Accelerating the decarbonisation of islands’ energy systems

Objective

Borkum is an island of about 30 km2 and 5,500 residents, located 20 miles from the north-western coast of Germany. Following concerns of the population regarding air quality due to a new coal fired power plant, Borkum started on a path towards renewable energy many years ago. Following several initiatives in that direction including a citizen dialogue, the island decided to become emission-free and fully decarbonized by 2030.

Within this framework, the ISLANDER project will showcase the process of making Borkum a fully autonomous and decarbonised island energy system. Specifically, the project will focus on delivering:

a) Distributed RESS systems (Renewable Energy + Small-scale Storage).
b) Complementary short-to-seasonal, large-scale electricity storage.
c) Seawater district heating coupled with heat storage and sized for 100 residential units, to make use of the heat of the North Sea water as a source of heating and cooling.
d) Deployment of an EV charging network.
e) A smart IT platform conceived to holistically perform the optimal aggregation of all these components while also implementing Demand Response (DR).
f) An optimisation tool to optimally design zero-carbon island energy systems.

To achieve such 2030 objectives of financing and maintaining the further roll-out of renewables and storage technologies across the island, the ISLANDER partners will facilitate the kick-start of a Renewable Energy Community in Borkum right during the project following a concrete roadmap.

Additionally, and as part of an ambitious plan to replicate the project results, the partners have developed a 3-wave replication strategy including:

Wave 1) Replication in the Follower islands,
Wave 2) Replication in the related archipelagos.
Wave 3) Further replication to the rest of EU islands.

Field of science

• /social sciences/economics and business/economics/sustainable economy
• /engineering and technology/environmental engineering/energy and fuels/renewable energy

Programme(s)

• H2020-EU.3.3.4. - A single, smart European electricity grid

Topic(s)

• LC-SC3-ES-4-2018-2020 - Decarbonising energy systems of geographical Islands

Call for proposal

H2020-LC-SC3-2020-EC-ES-SCC
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (10)