Welcome to RegiOpt!
Replacing fossil and nuclear raw materials with sustainably utilised renewable resources will become one of the grand challenges of the 21st century. Reasons for this necessary change are manifold, ranging from exhaustion of key resources like crude oil to the necessity to contain global climate change to political dependencies of many nations on instable providers of these resources to ethical considerations of exploitation, corruption and the destruction of habitats for mankind, flora and fauna.
The change will be profound. It will not be done by just replacing a few technologies; it requires a fundamental transformation of the very fibre of society in its social, economic and technological dimension. This transformation will not be without its own contradictions and ethical conundrums. Utilising renewable resources will also pose burning questions of global exploitation, jeopardising ecosystems as well as inequality on the local and global level. Only if these questions can be answered sufficiently, renewable resources may become sustainable alternatives to the current resource system.
One result of this resource transformation is a change in social and political responsibility for provision of the material base of human society. Fossil as well as nuclear raw materials emanate from point sources (oil rigs, mines, etc.) and are processed centrally. Energy services and products derived from these resources then will be distributed to consumers. This hierarchical resource economy is mirrored by an equally hierarchic political and economic structure. Decisions will be taken by states or big multinational companies.
This structure will be fundamentally changed when renewable resources are utilised. All renewable resources with the exception of geothermal energy are derived directly or indirectly from solar radiation as our sole natural income. Exploiting this income requires area. This means that renewable resources are provided de-centrally, actors who manage area are therefore key players for the provision of renewable resources. Utilising products and services from renewable resources require distribution systems where consumers may also become producers, breaking with the strictly hierarchical current distribution systems and building “smart” grids and supply systems.
This in turn means that decision structures and responsibilities will be transformed, too. Communities and regions as the main political bodies managing land and hence renewable resources will become decisive societal and political players, for renewable resource provision as well as for the rational use of goods and services derived from them. Supporting decision making on these levels is the objective of RegiOpt.
Challenges for decision makers in communities and regions are tremendous. Communities and regions command a great diversity of resources, they are home to citizens with different needs and the may use a great variety of pathways to utilise their resources as well as to fulfil the needs of their population, possibly also including changes in life styles, in order to achieve sustainable development. Each and every decision however results in direct and indirect economic, social, ecological and ethical impacts, on the local as well as global level.
RegiOpt supports decisions by providing optimised technology systems based on the renewable resources available locally. These systems will be evaluated economically (regarding local value added) and ecologically (with the Ecological Footprint calculated according to the Sustainable Process Index method as well as with the Carbon Footprint). At the same time decision makers are confronted with the impacts their decision have in the global economic and ecological context as well as what ecological and economic pressures they export. By altering the boundary conditions, but also by changing key parameters of life style, RegiOpt users may generate consistent scenarios and use the results of these scenarios in participatory decision making processes.
RegiOpt deliberatiely strives to initiate and support a discourse between all actors. Sustainable development does not lend itself to simple, one-dimensional solutions. In the face of the deep and complex change brought upon us by replacing fossil and nuclear resources, a broad and discourse as well as participatory and joint action is a necessity. RegiOpt wants to contribute to this process.
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