Colloquia

Summary

Energy autarky is referred to the ability of relying only on your own energy resources to generate the required energy needed to sustain society within an area, without depending on external factors that cross the boundary of the system. Through energy communities, energy autarky can provide more opportunities for consumers to manage their own energy supply and consumption. Research done on energy autarky and approaches carried out to implement it have concluded that the approach of implementing this strategy lies on knowing to what degree it should be applied on communities, and understanding the context that surrounds them, witnessing also individual behaviour through decision-making situations. Agent based modelling (ABM) is a useful tool to analyse how citizens act in an environment under certain established rules. This thesis consists in using ABM to establish different decision-making strategies within a community and see how differently these strategies can impact on the level of energy autarky of a community, its economic, environmental and social impact. The community selected for this research is Aardehuis. The results of the research showed that different decision-making strategies can produce different behavioural outcomes in the community, and the optimal degree of energy autarky will depend on the conditions that a particular community is faced with.