Heading toward a Sustainable Energy future

Meeting the challenges of a sustainable energy system. The world’s population is growing – the demand for energy is growing faster. This presents four core challenges for a sustainable energy system: security of supply, affordability, climate protection, and resource efficiency. It will take ingenuity to succeed.

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Shortcuts In order to meet the sustainability challenges, measures must be taken along the entire energy conversion chain – from the utilization of fossil resources for power generation and transportation to improvements in consumption.

Oil and gas will remain the backbone of the global energy supply for decades to come and the importance of natural gas will grow.

A sustainable energy supply needs to utilize all available resources from conventional to renewable power generation.

More renewable energy means a shift to a complex generation landscape. Smart, digital solutions for power grids can make this happen.

Energy and power systems are changing. Now, even private households can be prosumers, taking power from the grid, as well as feeding it in.

The cleanest energy is the energy that isn't needed. The energy conservation potential of buildings, industry, and transportation is huge.

Investments in the energy sector often require large amounts of capital to support new and expensive technologies.

Demanding targets

Working on the improvement of energy efficiency always has been a core driver for the industry. And it has made tremendous progress in providing innovative technologies that contribute to the better utilization of fossil and renewable resources as well as generated power. Still, this is not enough to meet future demanding targets.

The energy system of tomorrow will need to produce much lower greenhouse gas emissions than the one we have today. In order to do so, it will have to master a much higher share of renewable energy sources, fluctuating feed-in volumes, and increasingly decentralized production at ever smaller power plants. This will require many different market operators and technologies to join forces, forming a complex power supply system with new business models. So, besides improvements to each part and piece of the hardware along the energy conversion chain, in the future digitalization will be key to running a stable and sustainable energy system and its parts.

Take a minute to listen to the opinions of high-level experts:

Amory Lovins – Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountains Institute

Anyone aspiring to comprehend current trends in global energy markets must reckon with the words and ideas of Amory B. Lovins. Over four decades, Lovins has established a reputation as perhaps the world’s foremost authority on energy efficiency and clean energy solutions.

“The oil companies, just like the electric utility incumbents, have to figure out different ways to use their assets, capabilities and, most difficultly, cultures to compete in a very different market,” Amory B. Lovins said in a recent interview at his showcase green home in the mountains near Snowmass, Colorado. “This change in the market is coming at them at a speed they can scarcely imagine and much faster than their cultures will find it easy to cope with,” he added.

Interview with Amory Lovins

Richard Lancaster – CEO of CLP Holdings Limited, Hong Kong

A talk with Richard Lancaster, CEO of one of Asia’s largest power utilities, about climate change and whether energy technology is ready to meet this challenge.

“Ideally, we would have no carbon emissions. But that involves a huge change. Meanwhile, we have the technologies to navigate through the transition. If you look at that transition, you can’t go for a perfect solution all at once. It would take too long.

This is why we will need more gas, more nuclear, more renewables – and a more efficient use of energy. We need to do all of these things”, Lancaster says.

Interview with Richard Lancaster

The market becomes manifold

The energy system has never been easy to handle. But with the new possibilities arising with digitalization, it has (and will continue to) become even more demanding to manage a sustainable energy system. At the same time, there will be many more opportunities for more players to participate profitably in the market.

Prof. Jacob Østergaard, Head of the Center for Electric Power and Energy at the Technical University of Denmark DTU, talks about the major trends and the impact of IT developments for market players.

New possibilities by smart digital technologies

More market participants produce much more data than ever. In a large gas turbine alone, for example, hundreds of sensors measure temperature, pressure, flow paths, and gas compositions every second. And all of them – producers, prosumers and consumers – have to be connected in a smart way in order to enable a stable operation of the Future Energy System. Given that there’s no other way than taking the opportunities of digitalization: State-of-the-art analysis methods are required to ensure this data is intelligently evaluated and utilized.

Infographic With a growing and constantly changing range of power generation methods, as well as new developments in power distribution, storage and consumption, the energy landscape is becoming more and more complex. Numerous small producers of renewable energy, for example, supplement the familiar picture of large power plants. This, in turn, calls for “smart grids” to handle fluctuating feed-ins. Let us take you on a journey through the complete energy landscape and its many interdependencies.

Smart technologies

To ensure an efficient and reliable power supply, both now and in the future, Siemens offers a wide range of physical and digital products, technologies, and solutions – from state-of-the-art compressors, turbines and generators to virtual power plants, intelligent grid management and innovative storage solutions. With its innovative technologies, products, and solutions, Siemens is helping to close the gaps in energy supply and make production, transmission, and distribution smarter.

Together with its customers, Siemens analyses their requirements for energy systems and develops tailored solutions that address their challenges along the entire energy conversion chain. Siemens’ portfolio includes technology and expertise for an economically efficient and reliable power supply, which accounts for resource scarcity and helps to protect the climate. Enter the virtual showroom to get an overview.

Product overview Siemens products cover the complete energy conversion chain from the various types of power generation to power transmission and distribution leading to all forms of energy application. Find here an overview of our expertise and services and discover what's possible.

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