@inproceedings{LilliestamDuGilmanovaetal.2023,
  author    = {Lilliestam, Johan and Du, Fengli and Gilmanova, Alina and Mehos, Mark and Wang, Zhifeng and Thonig, Richard},
  title     = {Scaling up CSP},
  series = {AIP conference proceedings},
  volume    = {2815},
  booktitle = {AIP conference proceedings},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {American Institute of Physics},
  address   = {Melville},
  issn      = {1551-7616},
  doi       = {10.1063/5.0148709},
  pages     = {10},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Concentrating solar power (CSP) is one of the few scalable technologies capable of delivering dispatchable renewable power. Therefore, many expect it to shoulder a significant share of system balancing in a renewable electricity future powered by cheap, intermittent PV and wind power: the IEA, for example, projects 73 GW CSP by 2030 and several hundred GW by 2050 in its Net-Zero by 2050 pathway. In this paper, we assess how fast CSP can be expected to scale up and how long time it would take to get new, high-efficiency CSP technologies to market, based on observed trends and historical patterns. We find that to meaningfully contribute to net-zero pathways the CSP sector needs to reach and exceed the maximum historical annual growth rate of 30\%/year last seen between 2010-2014 and maintain it for at least two decades. Any CSP deployment in the 2020s will rely mostly on mature existing technologies, namely parabolic trough and molten-salt towers, but likely with adapted business models such as hybrid CSP-PV stations, combining the advantages of higher-cost dispatchable and low-cost intermittent power. New third-generation CSP designs are unlikely to play a role in markets during the 2020s, as they are still at or before the pilot stage and, judging from past pilot-to-market cycles for CSP, they will likely not be ready for market deployment before 2030. CSP can contribute to low-cost zero-emission energy systems by 2050, but to make that happen, at the scale foreseen in current energy models, ambitious technology-specific policy support is necessary, as soon as possible and in several countries.},
  language  = {en}
}