Technology Assessment Group

1. To improve understanding and thereby enable comparisons of current energy technologies and future energy options for the electricity, heating and transport sectors based on environmental, economic and socially relevant factors.
2. To provide quantitative, systematic, and interdisciplinary assessments of energy technologies and energy supply strategies through the development and application of consistent methodological frameworks and databases.
3. To support rational decision-making for sustainable development in the Swiss and international energy sectors, and to communicate balanced research findings to decision-makers and stakeholders.

Using (waste) heat to cool buildings
In a stakeholder event representatives from research and industry were able to gather information on the results of the NRP 70 joint project THRIVE (Thermally Driven Heat Pumps for Substitution of Electricity and Fossil Fuels). PSI’s Technology Assessment Group carried out an integrated sustainability assessment of the THRIVE system and assessed its performance in various application scenarios.

New Tools by TA-Group members:

• Cinelli, M., Spada, M., Zhang, Y., Kim, W., Burgherr, P. (2018). MCDA Index Tool. An interactive software to develop indices and rankings.
• Linden, D., Cinelli, M., Spada, M., Becker, W. and Burgherr, P. (2018). Composite Indicator Analysis and Optimization (CIAO) Tool

New article by TA-Group members:

• "Can renewables fill the power gap?" by Christian Bauer (April 2018). SCCER-SoE blog.
• "Current and future environmental performance of passenger cars" by Brian Cox, Christian Bauer and Chris Mutel (May 2019). Policy Brief

New reports from major projects led by TA-Group members:

• AA-CAES Research Project Summary: "Electricity storage via adiabatic air compression"

• THRIVE Research Project Summary “Sustainability of adsorption heat pumps”

• Potentials, costs and environmental assessment of electricity generation technologies - An update of electricity generation costs and potentials.

New publications in scientific journals by TA-Group members:

• Sebastian Rauner, Nico Bauer, Alois Dirnaichner, Rita Van Dingenen, Chris Mutel and Gunnar Luderer (2020). Coal-exit health and environmental damage reductions outweigh economic impacts. Nature Climate Change.  
• Patrick Gasser, Marco Cinelli, Anna Labijak, Matteo Spada, Peter Burgherr, Milosz Kadziński and Bozidar Stojadinovic (2020). Quantifying Electricity Supply Resilience of Countries with Robust Efficiency Analysis. Energies, 13, 1535.
• Bernhard Steubing, Daniel de Koning, Adrian Haas and Christopher Lucien Mutel (2020). The Activity Browser — An open source LCA software building on top of the brightway framework. Software Impacts, Vol. 3, 100012.
• Xiaojin Zhang, Julia Witte, Tillman Schilhauer and Christian Bauer (2020). Life cycle assessment of power-to-gas with biogas as the carbon source. Sustainable Energy & Fuels.
• Matteo Spada and Peter Burgherr (2020). Comparative Risk Assessment for Fossil Energy Chains Using Bayesian Model Averaging, Energies, Vol. 13(2), 295.