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Institute
Renewable energy changes the geopolitics of energy: whereas access to fossil fuel resources were key in the past, control over technology and industry will be key in the future. Consequently, different scholars have predicted that a growing focus on renewables will increase or decrease conflict in the energy sector, with no consensus on which is most likely. Here, we investigate the degree of conflict in renewable energy technology (RET) trade by analyzing data on 7041 trade conflicts 1995–2020, guided by two sets of theory-driven hypotheses. We show that RET trade is associated with more, longer, and more intense trade conflicts than other trade conflicts for 1995–2016. This supports the neorealist, geo-economic view of countries being willing to risk conflict to increase their share of a market rather than avoiding conflicts to increase the overall market size. It also contradicts the view that renewables will reduce conflict: at least in the past and regarding trade, it has increased rather than decreased conflict. For 2017–2020, this trend is reversed and RET trade became significantly less conflictive than other trade. Our findings imply that improved conflict-resolution institutions for RET are needed. We also suggest establishing specific institutions to govern trade in immature technologies.
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.
To achieve the European Union's target for climate neutrality by 2050 reduced energy demand will make the transition process faster and cheaper. The role of policies that support energy efficiency measures and demand-side management practices will be critical and to ensure that energy demand models are relevant to policymakers and other end-users, understanding how to further improve the models and whether they are tailored to user needs to support efficient decision-making processes is crucial. So far though, no scientific studies have examined the key user needs for energy demand modelling in the context of the climate neutrality targets. In this article we address this gap using a multi-method approach based on empirical and desk research. Through survey and stakeholder meetings and workshops we identify user needs of different stakeholder groups, and we highlight the direction in which energy demand models need to be improved to be relevant to their users. Through a detailed review of existing energy demand models, we provide a full understanding of the key characteristics and capabilities of existing tools, and we identify their limitations and gaps. Our findings show that classical demand-related questions remain important to model users, while most of the existing models can answer these questions. Furthermore, we show that some of the user needs related to sectoral demand modelling, dictated by the latest policy developments, are under-researched and are not addressed by existing tools.
Despite geopolitics play a pivotal role in the energy sector, geopolitical aspects are often not considered in the quantitative assessment models aimed at supporting the energy investment decision-making process. To address this issue, this work proposes an Extended Multi-regional Input-Output model (EMRIO) that incorporates import dependence and governance along the value chain. As case study, two alternative energy investments in Mexico – a Natural Gas Power plant (NG) and a Concentrated Solar Power plant (CSP) – are assessed. The method quantifies the geographical diversification of suppliers and the quality of governance. The assessment of the case study shows that the supply chain of the CSP plant includes more countries and with better governance levels than the supply chain of the NG power plant. That means, a priori, that the supply risks of investing in CSP power plants will be lower, as will suppliers' endogenous geopolitical risk. However, a sensitivity analysis considering different providers of the solar plant components reveals that CSP plant value chain could also entail similar or even higher governance risks levels as the NG plant. The scenario where China provides some of the components entails a much higher governance risks, even higher than the NG base case. In consequence, we have proved that the method proposed allows the identification of hidden geopolitical risks that would otherwise go unnoticed. This paper enlarges the existing knowledge on assessment methodologies for energy policy decision-support by measuring diversification and imports dependence from countries with different levels of governance along the whole value chain.
This article draws lessons from experiences of developing the photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power sectors in China for the development of Chinese Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) into an internationally competitive industry. We analyze the sectoral development with a framework that expands on the concept of lead markets, identifying factors that determine whether domestic industrial development paths may or may not generate export success. We find that the Chinese CSP sector has good potential for becoming internationally competitive because of a strong Chinese knowledge base, a clear eye for product quality, standard-setting, and a focus on the high-efficiency and large-storage technological routes most likely to see growing demand in future international markets. Chinese solar towers are already cheaper than international competitors and so far, appear reliable. However, continued and stable deployment support for CSP, designed to reward dispatchable solar power generation, enabling continued domestic learning-by-doing and -interacting is likely required to realize this export potential. To date, Chinese CSP policy has done many things right and, if the domestic market is maintained through renewed support, has put the Chinese industry well on the path to international competitiveness.
