Abstract
According to the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the European energy supply must be fully decarbonised by 2050. For the power sector, a massive deployment of decentralised renewable technologies will be required to provide carbon-free electricity. However, other energy-intensive sectors such as gas, heat, transport, and the industrial sectors are more challenging to decarbonise, since they rely mostly on liquid and gaseous fuels. Consequently, exploiting the synergies between energy vectors in an integrated, multi-energy system represents an opportunity for a cost-effective transition towards a carbon-free economy. The objective of this study is to provide insights on the coupling of power and residential heat supply systems in a centralised multi-energy system by developing a linear program that optimises the interactions between energy carriers such as electricity, heat, hydrogen, biomass, and methane to minimise the long-term investments in generation and storage assets. The tool was then applied to a case study for a carbon-neutral energy supply in the Brussels-Capital Region in 2050, and conclusions were drawn on the potential of sector coupling to determine the optimal supply system configuration. The conclusions were that the central planning and operation of a coupled system could induce an annual cost reduction of ownership and operation of more than 23% compared to the individual management of the power and residential heat sectors. The cost reduction reaches 30.9% if one further considers centralised, district-level storage and distribution of heat in district heating systems. Finally, it was concluded that the intermittent renewable energy infeed required along biomass to meet the total energy demand is significantly reduced in the optimal scenario. Indeed, the installed capacities of PV and wind onshore can be respectively reduced by 31.9% and 55.8%.
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