Welcome to the reFUEL Blog!

by Johannes Schmidt (reFUEL Project Leader)

reFUEL – that’s a five years research project on the role of trade in future renewable energy systems. It is strongly interdisciplinary, linking quantitative modelling approaches from economics and the natural sciences to qualitative case studies on local impacts of renewable energies in Europe and Brazil. As an important principle to increase reproducibility of our research, increase its quality, and allow for a full re-use of our research results by others, we will apply open data and open source standards in the course of the project.

reFUEL will assess global bio-physical differences in the availability of renewables, thus increasing our understanding of potential efficiency increases due to trade of renewable fuels. But reFUEL will also add to our understanding of land availability for the deployment of large-scale infrastructure - by quantitatively analyzing spatial data, but also in a qualitative way by gathering data on impacts of renewables on affected populations in Brazil and in Europe. Thus, we aim at drawing a rich picture of potentials and impacts of renewable fuel trade between world regions.

Our blog is one way of keeping you posted about the progress in our project – and of opening up the research process to our peers and the general public. We will discuss project publications, give some insights into the research process, and will also use it as a forum to briefly discuss ideas or present data that will not necessarily always end up in a publication. Guest posts are very welcome!