Impact of demand reduction on the Belgian energy system in 2050

Fifty years ago, the Meadows report “The limits to growth” was published. The authors already warned the world about the limits to growth and called for an anticipation of these limits. In addition, efforts to reduce our GHG emissions are increasing drastically these past few years, following the publication of the “European Green Deal”. One way of reducing these emissions attracts a growing attention: the reduction of the demand. Indeed, if we reduce our energy consumption, we emit less CO2 in the atmosphere. The present work results from a partnership between UCLouvain and negaWatt Belgium. It aims to highlight the impacts of the reduction of the demand in the Belgian energy system in 2050, the year at which the carbon neutrality must be achieved in the European Union. In this master thesis, a range of energy demand is defined. Its lower limit is defined with the help of the article “Providing a decent living with minimum energy: a global scenario”, while the higher limit is defined with the projections of the European Commission in the “EU Reference Scenario 2050”. The low demand scenario needs around 4 times less primary energy than the high demand one. Afterwards, intermediate scenarios are constructed and simulated with EnergyScope TD, which models the whole energy system. These simulations show two main tipping points in the energy system. One above which (at higher energy demand) the energy system imports an increasing share of primary energy resources and below which the Belgian maximum endogenous potential is not reached. The other one is determined by the use of cogeneration of heat and power units in higher demand scenarios, to meet the high demand in electricity and in high temperature heat. The reduction of the demand would lead to a lower energy dependency on importations and a lower cost of the energy system.