From cost-minimization to maximizing common well-being: what do well-being optimized energy system designs look like and how can they be utilized in energy policy design?

Extended abstract 2-223-26

The energy transition is made for humans. Individual well-being, therein, is strongly connected to our societal foundation and the sharing of common goods within planetary boundaries¹. Yet, the vast majority of energy modeling is mainly directed to cost minimization. In the project ENERGOOD² we have developed a framework which optimizes technical energy system designs in regard to their societal well-being implications. A new indicator system for ‘common well-being’ has been elaborated, based on the OECD well-being concept. We have operationalized these indicators for quantification in the comprehensive energy system optimization framework REMix³. For the parametrization, we have conducted a representative survey, designed to identify citizens’ preferences and perceptions regarding well-being aspects and energy technologies. In this assessment framework, we incorporated a sufficiency scenario from the EnSu⁴ research project. An integrated common well-being optimization is run, resulting in a well-being-optimized energy supply system design.

Our questions are: How can the findings be utilized for sufficiency- and well-being-oriented policies? How can this framework be used by political actors? We see the following levers:

1. Political actors can use the framework and its results to promote energy system developments which yield a maximum contribution to well-being, based on a weighting of indicators representing the actor’s objectives.
2. Even if policies do not pursue a holistic well-being maximization, degrees of freedom in a given policy design can be utilized for remaining well-being maximization.
3. The framework can possibly develop an even higher value in an explorative and discursive process of designing policies and instruments. Actors involved in policy design are enabled to discuss trade-offs between different dimensions of well-being quantitatively, including monetary implications.
4. Sufficiency policies lack the promoting factor of commercial marketability. However, a subset of well-being indicators yields higher benefits with less energy consumption. These benefits are made accessible to sufficiency-promoting policies quantitatively by the framework we have developed.

Acknowledgements

Johannes Kochems (DLR), Robin König (DLR) and Ulrich Frey (Universität Graz)

References

¹⁾             Raworth 2012

²⁾             Supported by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (03EI1091A)

³⁾             https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.06330, https://gitlab.com/dlr-ve/esy/remix

⁴⁾             https://energysufficiency.de/en/startseite-english/

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