Energy is a critical resource for industry, making energy security and availability vital topics for companies. Although many companies have established sustainable energy goals, developing a sustainable energy strategy is hindered by complexity and uncertainty in the long term. This research aims at developing a framework that provides an overview of the energy transition and a stepwise procedure for companies to develop a long-term sustainable energy strategy. The framework covers the categories: (1) Technology, infrastructure and innovation, (2) policy and governance, (3) economic, (4) environmental and (5) social. From this framework, a modular and dynamic architecture, consisting of input, variables and output, is developed with the goal of automizing sustainable energy strategy development for companies. A modular configurator tool has been created according to this architecture, to analyze and visualize the technical and financial implications of a company’s energy strategy. The tool simplifies sustainable energy strategy development by converting minimal input into visual scenario-based output and analyses. The framework and tool have been tested through a case study at a large technology company in the Netherlands. The results show that implementing a carefully constructed long-term sustainable energy strategy leads to a financial advantage besides the intended positive environmental impact.
Horn et al. (Thu,) studied this question.