Katherine Lonergan


Last Name

Lonergan

First Name

Katherine

ORCID

0000-0003-2157-6626

Organisational unit

02228 - Energy Science Center (ESC) / Energy Science Center (ESC)

Search Results

Publications 1 - 10 of 24
  • Considering distributive justice as a planning principle helps navigate a diversity of future energy infrastructure designs
    Item type: Journal Article
    Lonergan, Katherine; Sansavini, Giovanni (2025)
    Nature Communications
    The low-carbon energy transition could receive broader societal support if it also delivers a more just distribution of burdens and benefits. However, achieving more just systems in practice is complicated by contested interpretations of justice, conflicting system impacts, and overarching technical system constraints. To resolve these challenges, we develop a set of indicators for distributive justice based on justice theory and current policy to assess low-carbon and low-cost European energy system designs. We find that accounting for distributive justice can help narrow the field of technically viable system design choices without introducing substantive cost trade-offs. Considering public opinion to create a balanced approach to distributive justice produces more consistent continental-level technology capacity recommendations than provided by theory alone, showing the value of considering public opinion in systems-level energy planning. Our results support policymakers in enabling a sustainable energy transition that is also just.
  • Scheduling Municipal Carbon Abatement Projects Under Uncertainty
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Lonergan, Katherine; Sansavini, Giovanni (2022)
    Book of Extended Abstracts for the 32nd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2022)
    Addressing city-level energy-related emissions is a key challenge in wider decarbonization efforts. However, the ability to take effective planning decisions is constrained by budget, staffing resources, political cycles, and the need to consider multiple, competing policy objectives. Moreover, project selection is often conducted with little-to-no consideration to uncertainty in project cost, duration, or abatement potential. We suggest that applying established scheduling methods could help city planners make more effective emissions reduction planning decisions, especially if project uncertainties are considered in the scheduling process. We demonstrate such an approach to a case study of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, and consider actual projects adopted by the city. We adopt a simplified representation of project emissions abatement potential based upon whether projects addressed existing or new infrastructure and the actors involved. Our results show that projects selected by the city have lower expected carbon abatement potential and generally offer lower cost savings to the community than those selected by algorithm-based scheduling methods. Future work will further develop the applied uncertainty quantification methods and alternative case studies.
  • Impact of distributed decision-making on energy and social systems' resilience
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Lonergan, Katherine; Sansavini, Giovanni (2021)
    Proceedings of the 31st European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2021)
  • Risk Of Blackouts And Social Vulnerability In The Italian Power Transmission System
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Stankovski, Andrej; Lonergan, Katherine; Gjorgiev, Blazhe; et al. (2024)
    Advances in Reliability, Safety and Security: ESREL 2024 Collection of Extended Abstracts. Part 2
  • Business structure of electricity distribution system operator and effect on solar photovoltaic uptake: An empirical case study for Switzerland
    Item type: Journal Article
    Lonergan, Katherine; Sansavini, Giovanni (2022)
    Energy Policy
    Distribution System Operators are responsible for overseeing the connection of distributed energy sources, such as solar photovoltaic, to the low voltage electricity grid. While solar PV could contribute significantly to the decarbonization of the electricity supply, the technology's proliferation is not necessarily aligned with the business objectives of the Distribution System Operators. We conduct a statistical analysis to test whether solar photovoltaic in Switzerland is affected by the business model of the local Distribution System Operator. Our results indicate that the technology uptake patterns differ according to the business model despite a non-discriminatory connection policy. We conclude that Swiss policymakers provide additional support for solar photovoltaic in areas served by limited companies, due to their energy-generating potential, as well as those served by local municipalities, to achieve more consistent adoption rates. The findings of our work support future organizational studies of individual Distribution System Operators and comparisons to other jurisdictions with multiple Distribution System Operators of varying business models.
  • Investment and operation of energy storage for power outage mitigation
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Lonergan, Katherine; Wu, Raphael; Sansavini, Giovanni (2020)
    Proceedings of the 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference and the 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Managaement Conference
