The project aims to accelerate the development of innovations for the use of renewable energy sources and the commercialization of the respective technologies. Above all, researchers and companies should get easier access to research infrastructures in European and non-European countries. The project is coordinated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with significant participation of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) and several of its member organizations. Moreover, the RISEnergy consortium comprises 69 technology institutes, universities, and industry partners from 22 countries.

Main objectives (MO) and related work packages of the RISEnergy project are shown in Fig. 1. ITAS is in charge of task 3.4 “Decision making for sustainability and socio-technical aspects” within work package 3. In task 3.4, multi-criteria sustainability assessments of selected energy technologies within the ten RISEnergy target areas (see Fig. 2) are carried out. This task involves the characterization of the renewable energy technologies under investigation regarding selected sustainability indicators and creating the corresponding multi-criteria assessment matrices, as well as developing a browser-based tool for weighting and aggregating the criteria to determine the corresponding rankings. The aforementioned low-threshold tool is based on the HELDA (Helmholtz MCDA Tool) software and is intended to make it easier for technology developers and decision-makers, for example, to conduct comparative multi-criteria sustainability assessments. In addition, ITAS contributes to Task 4.4 “Training on cross-RI services and innovation support” in Work Package 4 as part of the preparation and implementation of workshops to demonstrate the tool and its use for decision support.

Project website: https://risenergy-project.eu