Quantified Carbon

As a remote-first company with a distributed team across seven countries,  in-person gatherings are rare, but they’re essential for strengthening collaboration, aligning on priorities, and building a cohesive team culture. Twice a year, we press pause on the screen and come together to align on projects. This time, we met just outside Sitges for four days of fresh air, fresh ideas — and fresh wine. We hiked through the Garraf hills, tasted the best of Penedès, and got together to discuss the latest developments with our projects, tools and introduce the new team members. QuantifiedCarbon is on a fast-moving, ambitious journey. If you’re driven to tackle some of today’s most urgent challenges and want to work on meaningful projects with exceptional clients — this might just be your next opportunity. 

Achieving a fully decarbonised power system is about ensuring reliable, cost-effective solutions for long-duration supply gaps as fossil fuels get phased out. Our recent study for WePlanet-DACH evaluates two scenarios for Germany’s energy future: “VRE100,” which achieves a 91.6% emissions reduction with high CO2 prices but still relies on natural gas, and “VRE100 Clean,” which targets 97% reduction by replacing natural gas with hydrogen and expanding offshore wind and solar. While we can see that “VRE100 Clean” offers deeper emissions cuts than VRE100, it comes with trade-offs: higher system costs (+18%), increased transmission investments (+39%), and greater import dependency (+60%). This scenario highlights the challenges of scaling clean technologies, including hydrogen, and the risks of market instability. Achieving deep decarbonisation will require not only ramping up renewable capacity but also ensuring plannable generation and flexibility to manage the long-duration supply gaps that arise as fossil fuels are phased out. The “VRE100” scenario, on the other hand, offers a more gradual approach by relying on high CO2 prices to drive emissions reductions while still maintaining natural gas as a balancing technology. Though it’s less ambitious in terms of emissions cuts, it represents a more manageable pathway for balancing decarbonisation with energy security and system stability. Read the full text here: https://lnkd.in/dXq8Gcpp

Thanks to our outstanding partners at the Silesian University of Technology and DEsire - Platforma Transformacji Energetyki, we hosted our largest Repower World Summit yet! The event took place in Silesia, bringing together global experts to discuss the Repowering Pathway—replacing coal-fired power plants with clean technology. To stay updated with Repower World news, subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/dbrdzZJv

Meet Michał! We’re excited to welcome him to the team as a Junior Analyst, following his successful Master’s thesis with us! In his research, he explored alternative heat utilization strategies for thermal power plants. With a detailed engineering background and a holistic understanding of energy systems, Michał brings valuable expertise to our industrial decarbonization department. It’s great to have him on board! He is particularly eager to contribute to the decarbonization of the heating sector and apply his insights to analyses focused on his homeland, Poland. 

🚀 Launch of New Report: Swedish power systems robust for 300 TWh 🔍⚡ We are proud to present the fourth edition of our scenario analysis, conducted on behalf of Svenskt Näringsliv – a comprehensive study spanning over 1.5 years, with co-authors from universities across the Nordics and Poland. Quantified Carbon live by the statement made by the British statistician George Box: “All models are wrong, some are useful.” – a reminder that no model or set of input assumptions can fully predict the future, but the right approach can provide valuable insights. This study strives to make modeling truly useful, employing a structured and sophisticated scenario analysis to explore alternative pathways for Sweden’s power system. These pathways are quantitatively evaluated in terms of self-sufficiency, competitiveness, environmental and climate impact, and operational safety, offering a clearer picture of both opportunities and risks for the future. By comparing six different power system configurations and testing their performance across 33 weather years, this methodology provides a robust foundation for energy policy and power system planning. We hope that the report will contribute to increasing understanding of key considerations that need to be addressed when evaluating options for building a robust Swedish power system. By putting focus on abilities that are required by the future Swedish power system, our ambition has been to rather identify those options that are not attractive than concluding the “right technology mix”. We look forward to answer questions and engage in meaningful conversations about how to drive the transformation of the Swedish power system forward. A huge thank you to the entire team for a fantastic collaboration! 🙌 Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/dKKybRU6 If you are a Swedish speaker you can listen to Anton Såmark-Roth and Carl Hellesen presentation here: https://lnkd.in/dw6t5EQt