    Energy storage technologies have been established as being extremely versatile, with the potential to facilitate energy arbitrage, frequency regulation, and increased self-consumption, among other services. Energy storage may also serve as a back-up source of energy in the event of a sudden power loss; however, unlike other services, the value of back-up energy provided by energy storage has not been fully quantified. The value of energy reserves presented by energy storage may be significant for users with high value of continuous power supply and may factor into the investment and decision-making process. Here, we present a methodology for a private energy storage investor by accounting for the change in expected cost of outage, as presented by the varying levels of stored energy, in the context of a mathematical optimization problem. In a case study of an Australian aluminum smelter and a vanadium redox flow battery, we find that considering the expected benefit of storage is of greater importance to operating strategy than in determining the optimal storage capacity, with impact increasing as the network failure rate decreases. These preliminary findings suggest that considering the value of energy storage in mitigating the costs of power outage may be non-negligible for other users, as well.
  • Ensuring/insuring resilient energy system infrastructure
    Item type: Journal Article
    Lonergan, Katherine; Greco, Salvatore Francesco; Sansavini, Giovanni (2023)
    Environment Systems & Decisions
    Natural disasters significantly impact energy systems and dependent critical infrastructures, causing severe human and economic losses in modern society. Given the increasing effects of climate change on both the frequency and the severity of extreme weather events, energy systems must adapt to cope with this new and evolving risk environment. In this perspective, we argue that re/insurers have an interest in supporting resilient infrastructure as well as the know-how to do so. Specifically, insurers can support resilient infrastructure by offering resilient-oriented insurance products, such as parametric insurance. Integrating resilience into re/insurance requires integrating existing assessment methods, including risk assessment, to develop innovative insurance products that help clients cope with climate change. Developing insurance products alongside industrial, academic, and government partners is key to making both effective and cost-attractive policies. While our argument is tailored towards energy infrastructure and climate change-related threats, resilience-based insurance would also be useful in mitigating the losses caused by other extreme and hybrid threats across interdependent critical infrastructure networks.
  • Current approaches in energy systems modelling to support the just transition
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Lonergan, Katherine; Suter, Nicolas; Sansavini, Giovanni (2023)
  • Equity, equality, and justice: Mapping concept to technical representations in energy system models
    Item type: Conference Poster
    Lonergan, Katherine; Chen, Meijun; Suter, Nicolas; et al. (2022)
    Energy system models are helpful tools for the planning and operation of future energy systems. Energy systems are large, expensive and interconnected; real-world experiments are therefore often impractical and the use of computational techniques is paramount for planning and design. The literature contains many examples of technical models that incorporate techno-economic factors but far fewer cases that model sociocultural aspects. Even when social factors are represented within technical models, they are often considered only to a limited extent. The dominant modelling practice is at odds with the fact that energy systems may deeply affect the communities in which they are embedded. To understand the state of the practice, we review current energy system modelling approaches that consider equity, equality, and energy justice (EEJ). Relevant, recent articles are identified using the Scopus search engine. We observe an increasing number of modelling studies that consider EEJ concepts with no clear evidence of location-based preference. The studies identified adopt a variety of approaches to quantify EEJ concepts; however, these approaches are largely inconsistent and are most often applied without a clear theoretical basis. Moreover, the methods largely fail to reflect the numerous dimensions of EEJ and tend to concentrate on select aspects of EEJ. Our findings indicate a gap between how modellers conceive EEJ and how EEJ is understood by social scientists and non-academic practitioners. To close this gap, technical modellers require further support in determining how they should consider EEJ. This support could include references to study motivation, contextually-appropriate definitions of EEJ, and alternative technical formulations. Providing such guidance would not only help bridge disciplinary gaps but also ensure that models that consider EEJ do so in a manner that is accepted by the broader community.
  • Changing energy mix and its impact on grid stability
    Item type: Educational Material
    Sansavini, Giovanni; Gabrielli, Paolo; Gjorgiev, Blazhe; et al. (2021)
Publications 1 - 10 of 24