In recent years, the ever rising awareness about climate change among nations around the world has motivated countries, regions and local authorities to start planning a development of their future energy systems, many of them aiming for a 100% renewable system. There are various ways to develop a 100% renewable energy system and choosing the optimal one depends on a series of factors.
This thesis tackles that problem by comparing two possible ways of developing a 100% renewable energy system, using Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, as a case. The first one is a so called traditional non-integrated renewable energy system, where each energy sector is developed independently, while the second one is a smart energy system concept, where different sectors are linked together in order to achieve synergies and increase efficiency of the system.
Both scenarios are modelled in EnergyPLAN, an energy system analysis tool that enables a user to model energy systems with high shares of fluctuating renewable energy sources.
The scenarios are compared based on primary energy consumption, CO2 emissions, total annual system costs and the level of biomass consumption. While both future systems have zero emissions, utilize less primary energy and are cheaper than the reference scenario, the biomass consumption in the traditional renewable energy system is above the sustainable level, which makes it technically unfeasible. The smart energy system utilizes a sustainable amount of biomass at total annual system costs only 1% higher than the traditional renewable energy system. This means that a smart energy system is a beneficial option for Zagreb in terms of technical feasibility, while the total costs are essentially at the same level.