We analyse the potential for industry entry and catching up by latecomer countries or firms in formative sectors, by deriving a framework that builds on the concept of windows of opportunity for catching up. This framework highlights differences in technological, market, and institutional characteristics between formative and mature sectors, and elaborates how this may affect opportunities for catching up. We apply this framework to the global Concentrated Solar Power sector, in which China has rapidly narrowed the gap to the global forefront in terms of technological capabilities and market competitiveness. We find that the formative nature of the sector resulted in turbulent development of the technological, market, and institutional dimensions, making it more difficult for early leaders to retain leadership, and therefore easier for latecomer firms or countries to catch up. This signals an increased role in early-stage technology development in the next phase of the energy transition.
There are considerable differences in the pace and underlying motivations of the energy transition in the different geographical contexts across Europe. The European Union's commitment to climate neutrality by 2050 requires a better understanding of the energy transition in different contexts and scales to improve cooperation of involved actors. In this article, we identify critical issues and challenges of the European energy transition as perceived by stakeholders and investigate how these perceptions vary across geographical contexts. To do so, we couple a policy document analysis with research based on stakeholder engagement activities in three different scales, national (Greece), regional (Nordic Region) and continental scale (European Union). Our findings show that stakeholder perspectives on the energy transition depend on contextual factors underlying the need for policies sensitive to the different transition issues and challenges in European regions. They also reveal cross-cutting issues and challenges among the three case studies, which could lead to further improvement of the cross-country collaboration to foster the European energy transition.
Beyond technology
(2022)
This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a systematic horizon scanning process, which utilised the expert knowledge of 85 researchers from the field with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and expertise, the paper develops a set of 100 priority questions for future research within SSH scholarship on renewable energy sources. These questions were aggregated into four main directions: (i) deep transformations and connections to the broader economic system (i.e. radical ways of (re)arranging socio-technical, political and economic relations), (ii) cultural and geographical diversity (i.e. contextual cultural, historical, political and socio-economic factors influencing citizen support for energy transitions), (iii) complexifying energy governance (i.e. understanding energy systems from a systems dynamics perspective) and (iv) shifting from instrumental acceptance to value-based objectives (i.e. public support for energy transitions as a normative notion linked to trust-building and citizen engagement). While this agenda is not intended to be—and cannot be—exhaustive or exclusive, we argue that it advances the understanding of SSH research on renewable energy sources and may have important value in the prioritisation of SSH themes needed to enrich dialogues between policymakers, funding institutions and researchers. SSH scholarship should not be treated as instrumental to other research on renewable energy but as intrinsic and of the same hierarchical importance.
Scaling up CSP
(2023)
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.
Understanding and accounting for the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on global learning rates
(2020)
Learning rates are a central concept in energy system models and integrated assessment models, as they allow researchers to project the future costs of new technologies and to optimize energy system costs. Here we argue that exchange rate fluctuations are an important, but thus far overlooked, determinant of the learning-rate variance observed in the literature. We explore how empirically observed global learning rates depend on where technologies are installed and which currency is used to calculate the learning rate. Using global data of large-scale photovoltaic (>= 5 MW) plants, we show that the currency choice can result in learning-rate differences of up to 16 percentage points. We then introduce an adjustment factor to correct for the effect of exchange rate and market focus fluctuations and discuss the implications of our findings for innovation scholars, energy modellers and decision makers. <br /> Learning rates are a measure of reduction in costs of energy from technologies such as solar photovoltaics. These are often estimated internationally with all monetary figures converted to a single currency, often US dollars. Lilliestam et al. show that such conversions can significantly affect the learning rate estimates.