Deadline: 18-Oct-23
The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) has launched the sixth call for proposals under the SWEET (SWiss Energy Research for the Energy Transition) funding programme.
The guiding theme of the call, which has a total budget of CHF 8 million, is ‘Critical Infrastructures, Climate Change, and Resilience of the Swiss Energy System’. This call is a joint activity with the National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS).
SWEET (SWiss Energy research for the Energy Transition) is a funding programme owned and managed by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). The purpose of SWEET is to fund inter-/transdisciplinary research and innovation activities with a focus on the goals of Switzerland’s Energy Strategy 20503 and long-term climate policy. SWEET targets solution-oriented research and innovation in the natural sciences and engineering as well as in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in the domains of energy efficiency, renewable energy production and consumption, storage, networks, society and energy, and security and safety of critical energy infrastructures. Within these domains, the SFOE, in collaboration with the Federal Energy Research Commission CORE, set the guiding theme of the current call as “Critical Infrastructures, Climate Change, and Resilience of the Swiss Energy System”. Assisted by discussions with various stakeholders, the SFOE subsequently formulated the research challenge that is the subject of this call.
Scope
- Prior hazard and risk analyses must not be repeated except if consortia can convincingly demonstrate that additional hazards must be considered or that new findings are likely to significantly alter the results of the prior analyses.
- Hazards and risks associated with the transport and storage of nuclear waste and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants are not within the scope of this call. However, consortia are encouraged to study the benefits and risks associated with the continuing operation of nuclear power plants until they are phased out. For instance, the energy system might benefit from the load-following ability of nuclear power plants, but this mode of operation could result in increased maintenance needs and a higher probability of unscheduled shut-downs.
- Studying measures to mitigate a loss of social acceptance that might result from real or perceived risks to the population is within the scope of this call, provided that the critical infrastructures that give rise to the risks are necessary for reaching Switzerland’s energy- and climate-policy goals.
Funding Information
- The call budget of at most CHF 8 million will be awarded for a term of 6 years.
Research Questions
- Research question 1: How does the criticality of the infrastructures of the Swiss energy system change as the system transforms to meet Switzerland’s energy- and climate-policy goals and as it is exposed to climate change?
- Research question 2: How vulnerable is the energy system to technical, natural, and societal hazards?
- Research question 3: How can the risks to the energy system and the population that result from the malfunction, failure, or destruction of critical infrastructures be mitigated and thereby the resilience of the energy system be improved?
Expected Outputs
- The consortium’s work is expected to lead to the following outputs:
- Identification of those infrastructures of the energy system with the highest criticality in response to technical, natural, and societal hazards. The identification should be based on an initial evaluation of the hazards, followed by quantitative investigations of a selection of hazards and infrastructures.
- Findings for relevant stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, federal/cantonal/local authorities, infrastructure owners and operators, and equipment suppliers) on how the vulnerability of the energy system changes over time. Wherever feasible, the recommendations should be based on quantitative investigations.
- Recommendations for relevant stakeholders on how the resilience of the energy system can be increased, e.g., using structural/topological and operational measures. Wherever feasible, the recommendations should be based on quantitative investigations, deduced from suitable resilience metrics, and weighed against the economic and environmental impacts of the measures.
Consortium Requirements
- A consortium must:
- Be led by 1 host institution.
- Consist of at least 5 different member institutions.
- Consist of at least:
- 1 member institution from Swiss universities or institutes of the ETH domain (ETH Zurich, EPF Lausanne, Empa, Eawag, PSI, and WSL),
- 1 member institution from Swiss universities of applied sciences,
- 2 member institutions from Swiss industry and/or the Swiss private sector.
- In addition:
- The extended consortium should consist of members and cooperation partners that span the innovation system and thereby enable an inter-/transdisciplinary approach commensurate with the research challenge.
- The consortium should be compact, i.e., large enough to bring together the necessary expertise and enable an inter-/transdisciplinary approach yet small enough so that members deliver complementary and significant contributions to the consortium’s work programme and receive an adequate share of the potential financial award.
- The consortium should be gender-balanced and reflect Switzerland’s diversity in terms of languages and regions.
For more information, visit SFOE.