Workshop: Future Scenarios and Strategic Decision-Making for Industry Transformation – Powered by Systems Engineering

Start date 2021-04-15 13:30

End date 2021-04-15 17:00

Detailed agenda will be distributed to those who register, using this link.

Synopsis of the Workshop

Systems engineering, as well as decision-making methods and tools, have been traditionally used for industrial process and energy system evaluation. However, considering the need for radical and rapid improvements of industrial sites for deep decarbonization, the need for strategic decision-making with large uncertainty has become imminent. Scenario planning and ex-ante research is a tool for decision-makers to visualize the future and assess how to will respond in different situations, and understand more clearly how complex environments and policy might impact outcomes. Scenario planning and ex-ante research can be effective in every industrial sector. According to a 2019 McKinsey survey, most organizations seem to make trade-offs between how fast decisions are made and executed, versus how carefully-planned the decision is. Further, decisions tend to be made considering current and/or imminent policies, whereas longer-term policies are more pertinent for new industrial implementations that will operate for the coming decades. This has led to the development of hybrid approaches and novel tools, which have proven to be powerful in support of decision-making in industry. Reasons for this can be attributed to their usefulness in one or more of the following aspects:

  • Radical changes and disruptions in the future, where old rule of thumbs are not applicable
  • Combinations of novel technologies/systems, with knowledge gaps
  • Both foreground and background (surrounding system in and around industry sites) are changing
  • Conditions regarding economic and policy instruments are changing rapidly, resulting in a need to evaluate future scenarios

The main aims of this two-day workshop are to highlight international strategies for deep decarbonization and scaling-up the sustainable bioeconomy, as well as novel developments in methods and tools for strategic decision-making, and to discuss interests for enhanced international collaboration in this area.

Workshop Speakers

The workshop will be hosted by renowned international speakers in the area. To name just a few:

  • Ernst Worrell (Utrecht University) and Andrea Ramirez (Delft University of Technology) will speak on “Industry perspective of deep decarbonization, DSS and ex-ante”.
  • Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi (Texas A&M University) will speak on “Technology design approaches for radical GHG emissions reduction in industrial sites”.
  • There will be a “Roundtable discussion on complexity of decision-making for industrial deep decarbonization and systems analysis” involving experts from Austria, Finland, France, Sweden and Switzerland.
  • Emily Newes (National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL) will speak on “Bioeconomy scenario analysis”.
  • Lars-Peter Lindfors (NESTE) will speak on Decision-making for the emerging biofuels market”.

…and many more experts. On Day 2, an invitation will be extended to you regarding whether you might be interested in participating in a new IETS Task entitled “Decision Support Systems (DSS) and ex ante research”.

Reserve Your Spot Now!

If you are interested to participate in the workshop, please use the following link to register. For those that register, you will receive the detailed agenda and login information next week.

The workshop is  workshop initiated by Annex XI Task 5.

About Annex XI – Industry-based Biorefineries

The robustness of new biorefinery pathways will depend on their ability to survive under uncertain future conditions, for example changes in process, processes, production and policy instruments. Assessments and evaluations made at the present by companies considering transformation to the bioeconomy are made considering a set of complex criteria that are unique to the values of the company, eg economic, GHG mitigation, technology risk, market risk, unique competitive advantage, etc. A methodology for systematically quantifying and mitigating risk when assessing transformational strategies is essential, considering for example mathematical uncertainty, and/or different future scenarios.

Main objectives:

  • Understanding the complex decision-making needs of industry related to bioeconomy transformation generally, and more specifically, energy decision-making needs as part of the overall decision considering ex-ante analysis;
  • Identifying DSS software that assists in addressing the complex decision-making; and
  • Understanding of ex-ante research related to energy policy, in the overall decision-making context.