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Transport accounts for roughly one quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in Europe. Transport is the only sector that did not reduce its GHG in recent years. To meet the European and global targets to reduce GHG in industrialized countries by -80 to -95% until 2050 compared with 1990 requires that also the transport sector is put on a pathway to drastically reduce its emissions. The paper demonstrates that with a combined R&D and transport policy strategy reductions of -60 to -70% of GHG until 2050 will be achievable for the European transport sector. The analysis to develop the transport strategy combines an analysis of the innovation system of the transport sector with respect to developing GHG reduction technologies of all modes and a model-based quantitative scenario exercise to assess the transport impacts, economic and environmental impacts of the scenarios. We suppose to support R&D for biofuels for air transport and R&D for cross-modal transport. The policy strategy suggests in early years to focus on road transport (i.e. efficiency of ICE) and in medium time horizon on alternative energy technologies (i.e. electricity and hydrogen both from renewables). Additionally the transport strategy must include pricing measures and ambitious regulations (e.g. ban of fossil fuel cars in 2035).

In SONNET, we investigate the development of the SIE-field called ‘participatory experimentation and incubation’, i.e. multi-actor, collaborative formats that aim to experiment with and/or try out novel energy solutions in specific (local and temporal limited, project-like) settings. This report analyses formats that bring together actors from different societal spheres to collaborate (rather than to have a dialogue only) in a project-like setting. To qualify, a collaboration needs to be considered by at least one of the actors as an ‘experiment’ meaning that it aims at testing, investigating or trialling a specific solution and/or clearly aiming at learning from putting certain solutions in practice. To be included in this report, the experimentation clearly focuses on energy topics and takes place in Germany. Although terms and concepts are often not clearly defined, we could distinguish and trace the developments of at least five collaborative multi-actor experimentation formats during the last twenty years.

The increasing use of energy from renewable sources (RE) for the generation of heat and electricity in Germany has also led to an increasingly intensive debate on its advantages and disadvantages. The discussion mostly centers on the cost effects, because beneficial effects often are harder to quantify. Benefits comprise indirect effects or effects which lie far in the future. Scientific studies also frequently focus on single aspects, which cannot be aggregated easily, because they occur in different sectors and comprise technology system-wide effects, distributional effects or overall macro-economic effects. This study intends to answer questions refering to clear definitions of effects when increasing renewable energy, methods of adding and balancing the effects, the choice of methodological approach, support mechanisms, suitable time span or spatial system border. After a brief sketch of the basic methods applied, the contribution will present estimates for a wide range of effects. It closes with suggestions on possibilities how to add and balance the effects.

Extracts from life cycle assessment (LCA) results and environmental impact projections for a connected factory demonstrator are presented.

The thermal conversion process “pyrolysis” converts biomass in the absence of air into 2 primary products: a solid residue (pyrolysis char) and a gaseous vapour (pyrolysis vapor). By cooling the primary vapours the condensable fraction can be separated as liquid phase from the permanent gases. The ablative flash pyrolysis, where heat transfer to the biomass particles happens in direct contact with a hot surface by mechanical force, aims at maximizing the liquid yield. By means of this thermochemical conversion the originally solid biomass becomes accessible for material utilization as platform chemical. Due to the fact that pyrolysis liquids contain on one hand many valuable organic compounds but on the other hand exhibit disadvantageous properties with respect to oxygen and water content, acid number and storage stability, a post­treatment / upgrading is mandatory. Beneath other processes, the thermal fractionation is a possible process to produce separate fractions depending on component boiling temperature. By that an enrichment of components with similar boiling temperature within different fractions can be achieved. As distillation does not lead to a satisfactory result due to polymerization processes the thermal fractionation must be executed directly with the pyrolysis vapours. First results for beech wood obtained in a side stream at the laboratory plant at Fraunhofer UMSICHT indicate, that the middle fraction is well suited for the production of high value phenolic resins, while the two other fractions also concentrate other valuable components. The fraction with low boiling components offer the possibility to produce acetic acid or biogas and the high boiling fraction can substitute biomass in gasification processes or heating oil in residential houses. Other utilization purposes will be evaluated in future research. Proceedings of the 22nd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 23-26 June 2014, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 1127-1133

The deliverable at hand reports on the SONNET city lab in Mannheim which focused on novel governance arrangements to enhance social innovation in energy (SIE) in the district of Neckarstadt-West. The aim of the lab was to develop, test and instigate an organisational governance process, which includes a stakeholder interaction as well as an inner-administrative dialogue and the use of innovative methods to foster dialogue and participation. As part of the lab, different activities were conducted such as design thinking workshops, activities in public and digital spaces to allow for new ways of interaction between local stakeholders as well as for citizen participation in the local energy transition.

A complete plant concept for the conversion of solid biomass to electricity and heat with an autother­mal fluidized bed gasification and dry synthesis gas cleaning is developed. Plants with four distinct fuel capacities of 0.1, 1, 5 and 10 MW are further analyzed: firstlythe investment cost are estimated based on commercial offers for main machineryand secondly economic evaluation is performed. Results show that at least a plant with fuel capacity of 10 MW is cost competitive with actual commercial processes. Economic evaluation results in a break-even point of 3.3 MW fuel input, above which such plant is economically feasible. A high degree of heat sold to costumers is another prerequisite to obtain plant profitability. Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1485-1488