution space is analyzed regarding implications for the individual actors. Thereby, prices of internal exchanges between actors that would allow the realization of the optimal integrated system solution while granting each actor their economic objectives are derived. The approach is demonstrated in three distinct case studies varying in size: a bio-based industry, a renewable energy community, and a national energy system. All case studies yield system configurations allowing the actors to profit from economic benefits emerging from synergies of the cooperation.Further research must delve into diverse system settings and actor paradigms to enhance the robustness and applicability of the derived insights.
Keywords: Energy system design, energy transition, energy system optimization, multi-actor modeling, Internal pricing, Energy Hubs
Received: 28 Feb 2024; Accepted: 06 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Granacher, Schnidrig, Chuat, Lepour, Terrier, Castro-Amoedo and Marechal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Francois M. A. Marechal, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, 1015, Vaud, Switzerland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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