Energy coordination in eco-districts: The multi-disciplinary NEXUS project

Funded by ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) the NEXUS project aims at identifying innovations in energy storage and management (especially of intermittent renewables) at the level of eco-districts or city blocks. The multidisciplinary analysis involves technological, sociological, economic, city planning and political dimensions 1. The research analyses socio-energy nodes (SEN) at district or block level. SENs are seen as the place of the coordination among district stakeholders, from real estate, energy and city planning actors to constructors or investors. Deploying appropriate technical systems, SENs are supposed to be more or less replicable from a territory to another. The project studies the arrangement and deployment conditions of SENs at district level and describes them through a portfolio of contrasted scenarios (including smart grids) in view of a 2040 goal of dividing greenhouse gases by 4. These scenarios will propose visions of districts or blocks able to smoothen energy intermittencies, using assumptions about economic constraints, technological capacities, regulatory context and political decisions at local and national scales.