TY - JOUR A1 - Tröndle, Tim A1 - Lilliestam, Johan A1 - Marelli, Stefano A1 - Pfenninger, Stefan T1 - Trade-offs between geographic scale, cost, and infrastructure requirements for fully renewable electricity in Europe JF - Joule N2 - The European potential for renewable electricity is sufficient to enable fully renewable supply on different scales, from self-sufficient, subnational regions to an interconnected continent. We not only show that a continental-scale system is the cheapest, but also that systems on the national scale and below are possible at cost penalties of 20% or less. Transmission is key to low cost, but it is not necessary to vastly expand the transmission system. When electricity is transmitted only to balance fluctuations, the transmission grid size is comparable to today's, albeit with expanded cross-border capacities. The largest differences across scales concern land use and thus social acceptance: in the continental system, generation capacity is concentrated on the European periphery, where the best resources are. Regional systems, in contrast, have more dispersed generation. The key trade-off is therefore not between geographic scale and cost, but between scale and the spatial distribution of required generation and transmission infrastructure. KW - energy decarbonization KW - self-sufficiency KW - cooperation KW - trade KW - transmission KW - regional equity KW - land use KW - acceptance KW - flexibility Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2020.07.018 SN - 2542-4351 VL - 4 IS - 9 SP - 1929 EP - 1948 PB - Cell Press CY - Cambridge , Mass. ER - TY - GEN A1 - Tröndle, Tim A1 - Lilliestam, Johan A1 - Marelli, Stefano A1 - Pfenninger, Stefan T1 - Trade-offs between geographic scale, cost, and infrastructure requirements for fully renewable electricity in Europe T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The European potential for renewable electricity is sufficient to enable fully renewable supply on different scales, from self-sufficient, subnational regions to an interconnected continent. We not only show that a continental-scale system is the cheapest, but also that systems on the national scale and below are possible at cost penalties of 20% or less. Transmission is key to low cost, but it is not necessary to vastly expand the transmission system. When electricity is transmitted only to balance fluctuations, the transmission grid size is comparable to today's, albeit with expanded cross-border capacities. The largest differences across scales concern land use and thus social acceptance: in the continental system, generation capacity is concentrated on the European periphery, where the best resources are. Regional systems, in contrast, have more dispersed generation. The key trade-off is therefore not between geographic scale and cost, but between scale and the spatial distribution of required generation and transmission infrastructure. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 146 KW - levelized cost KW - energy-system KW - power-system KW - storage KW - wind KW - reanalysis KW - decarbonization KW - transmission KW - integration KW - deployment Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-539611 IS - 9 SP - 1929 EP - 1948 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - McKenna, Russell A1 - Pfenninger, Stefan A1 - Heinrichs, Heidi A1 - Schmidt, Johannes A1 - Staffell, Iain A1 - Bauer, Christian A1 - Gruber, Katharina A1 - Hahmann, Andrea N. A1 - Jansen, Malte A1 - Klingler, Michael A1 - Landwehr, Natascha A1 - Larsén, Xiaoli Guo A1 - Lilliestam, Johan A1 - Pickering, Bryn A1 - Robinius, Martin A1 - Tröndle, Tim A1 - Turkovska, Olga A1 - Wehrle, Sebastian A1 - Weinand, Jann Michael A1 - Wohland, Jan T1 - High-resolution large-scale onshore wind energy assessments BT - a review of potential definitions, methodologies and future research needs JF - Renewable energy N2 - 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. KW - onshore wind KW - resource assessments KW - social acceptance KW - planning constraints KW - research priorities Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2021.10.027 SN - 0960-1481 VL - 182 SP - 659 EP - 684 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bersalli, Germán A1 - Tröndle, Tim A1 - Lilliestam, Johan T1 - Most industrialised countries have peaked carbon dioxide emissions during economic crises through strengthened structural change JF - Communications earth & environment N2 - As the climate targets tighten and countries are impacted by several crises, understanding how and under which conditions carbon dioxide emissions peak and start declining is gaining importance. We assess the timing of emissions peaks in all major emitters (1965–2019) and the extent to which past economic crises have impacted structural drivers of emissions contributing to emission peaks. We show that in 26 of 28 countries that have peaked emissions, the peak occurred just before or during a recession through the combined effect of lower economic growth (1.5 median percentage points per year) and decreasing energy and/or carbon intensity (0.7) during and after the crisis. In peak-and-decline countries, crises have typically magnified pre-existing improvements in structural change. In non-peaking countries, economic growth was less affected, and structural change effects were weaker or increased emissions. Crises do not automatically trigger peaks but may strengthen ongoing decarbonisation trends through several mechanisms. KW - climate-change mitigation KW - economics KW - environmental economics KW - environmental studies Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00687-8 SN - 2662-4435 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 44 EP - 44 PB - Springer Nature CY - London ER -