Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research – Supply of Electricity (SCCER-SoE) - Phase 1

The SCCER-SoE aims to develop fundamental research and innovative solutions in the domains of GeoEnergies (Deep Geothermal Energy and CO2 sequestration) and HydroPower. Thanks to the innovation of SCCER-SoE the renewable energies ‘Deep Geothermal Energy’ and ‘Hydro Power’ should contribute substantially to the electricity production in 2050. The key challenges are:

• Safely extract deep geothermal heat and produce at competitive cost a substantial portion of the national electricity supply, covering up to 5-10% of the national base load supply.
• Increase by around 10% the present hydropower electricity production under changing demand, climate and operation conditions.
• Maintain, improve and operate the hydropower infrastructure in the long –term future.
• The geological capture of CO2 is a viable measure to enable carbon-free generation of electricity from hydrocarbon resources.

PSI’s Technology Assessment (TA) group is involved in two major tasks of SCCER-SoE that are both part of WP4 on integrative activities. In the task “risk, safety and societal acceptance” TA will work on the comparative assessment of accident risks. Additionally, the TA group leads the task on the “global observatory of electricity resources”. The goal of the observatory is to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for technology characterization and trend identification that can be applied in a consistent manner across a broad portfolio of current and future technologies. While this SCCER is focused on geo-energies and hydropower, the observatory has a much broader coverage, including new renewables (e.g. solar photovoltaic, solar-thermal, wind onshore and offshore, biomass, geothermal, wave and tidal), fossil energy carriers (with and without CCS), nuclear energy and consideration of co-generation.