SHIELD - Sustainable Heat Integration via Enhanced Digital Landscapes

SHIELD is a research project that will develop a real-time Digital Shadow of GreenLab’s heat symbiosis infrastructure. In simple terms, this means creating a live digital representation of the heat system that uses operational data to monitor performance, forecast future conditions, simulate different scenarios, and support better decision-making. 

The project is designed as a practical step toward a full Digital Twin. By combining data integration, real-time simulation, forecasting, and optimisation, SHIELD will help make GreenLab’s heat symbiosis greener, smarter, and more flexible. The system will support operators in reducing energy costs and CO₂ emissions while improving the use of renewable energy and thermal storage. It will also help quantify flexibility in the system, opening new opportunities for participation in relevant energy markets. 

A key strength of SHIELD is that it is being developed directly in GreenLab’s unique living testbed, where industries, renewable energy, storage, and sector coupling already interact in practice. This makes GreenLab the ideal place to validate how digitalisation and AI can accelerate the green transition in eco-industrial clusters. Beyond GreenLab, the project is designed to be scalable and replicable, offering a model that can inspire similar solutions in Denmark and internationally. 

What the researchers think:

"Collaborating with GreenLab has been highly inspiring from the beginning. GreenLab is not only a demonstration site, but a true innovation ecosystem where research, industry, and digital infrastructure come together in a very concrete way. This makes it possible to turn advanced research into practical solutions with measurable impact. For us, the strong connection between GreenLab and the wider research community is especially valuable, because it creates a shared platform for testing, learning, and scaling new ideas. SHIELD is a good example of this spirit: bringing greener energy and smarter heat to GreenLab through a real-time Digital Shadow of heat symbiosis"