After 3.5 years of an amazing collaboration between 13 partners from 9 European counties the Sustainable Energy Transition Laboratory (SENTINEL) project has been completed!

The aim of the project was to create a new modelling framework, modular in structure, incorporating many separate models, which will look in detail at specific technological, geographic, and societal aspects of the transition to a low-carbon energy system.

To this end, SENTINEL included a set of case studies at three different geographical levels: 1. National (Greece), 2. Regional (Nordic countries), and 3. Continental (European Union, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and some Balkan countries), to identify the main issues and challenges of the energy transition, which modellers and policymakers will be faced with in the future.

The SENTINEL platform now consists of 14 modelling tools that can be used to explore decarbonisation pathways and trade-offs of potential future energy systems.

The SENTINEL team has also produced a collection of short “stories” on individual outcomes from the project describing what our modelling teams have found out during the project and linking them with specific scientific papers published.

In addition, the stakeholder engagement was at the heart of the SENTINEL project, through organising a series of different activities, conducting several online workshops, interviews, and developing stakeholders’ and researchers’ surveys. Throughout the project, the systemic involvement of stakeholders contributed to identifying modelling needs and research questions and guided work on further model improvements and in developing useful modelling interlinkages.

Our TEESlab – Technoeconomics of Energy Systems laboratory has contributed to more than 6 scientific papers and 10 deliverables, and have co-organised several engagement activities with more than 150 stakeholders participating!

Below, you can find some highlights of our work:

• Deliverable 7.1. Case specification and scheduling
• Model-based policymaking or policy-based modelling? How energy models and energy policy interact
• Better suited or just more complex? On the fit between user needs and modeller-driven improvements of energy system models
• Eliciting knowledge from stakeholders to identify critical issues of the transition to climate neutrality in Greece, the Nordic Region, and the European Union
• Existing tools, user needs and required model adjustments for energy demand modelling of a carbon-neutral Europe
• Deliverable 7.2 Report on model application in the case studies: challenges and lessons learnt
• Why energy models should integrate social and environmental factors: Assessing user needs, omission impacts, and real-word accuracy in the European Union

To be continued: Formed focus groups and other activities on various energy system modelling topics will continue to take place during the ENCLUDE and IAM COMPACT projects and new stakeholders are invited to join the discussion!