About us

The company ESA² originated from the lighthouse innovation and research project „Energy Systems Analysis Agency“ (2012-2014) within the KIC-InnoEnergy initiative under the leadership of KIC InnoEnergy SE and the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and additionally funded by the State of Baden-Württemberg (Ministry for Science, Research and Art). Within this project, an independent, international consortium of renowned universities and research institutions from five European countries was formed. The project partners were:

University of Science and Technology (AGH), Kraków, Poland
Central Mining Institute (GIG), Katowice, Poland
European Institute for Energy Research (EIfER), Karlsruhe, Germany
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI), Karlsruhe, Germany
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Dresden, Germany
University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
VITO, Mol, Belgium.

All involved partners have long experience in using models for analysing energy, environmental and social topics under different national and international conditions and are continuously working on the development of these models. Typically, one model cannot cover all aspects of an energy system or the implications of specific policies. The innovative idea of the project was to combine the strengths of the existing models, thus enhancing the potential of individual instruments, and making new and more comprehensive methods of analysis possible. Therefore, the different optimization models, agent-based models and life cycle assessment (LCA) based approaches of the partners were linked together on a harmonized data basis. With the new model system thus created, a number of case studies were created, assessing the various challenges in order to achieve the EU’s decarbonization objective by 2050. The results were presented at two public workshops in Brussels.

The innovation project was successfully completed by spring 2014. Based on the experience from the project, the idea for the further development of the concept of model coupling originated. The result of this consideration was the foundation of the company

Energy Systems Analysis Associates – ESA² GmbH

ESA² sees itself as an innovative, independent and competent consultancy and research company for energy-related topics which is placed between politics, economy and society acting as a catalyst to enable the transfer of research results into practice. At the same time, we enable decision makers from politics and economy to use scientific know-how, methodologies and models to analyse their own specific questions on their energy transition pathway. Thus we create energy model systems (EMS) based on different analysing approaches which can be selected from a flexible toolkit and combined in the most suitable way to serve the specific demands of our public and private clients.

We rise to the challenge of finding answers to the questions evolving from the development and design of the future energy system with the perspective of a safe, sustainable and affordable energy supply for everyone as well as strengthening the business location Europe. We see sustainability from a holistic viewpoint, involving all relevant aspects, such as economy, environment, resources and society.

With our work we answer energy and environmental-related questions of today and help to conceive the energy world of tomorrow.