Industrial flexibility project launches in Belgium

Project Galileo to unlock the untapped potential of industrial flexibility has kicked off in Belgium, coordinated by the research organisations VITO and EnergyVille.

The Belgian Energy Transition Fund supported project is aimed to tackle the pressing flexibility need challenge with what could be a significant source of flexibility.

Industrial flexibility has the potential to provide both long-term capacity to ensure security of supply and short-term options to balance the grid. However, realising its full potential has been hampered by a range of barriers, technical, economic, social and regulatory.

In addition, industries are under increasing pressure from rising energy procurement costs and the investments required for decarbonisation and electrification.

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The Galileo project is proposed to address these challenges by focusing on several key objectives.

These include exploring the potential of industrial flexibility by refining scenarios to understand how it can improve the Belgian energy system and proposing solutions to adapt current market designs and to facilitate the provision of flexibility.

The project also proposes to explore new financial instruments and advanced hedging strategies and to help industry players maximise the value of their flexibility potential through advanced assessments, scenario building and market valorisation strategies.

To ensure an impact on the ground, the project is proposing five major industrial demonstration cases representing different energy intensive sectors – steel, metal, chemical, food, agriculture etc., nutrition and data centres.

These demonstration cases should help to shape practical insights and guide industry players towards more sustainable and flexible energy solutions.

Throughout the project, Galileo intends to engage with key Belgian stakeholders through a series of interactive workshops.

Besides strengthening Belgium’s position in the energy transition, the project also is expected to set a precedent for industrial decarbonisation and electrification across Europe.