This research line focuses on three interconnected societal challenges: the transition to carbon neutrality by 2050, the sustainable use of resources, and digital transformation as a means to achieve these goals.
The Group pursues a wide range of activities in the field of advanced energy models at all scales: building, municipality, regional and national. We have developed five projects with national funding (two with private and two with public funding), and nine with international funding (six with the Asian Development Bank, one with the Interamerican Development Bank/Government of El Salvador, two Interreg MED projects and an EU H2020 project). The general goal is to foster the integration of renewable energies, the improvement of energy efficiency, the determination of the potential of renewable energies, and energy planning at all scales.
These challenges require new approximations and multiscale, multidisciplinary tools that include fluid-dynamical models, dynamic system-level energy models, regional/national energy models, Geographical Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence tools.
Our activities in this research line include:
- Development of advanced models for the integration of renewable energies in buildings and industrial processes.
- Contribution to the next generation of energy certificates for buildings.
- Development of local, regional and national energy models, combining tools from several disciplines (Computational Fluid Dynamics models, geographical information systems, energy models using tools such as LEAP).
- Application and improvement of the methodologies developed for the estimation of the energy resources from agricultural and animal residues, and municipal solid waste for the evaluation of circular economy projects.
- Integration of energy models with digital platforms (Smart Cities/Smart Rural).