@article{ThonigLilliestam2023,
  author    = {Thonig, Richard and Lilliestam, Johan},
  title     = {Concentrating solar technology policy should encourage high temperatures and modularity to enable spillovers},
  series = {AIP conference proceedings},
  journal   = {AIP conference proceedings},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {American Institute of Physics},
  address   = {Melville},
  issn      = {1551-7616},
  doi       = {10.1063/5.0149423},
  pages     = {1 -- 11},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Thermal energy from concentrating solar thermal technologies (CST) may contribute to decarbonizing applications from heating and cooling, desalination, and power generation to commodities such as aluminium, hydrogen, ammonia or sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). So far, successful commercial-scale CST projects are restricted to solar industrial process heat (SIPH) and concentrating solar power (CSP) generation and, at least for the latter, depend on support from public policies that have been stagnating for years. As they are technologically similar, spillovers between SIPH or CSP and other emerging CST could accelerate commercialization across use cases while maximizing the impact of scarce support. Here, we review the technical potential for cross-fertilization between different CST applications and the ability of the current policy regime to enable this potential. Using working temperature as the key variable, we identify different clusters of current and emerging CST technologies. Low-temperature CST (<400℃) applications for heating, cooling and desalination already profit from the significant progress made in line-focussing CSP over the last 15 years. A newly emerging cluster of high temperature CST (>600℃) for solar chemistry and high-grade process heat has significant leverage for spillovers with point-focussing solar tower third-generation CSP currently under development. For these spillovers to happen, however, CSP policy designs would need to prioritize innovation for high working temperature and encourage modular plant design, by adequately remunerating hybridized plants with heat and power in and outputs that include energy sources beyond CST solar fields. This would enable synergies across applications and scales by incentivizing compatibility of modular CST components in multiple sectors and use cases.},
  language  = {en}
}
@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}
}
@article{ThonigGilmanovaZhanetal.2022,
  author    = {Thonig, Richard and Gilmanova, Alina and Zhan, Jing and Lilliestam, Johan},
  title     = {Chinese CSP for the world?},
  series = {AIP conference proceedings},
  journal   = {AIP conference proceedings},
  publisher = {American Institute of Physics},
  address   = {Melville},
  issn      = {1551-7616},
  doi       = {10.1063/5.0085752},
  pages     = {1 -- 11},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {For three consecutive five-year plans since 2006, China has worked on building up an internationally competitive CSP industry and value chain. One big milestone in commercializing proprietary Chinese CSP technology was the 2016 demonstration program of 20 commercial-scale projects. China sought to increase and demonstrate capacities for domestic CSP technology development and deployment. At the end of the 13th five-year period, we take stock of the demonstrated progress of the Chinese CSP industry towards delivering internationally competitive CSP projects. We find that in January 2021, eight commercial-scale projects, in total 500 MW, have been completed and three others were under construction in China. In addition, Chinese EPC's have participated in three international CSP projects, although proprietary Chinese CSP designs have not been applied outside China. The largest progress has been made in molten-salt tower technology, with several projects by different companies completed and operating successfully: here, the aims were met, and Chinese companies are now at the global forefront of this segment. Further efforts for large-scale demonstration are needed, however, for other CSP technologies, including parabolic trough - with additional demonstration hindered by a lack of further deployment policies. In the near future, Chinese companies seek to employ the demonstrated capabilities in the tower segment abroad and are developing projects using Chinese technology, financing, and components in several overseas markets. If successful, this will likely lead to increasing competition and further cost reductions for the global CSP sector.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{ReschSchoenigerKleinschmittetal.2022,
  author    = {Resch, Gustav and Sch{\"o}niger, Franziska and Kleinschmitt, Christoph and Franke, Katja and Thonig, Richard and Lilliestam, Johan},
  title     = {Deep decarbonization of the European power sector calls for dispatchable CSP},
  series = {AIP conference proceedings},
  journal   = {AIP conference proceedings},
  publisher = {American Institute of Physics},
  address   = {Melville},
  issn      = {1551-7616},
  doi       = {10.1063/5.0086710},
  pages     = {050006-1 -- 050006-9},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonized power generation and is one of the few dispatchable renewable technologies able to generate renewable electricity on demand. Today (2018) CSP contributes only 5TWh to the European power generation, but it has the potential to become one of the key pillars for European decarbonization pathways. In this paper we investigate how factors and pivotal policy decisions leading to different futures and associated CSP deployment in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step we characterize the scenarios with their associated system cost and the costs of support policies. We show that the role of CSP in Europe critically depends on political developments and the success or failure of policies outside renewable power. In particular, the uptake of CSP depends on the overall decarbonization ambition, the degree of cross border trade of renewable electricity and is enabled by the presence of strong grid interconnection between Southern and Norther European Member States as well as by future electricity demand growth. The presence of other baseload technologies, prominently nuclear power in France, reduce the role and need for CSP. Assuming favorable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modeled scenarios: contributing between 100TWh to 300TWh of electricity to a future European power system. This would require increasing the current European CSP fleet by a factor of 20 to 60 in the next 30 years. To achieve this financial support between € 0.4-2 billion per year into CSP would be needed, representing only a small share of overall support needs for power-system transformation. Cooperation of Member States could further help to reduce this cost.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{McKennaPfenningerHeinrichsetal.2022,
  author    = {McKenna, Russell and Pfenninger, Stefan and Heinrichs, Heidi and Schmidt, Johannes and Staffell, Iain and Bauer, Christian and Gruber, Katharina and Hahmann, Andrea N. and Jansen, Malte and Klingler, Michael and Landwehr, Natascha and Lars{\´e}n, Xiaoli Guo and Lilliestam, Johan and Pickering, Bryn and Robinius, Martin and Tr{\"o}ndle, Tim and Turkovska, Olga and Wehrle, Sebastian and Weinand, Jann Michael and Wohland, Jan},
  title     = {High-resolution large-scale onshore wind energy assessments},
  series = {Renewable energy},
  volume    = {182},
  journal   = {Renewable energy},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Amsterdam},
  issn      = {0960-1481},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.renene.2021.10.027},
  pages     = {659 -- 684},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The rapid uptake of renewable energy technologies in recent decades has increased the demand of energy researchers, policymakers and energy planners for reliable data on the spatial distribution of their costs and potentials. For onshore wind energy this has resulted in an active research field devoted to analysing these resources for regions, countries or globally. A particular thread of this research attempts to go beyond purely technical or spatial restrictions and determine the realistic, feasible or actual potential for wind energy. Motivated by these developments, this paper reviews methods and assumptions for analysing geographical, technical, economic and, finally, feasible onshore wind potentials. We address each of these potentials in turn, including aspects related to land eligibility criteria, energy meteorology, and technical developments of wind turbine characteristics such as power density, specific rotor power and spacing aspects. Economic aspects of potential assessments are central to future deployment and are discussed on a turbine and system level covering levelized costs depending on locations, and the system integration costs which are often overlooked in such analyses. Non-technical approaches include scenicness assessments of the landscape, constraints due to regulation or public opposition, expert and stakeholder workshops, willingness to pay/accept elicitations and socioeconomic cost-benefit studies. For each of these different potential estimations, the state of the art is critically discussed, with an attempt to derive best practice recommendations and highlight avenues for future research.},
  language  = {en}
}