Tom Brown

EWI: The default assumption assumes 2 cycles per year, whereas I assume only one (they covered this in a sensitivity), got some help with this from @benpfluger.bsky.social.

Thanks for the questions! The model only chooses H2 for backup if we restrict the options or force the gas plants to switch to H2 (like for the Ariadne scenarios). If unrestrained, it prefers barely-used gas plants (running on biomethane or fossil gas compensated by CDR to be carbon-neutral).

Read the post. I'm not advocating 1st generation biofuels, but advanced fuels without direct land usage (wastes and residues). They will also need hydrogen to boost carbon efficiency.

- in the short-term out to 2035 we need to focus 95% of our attention on electrification, clean electricity, and replumbing biomass and agriculture; grandiose hydrogen plans should be put on hold

- we need to have a rough long-term plan out to 2040-50 because industrial plant, ships and planes have lifetimes of 30-40 years; solutions need to slot into those reinvestment cycles

- we won't see much hydrogen trade, but trade in hydrogen derivatives (ammonia, direct-reduced iron, e-biofuels) could be large, since they're easy to store and move

- fuel yields can be doubled by adding green hydrogen to mop up the excess carbon in the biomass, making e-biofuels and raising the carbon efficiency (excess CO2 can also be sequestered where that's possible)

- advanced biofuels that use wastes and residues offer a path to address non-electrifiable sectors with methanol, methane and kerosene at costs of 80-120 EUR2020/MWh and abatement costs of 120-400 EUR2020/tCO2

Main points:

- reaching climate neutrality will mean managing our limited sustainable biomass resource carefully
- we need to think not just about energy efficiency, but also carbon efficiency (how well we use biogenic carbon)

Since everyone is busy "resetting", here is a more focused plea: let's manage our sustainable biomass better.

People get nervous around biomass (it's complicated!) but high costs for green hydrogen and direct air capture mean we need to take a closer look.

Blog: nworbmot.org/blog/biomass...

Locational Price Signals in Europe As Europe strives to become the first climate neutral continent, grid congestion is becoming an increasingly urgent issue, with the potential to lead to large-scale curtailment of renewables and under...

“By 2040, the Locational scenario could reduce the total system cost by 23 – 59 Bn. EUR annually. These savings are in the order of magnitude of those associated with the integration of European electricity markets.”

Very nice, congratulations - will take a look!

Come join the community, who knows where we land in another 10 years? 🔭

PyPSA has come a long way from Jonas Hörsch and me hacking away in 2015, trying to create a tool that would meet our needs and we'd want to use. Great to see so many other folks enjoying PyPSA too, and how the development has become so professional over the years.

We would like to thank all the contributors and developers who have made PyPSA possible up to this point. This includes those who have contributed code, reported bugs, or provided feedback! We would also like to thank the @dfg.de for funding the recent developments.

#freethemodels #PyPSA

Release Notes - Documentation None

As well as additional MGA functionality, a new Xarray based backend with easier writing of custom constraints, an optional new API for components, and more!

👉 Full release notes: docs.pypsa.org/latest/relea...

🔄 A new NetworkCollection to store multiple networks in a single object for easy comparison and plotting - for example, to 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬.

⚙️ The 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞 allows you to control PyPSA behaviour without the need to pass arguments all the time.

🗺️ 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐩𝐬 to explore the location of all components, their attributes, and map results or other properties.

📦 Components data is now bundled together in a 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬, which introduces components-specific functionality to help simplify your scripts.

✨ 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐰

🎲 Introduction of 𝐭𝐰𝐨-𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 with scenario trees as well as support for changing risk preference through Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR)-based 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤-𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, allowing users to account for extreme outcomes and tail risks in their optimization.

PyPSA v1.0 is officially here - 10 years and 2 days since the first git commit. This milestone release brings major new features, completely new documentation, and a fresh landing page - congratulations to all the PyPSA team! 🎉

🔗 New Documentation: docs.pypsa.org
🔗 New Landing Page: pypsa.org

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party Has Accepted £2.3 Million from Fossil Fuel Interests, Climate Deniers, and Polluters Since 2019 Election Reform UK has received more than £2.3 million from oil and gas interests, highly polluting industries, and climate science deniers since December 2019, amounting to 92 percent of the party’s donations...

Every day is a good day to point out that 92% of Reform's donations were found to come from figures and groups linked to the fossil fuel industry. @desmog.com

Explosive stuff on Elsevier's journal publishing business from the previous (now fired) editor-in-chief of Energy Economics...the rot seems deep.

„Wir sollten uns durch das Prüfen nicht vom Tun abbringen lassen“ TU-Professor Tom Brown über die Mehrkosten der Energiewende und seine Forderungen an die Politik

🔋 Die #Energiewende erfordert Investitionen von 116–131 Mrd. €/Jahr. Gleichzeitig sinken fossile Importe & Haushalte sparen Geld. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt @nworbmot.bsky.social von der #TUBerlin im Ariadne-Report 2025. Sein Appell: Erneuerbare & Elektrifizierung müssen vorangehen. Zum Interview ⬇️

And this!

“Here comes the sun ☀️“

“Record solar growth keeps China’s CO2 falling in first half of 2025”

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-rec...

@carbonbrief.org

The green transition has a surprising new home Forget about northern Europeans, with their coalition governments and love of cycling

The green transition will not be stopped by Trump or anyone else.

Just look to Ethiopia, and Morocco, and Nepal, and Pakistan, and Turkey
www.economist.com/finance-and-...

PS The above graphic of shipping costs is from Jerry Murphy's group at UCC.

I don't really see those very high CO2 prices biting before 2040, and as noted elsewhere those are *marginal* costs. If the last few emissions are very expensive to decarbonise, it doesn't mean the total cost of decarbonisation is high.

Bio-CNG is at most as bridge until the truck fleet electrifies.

We need that biogas where sustainable carbon is most needed: chemicals, shipping and aviation.

Fully behind anaerobic digestion to mop up wastes and residues! I just see a different use case in 2035+.

Unfortunately it's the dual fuel low pressure engines that have the worst methane slip...if I remember right the high pressure LNG-only engines are much better.

Final point: the logistics of getting methanol from many decentral locations is just easier than with methane, see the arguments here:

nworbmot.org/blog/methano...