Accelerating the decarbonisation of islands’ energy systems

Solutions developed

Borkum is an island of about 30 km2 and 5,500 residents, located 20 miles from the north-western coast of Germany. Following concerns of the population regarding air quality due to a new coal fired power plant, Borkum started on a path towards renewable energy many years ago. Following several initiatives in that direction including a citizen dialogue, the island decided to become emission-free and fully decarbonized by 2030.

Main results

The ISLANDER project will showcase the process of making Borkum a fully autonomous and decarbonised island energy system. Specifically, the project will focus on delivering:

a) Distributed RESS systems (Renewable Energy + Small-scale Storage).
b) Complementary short-to-seasonal, large-scale electricity storage.
c) Seawater district heating coupled with heat storage and sized for 100 residential units, to make use of the heat of the North Sea water as a source of heating and cooling.
d) Deployment of an EV charging network.
e) A smart IT platform conceived to holistically perform the optimal aggregation of all these components while also implementing Demand Response (DR).
f) An optimisation tool to optimally design zero-carbon island energy systems.

To achieve such 2030 objectives of financing and maintaining the further roll-out of renewables and storage technologies across the island, the ISLANDER partners will facilitate the kick-start of a Renewable Energy Community in Borkum right during the project following a concrete roadmap.