Research

Austria’s transition to climate neutrality by 2040 requires innovative approaches to managing flexible energy systems, including photovoltaics (PV), battery storage systems, electric vehicles (EVs), and heat pumps. A key component of this transition is the integration of decentralized energy producers and consumers into energy communities (ECs). Achieving optimal energy use and grid stability in ECs, however, demands advanced operational strategies that are inseparably linked to user behavior patterns and entail significant challenges regarding privacy, security, and trust. The TRUST-EC feasibility study examines the transformative potential of responsible and ethical artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize energy management and enhance EC functionality. Adopting an exploratory approach, the study addresses critical uncertainties and risks—technical, regulatory, and sustainability-related—that currently impede the deployment of AI-driven solutions in ECs. By systematically investigating these barriers, the project aims to lay the groundwork for a future research and development (R&D) initiative that goes beyond the current state of the art.

Prospective approaches to risk assessment have gained significance beyond the field of technology assessment and are now also being adopted and promoted at the regulatory level. Their particular advantage lies in their ability to assess potential risks early on in innovation processes. In this way, they enable safety assessments to be targeted and technologies to be designed with risk mitigation in mind. To enable prospective risk assessment as early as possible in the development process, a number of methods have been developed in recent years. These methods account for as broad a spectrum as possible of risk-relevant properties of nanomaterials and advanced materials without requiring extensive experimental testing of these materials. The project aims to further develop these methods and adapt them to the requirements of specific materials such as nanocarriers or micro- and nanoplastic particles.

The non-proliferation of nuclear material and the long-term protection of people and the environment are central tasks of the nuclear regulatory framework. In the context of final storage, safeguards measures are necessary to reliably verify the integrity and inaccessibility of waste containing nuclear material. The project systematically records the current state of science and technology relating to safeguards monitoring techniques for final repositories, focusing on technologies that can be used to monitor final repositories. Based on this, the potential safety-related influences of these monitoring measures on the final repository system are qualitatively evaluated and assigned to the corresponding entries in FEP catalogs (features, events, processes). The aim is to develop a methodology with which safeguards monitoring measures can be integrated into long-term safety analysis procedures. The project will investigate which safety-related statements can be made in the individual steps of a safety analysis if the measures are methodically taken into account via FEP catalogs. Finally, the developed methodology will be applied to selected safeguards monitoring measures and to a documented final repository system in a specific host rock.