TY - JOUR
T1 - Industrial community energy systems
T2 - Simulating the role of financial incentives and societal attributes
AU - Eslamizadeh, S.
AU - Ghorbani, A.
AU - Castelo Branco Ferreira Costa, R.
AU - Kunneke, R.W.
AU - Weijnen, M.P.C.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Considering that the industrial sector consumes almost one-third of the energy demand globally, it is an urgent call to reduce the carbon footprints in this sector. Among different approaches to meet this goal, such as the employment of carbon capture technologies and increasing energy efficiency within industries, transitioning to renewable electricity (RE) would be another outlook to reduce the carbon footprints and increase the energy security of the industries. Collective power generation within communities has shown to be feasible and promising in the industrial sector, where groups of industries collaborate to generate energy and meet their energy demand. In this research, we investigated how the initiation and continuation of industrial community energy systems (InCES) among companies can take place and which financial incentives the government can introduce to support these initiatives. We built an agent-based model that incorporates cost-benefit analysis and cultural factors in the decision making process of industries, to assess the feasibility of initiating/joining an InCES by industries. This study shows that the FIT mechanism had the worst performance in incentivizing the establishment of an InCES among industries. In contrast, the TAX incentive showed the best performance in mobilizing the investments towards InCES. Similarly, the TAX incentive showed relatively superior performance in electricity generation, the number of established InCESs, and the number of companies joining each InCES. Despite the better performance of the TAX incentive, it was also the most expensive option for the governments as a significant share of the establishment costs of an InCES was put on the shoulders of the governments.
AB - Considering that the industrial sector consumes almost one-third of the energy demand globally, it is an urgent call to reduce the carbon footprints in this sector. Among different approaches to meet this goal, such as the employment of carbon capture technologies and increasing energy efficiency within industries, transitioning to renewable electricity (RE) would be another outlook to reduce the carbon footprints and increase the energy security of the industries. Collective power generation within communities has shown to be feasible and promising in the industrial sector, where groups of industries collaborate to generate energy and meet their energy demand. In this research, we investigated how the initiation and continuation of industrial community energy systems (InCES) among companies can take place and which financial incentives the government can introduce to support these initiatives. We built an agent-based model that incorporates cost-benefit analysis and cultural factors in the decision making process of industries, to assess the feasibility of initiating/joining an InCES by industries. This study shows that the FIT mechanism had the worst performance in incentivizing the establishment of an InCES among industries. In contrast, the TAX incentive showed the best performance in mobilizing the investments towards InCES. Similarly, the TAX incentive showed relatively superior performance in electricity generation, the number of established InCESs, and the number of companies joining each InCES. Despite the better performance of the TAX incentive, it was also the most expensive option for the governments as a significant share of the establishment costs of an InCES was put on the shoulders of the governments.
KW - industrial community energy system
KW - energy transition
KW - financial incentive
KW - industrial collaboration
KW - community energy systems
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85138373146&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fenvs.2022.924509
DO - 10.3389/fenvs.2022.924509
M3 - Article
SN - 2296-665X
SP - 1
EP - 18
JO - Frontiers in Environmental Science
JF - Frontiers in Environmental Science
M1 - 924509
ER -