Energy Self-sufficiency in Agriculture - Business Recommendations and Advisory Support

Energy costs, particularly in the form of electricity, are playing an increasingly important economic role on farms due to the rise in energy prices. As electricity prices will remain at a higher level in the future, but above all become more volatile than before, the economic price risk for farms is increasing. On the other hand, security of supply has increasingly become the focus of social discourse. Due to Austria's high dependency on imported energy sources, this leads to an increasing risk in the security of supply. One form of risk management can be to make the farm as energy self-sufficient as possible. The possibilities for this have become more diverse due to the further development of renewable energy technologies and the investment decision for farms is often associated with great economic uncertainty. This project aims to evaluate the technologies available on the market (in the field of solar power production, storage and use) and operational development paths (flexibilisation measures in efficiency and load management) with regard to energy self-sufficiency from a technical and economic perspective and to survey their acceptance among farm managers. In addition to surveys on motives for such investment decisions and attitudes towards energy self-sufficiency and risk perception, high-resolution energy simulation and business risk assessment models will be developed and applied to typical farms in Austrian agriculture. From this, an Excel tool will be developed to support the work of agricultural advisors and thus make a significant contribution to the development of more sustainable structures in agriculture.