Lukas Schirren

About me

I am a researcher at Imperial College London in the department of Chemical Engineering, supervised by Prof Adam Hawkes. My work focuses on open-source energy system modelling with an emphasis on the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors and energy security. Part of CCG, SHIELD, and HI-ACT.

Current Research Projects

• Reconstruction of Power and Industry in Ukraine: Modelling short- and long-term reconstruction of Ukraine’s power sector and linked energy-intensive industries, extending PyPSA-Eur for all sectors of Ukraine and country-specific parameters. Also working on evaluating the impact of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) on Ukraine’s power and steel sector. This is part of the SHIELD project.

• Defossilising Petrochemical Production: Analysing the global petrochemical industry with a focus on European value chains, exploring technology pathways, infrastructure needs, and policy instruments for defossilisation.

• Spatial Battery Sitting under Renewable Cost Uncertainty: Quantifying the spatial patterns of battery capacities under future solar and wind cost floors with PyPSA-Eur. Focus on energy arbitrage and where batteries robustly mitigate renewable droughts.

• Geospatial Analysis of Commodity Production Costs: Advancing the Geo-X model and assessing the potential for hydrogen production from solar, wind, and hydropower in Lao PDR and Nepal. This is part of the CCG project.