Energy system analysis – climate-neutral Bavaria
Motivation
On December 13, 2022, the Bavarian state parliament decided as part of the Bavarian Climate Protection Act (BayKlimaG) that Bavaria should be climate-neutral “by 2040 at the latest”. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to know the interrelationships in the entire energy system in order to identify the necessary prerequisites and the most important steps for Bavaria.
As a result, FfE and consentec were commissioned by the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the Bavarian energy system.
Project Objectives
By looking at various scenarios (“Bavarian pathways”), it is shown how the transformation to a climate-neutral energy system in 2040 can be achieved along various paths. The focus is on the opportunities and challenges across all end energy sectors, forms of energy supply and infrastructure in the context of a European energy system.
Project Structure
Building on the knowledge of existing projects (Extremos, Bayernplan Energie 2040), a scenario framework was developed on the basis of current climate policy requirements and economic developments. This is based on the political objective of achieving climate neutrality in Bavaria by 2040 and in Germany by 2045. The narratives of the individual scenarios were then worked out with the aim of analyzing their impact on the design of the energy system of the future. This resulted in a total of 6 different Bavarian pathways:
- Mix: The mix path shows a balanced and ambitious future development in the final energy sectors of buildings, industry and transport together with a plausible development of the energy source mix.
- H2import and H2balance: The use of hydrogen plays a central role and the scope for the use of hydrogen-based technologies contained in the Easter package is exhausted. The H2balance pathway additionally restricts annual imports of electricity and hydrogen from exceeding exports in order to focus on local supply.
- ELimport and ELbalance: Electricity-based technologies predominate in all end energy sectors due to their higher systemic efficiency. In the ELbalance pathway, the annual net imports are limited to 0, analogous to H2balance.
- Business-As-Usual (BAU): In order to be able to classify the results from the paths presented so far, the BAU path shows the further development of the system based on the current transformation efforts. In this pathway, climate neutrality can only be achieved by importing expensive synthetic fuels.
For these scenarios, the temporally and spatially high-resolution demand of the end energy sectors for the various energy sources is first calculated for the whole of Europe in the FfE models. Furthermore, generation potentials for wind and photovoltaics are calculated, differentiated according to system type. This data is then fed into the ISAaR energy system model, in which the supply of energy sources in Europe is modeled in 5-year increments from 2025 to 2050.
Results
Major efforts and changes in the Bavarian energy system are required to implement the Bavarian pathways, for which society, industry and politics must work together to create the conditions for a rapid transformation of our system. Overall, the results of the study allow us to derive central statements for the Bavarian energy system:
The expansion of renewable energies is a key element in achieving climate neutrality across all paths. In addition, the volatility of renewable energies increases the need for flexibilities such as large-scale battery storage. Specifically, the increase in installed capacity observed in the mix path can be translated into the weekly increase in individual systems required to achieve the target. This is shown in Figure 2 for the most important technologies in Bavaria.
Projektpartner