Next week, the Repower Initiative is convening for another major summit! The Repower World Summit 2025 will take place in Katowice, Poland, hosted by the Silesian University of Technology. Over two days, we’ll explore strategies to repower—decarbonize coal-based energy systems—an urgent challenge given that coal repowering could eliminate one-third of global carbon emissions, protect trillions in investment, and ensure a just transition for the 8.4 million people working in the coal industry today. Founded by Quantified Carbon, the Repower Initiative is a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating this transition while safeguarding economies and communities. The summit will feature 8 expert panels: ✅ Presidents & senior leaders of Poland’s largest energy companies ✅ CEOs driving decarbonization technology ✅ Coal asset owners & major utilities ✅ Leading financial institutions More details and registration here: https://lnkd.in/dQeGRgHz Patryk Białas Rafał Kasprów Dorota Jeziorowska Ning Li Bożena Horbaczewska

Power system decarbonisation is often assessed by emission figures, but how much of that progress is real, and how much is just weather-driven fluctuation? A mild winter or a windy spell might look like major climate progress—but is it genuine progress or merely a temporary dip? That’s why, in our energy modeling, we use 33 historical weather years to ensure power systems perform reliably across a broad range of conditions. Looking into the future as countries progress in their decarbonisation efforts, a critical eye should be kept on claimed emissions reductions in the more and more weather dependent power systems. Power system modelling is set to aid in the understanding. Below is as an example a figure from our recent German Power System study for WePlanet Dach, comparing two key scenarios. Check out our blog post for the full story: https://lnkd.in/g68PxQrv

Sweden and Norway have introduced grid fees with a localisation component. At the TSO (Transmission System Operator) level, these fees include energy and capacity components. Generators and consumers pay higher fees if their location increases the need of transmission. The figure shows the loss factors per TSO substation, which are used to calculate the energy fee. Generators in northern regions pay a percentage (the loss factor) of the spot price, while those in the south receive reductions. Thus, incentivising localizing generation in the south, where there is an energy deficit, and encouraging demand in the energy surplus area of the north. A similar localisation component exists in the capacity fee.  In the last years, the spot price has been much higher in the southern bidding zones than in the northern bidding zone. Thus there are plenty of price incentives for generators to locate in the south and for demand to be concentrated in the north. However, it is often not possible for existing customers to do anything about their localisation. It could be argued that the signal would be both stronger and have a larger practical impact if only directed at those considering connecting new generators or demand, Denmark for example applies this approach through connection fees. Finland also considering introducing such a location component in the grid connection fee.  https://lnkd.in/d5srf4ig

As power systems worldwide transition toward renewables, ensuring energy security amid increasing intermittency is becoming a major challenge. Our latest study for WePlanet DACH compares two potential pathways for Germany’s 2045 energy mix: a “Nuclear” scenario, combining nuclear with renewables, and a “VRE100” scenario, relying solely on variable renewable energy (VRE) for clean power. Using investment and dispatch optimization based on 33 historical weather years, our findings highlight critical trade-offs—most notably, the significantly higher natural gas consumption in the VRE100 scenario (144 TWh vs. 45 TWh in the Nuclear scenario), emphasising the impact of electrification trends and coal phase-out on fuel dependency.    The study explores extreme natural gas consumption levels, revealing how reliance on wind and solar increases vulnerability to supply shortfalls. In the long term, the results emphasise the role of nuclear power as a proven solution to enhance energy security, mitigate geopolitical risks, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. As intermittency grows, energy systems will require greater storage capacity and backup resources to manage peak loads. In the short term, with wind and solar shares set to rise in the European power system, can a lower average fuel consumption of dispatchable power supply still mean an increased dependence on storage and infrastructure as insurance against challenging weather conditions? Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dwU6rpbr