• Energy Research

Planning for the decarbonisation of island energy systems is both crucial and fraught with complexities. The process to develop and evaluate these plans needs to encompass not only technical and economic specifics but each plan's impacts on the environment and local inhabitants must also be considered. This inclusive planning involves multiple criteria and requires a means of handling them. In this paper a series of potential future energy systems are generated with the EnergyPlan software for the Faroe Islands before these systems are assessed using a set of criteria covering their environmental, social, technical and economic aspects. These criteria are used by two multi-criteria approaches, along with actual weights obtained from local stakeholders, to rank the energy systems. It is found that there is a clear shift in rankings towards systems employing offshore technologies due to the inclusion of social criteria specifically fitted to the Islands’ resident's preferences. This shift, however, was not sufficient for these offshore scenarios to outperform other scenarios that performed well on the other criteria. These findings indicate there is likely value in terms of local acceptance for transition planning on the Islands in adjusting to include greater quantities of offshore technologies in future energy strategies.

Solving the issue of energy security for geographical islands presents a one-of-a-kind problem that has to be tackled from multiple sides and requires an interdisciplinary approach that transcends just technical and social aspects. With many islands suffering in terms of limited and costly energy supply due to their remote location, providing a self-sustainable energy system is of utmost importance for these communities. In order to improve upon the status quo, novel solutions and projects aimed at increasing sustainability not only have to consider optimal utilization of renewable energy potentials in accordance with local conditions, but also must include active community participation. This paper analyzes both of these aspects for island communities and brings them together in an optimization scenario that is utilized to determine the relationship between supposed demand flexibility levels and achievable savings in a setting with variable renewable generation. The results, specifically discussed for a use case with real-world data for the La Graciosa island in Spain, show that boosting community participation and thus unlocking crucial demand flexibility, can be used as a powerful tool to augment novel generation technologies with savings from flexibility at around 7.5% of what is achieved purely by renewable sources.

The transition to renewable and smart energy systems is critical to address climate change and reduced energy security, particularly on islands where the negative impacts of both are already being felt. This transition, however, is being delayed by, among others, the lack of islanders’ awareness of the effective use of potential energy transition technologies and practices. This paper studies island residents’ initial awareness and knowledge of energy concepts and technologies, before their interaction with them in the context of the four-year EU Horizon 2020 REACT (Renewable Energy for Self-Sustainable Islands) project. Three European islands, Inis Mór (Ireland), La Graciosa (Spain), and San Pietro (Italy) are studied. The analysis seeks to determine how individual’s initial levels of awareness impacted perceived experiences, usability and desire to continue using REACT’s suggested energy transition solutions, technologies and software. The study employed interviews, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) surveys, and System Usability Scale (SUS) surveys, to evaluate and assess the REACT’s project participants’ attitudes and awareness towards the project’s energy transition concepts and tools. Interviews were conducted before participants interacted with any energy transition technology or software and provided insights into participants’ initial knowledge, awareness and attitudes while the TAM and SUS surveys were conducted after the participants had interacted with the REACT’s proposed technologies and evaluated their perceived usefulness, ease of use, and overall user experience. Results showed that a participant’s initial awareness and knowledge had influenced their experiences with the deployed energy transition technologies, both positively and negatively. Despite these differing experiences, most participants, regardless of initial awareness and knowledge level, found the technologies relatively useful and expressed a willingness to continue using them. The paper’s findings underline the importance of understanding participants’ starting points in terms of awareness and knowledge when planning and implementing energy transition activities. Energy planners seeking to involve people in the energy transition should work to address low levels of awareness and knowledge before beginning, such as with additional information and training tailored to their potential participants’ starting points. In doing so, energy transition planners and energy project developers and managers can enhance participants’ experiences with transition activities and foster long-term engagement.

ABSTRACT In this paper the REACT-DECARB energy planning platform, designed to assist with the assessment of decar- bonisation scenarios for islands’ electricity grids, is fully presented and applied to eight (8) EU islands. The scenarios were developed in the context of a Horizon 2020 EU project employing a renewable energy production forecasting and an optimisation mixed-integer linear programming model. The platform employs energy and economic modules, life-cycle assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis to facilitate the integrated evalu- ation of scenarios and enables decision makers to fully grasp the technical, environmental, economic and social aspects of energy systems’ decarbonisation. Results indicate that island electrical autonomy should be considered with caution and can be a valid option only if cost criteria are not prioritised. Further, it was determined that seeking autonomy in countries with low carbon costs for electricity production may be not be environmentally beneficial. A number of inter-island comparisons have been made and have shown that the REACT-DECARB platform can assist planners and decision-makers to identify the best available scenarios, define the sensitivity issues with respect to the criteria weights and, together with local communities, come to a common ground in order to establish a roadmap for the transition towards a decarbonised energy future for islands.

The consequences of climate change and reduced energy security are becoming increasingly apparent, especially on islands. At the same time, the energy transition is quickly spreading and its value to society becoming clearer. Two main obstacles to this transition, rigid policy and lack of local understanding, are particularly troubling on islands, where national policies often aren't flexible enough to consider local particularities and residents are exposed to different energy realities from those on the mainland. Using exploratory interviews and a survey on four islands, this article considers island residents' awareness of energy transition concepts and presents how it interacts with, and is potentially influenced by, relevant energy policies at the national level. The paper presents the comparative results for the geographically, demographically and climatologically diverse islands of Gotland (Sweden), Lesvos (Greece), La Réunion (France) and Mallorca (Spain) to focus on European island energy transitions. Differences were noted between the islands' residents with regards to awareness of and willingness to use specific energy transition tools or to join activities like energy communities. Additionally, differences were noted between the islands for what was the most important reason to consider when using demand response, though 'Ease of use' was important across all. The potential reasons for differences among the islands are discussed and suggestions to increase consumer engagement with energy transition activities on islands are given. Overall, the results show that while awareness of energy concepts isn't greater on these European islands, interest in prospective transition actions was high and provide an opportunity for planners to capitalize on. However, if there are potential policy obstacles, these higher levels of interest cannot ensure higher levels of willingness to engage. Taken together, these two findings indicate the potential for an acceleration of transition activity on these islands, and potentially beyond, should engagement with island residents be increased along with review, and amendment of policies impeding it.