A hybrid model spanning hours to decades shows that a fully renewable energy system is achievable, with flexibility key to lowering costs

Earth timer (Courtesy: iStock/Peepo)

A successful clean‑energy transition depends on understanding how to balance variable renewable power with the growing electricity demands of transport, heating, and industry. A key challenge is capturing how renewable energy sources like wind and solar fluctuate hour by hour, but this variability also creates new opportunities to align supply with increasingly flexible forms of demand, such as electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other electrified services. Alongside these short‑term dynamics, it is equally important to determine the long‑term infrastructure needed to support a fully decarbonised energy system.

In this research, two powerful models (REMIND and PyPSA ‑ Eur) are linked and allowed to exchange information repeatedly to determine both what infrastructure should be built and how it would operate each hour of the year.…