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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.
Economic crises as critical junctures for policy and structural changes towards decarbonization
(2024)
Crises may act as tipping points for decarbonization pathways by triggering structural economic change or offering windows of opportunity for policy change. We investigate both types of effects of the global financial and COVID-19 crises on decarbonization in Spain and Germany through a quantitative Kaya-decomposition analysis of CO2 emissions and through a qualitative review of climate and energy policy changes. We show that the global financial crisis resulted in a critical juncture for Spanish CO2 emissions due to the combined effects of the deep economic recession and crisis-induced structural change, resulting in reductions in carbon and energy intensities and shifts in the economic structure. However, the crisis also resulted in a rollback of renewable energy policy, halting progress in the transition to green electricity. The impacts were less pronounced in Germany, where pre-existing decarbonization and policy trends continued after the crisis. Recovery packages had modest effects, primarily due to their temporary nature and the limited share of climate-related spending. The direct short-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on CO2 emissions were more substantial in Spain than in Germany. The policy responses in both countries sought to align short-term economic recovery with the long-term climate change goals of decarbonization, but it is too soon to observe their lasting effects. Our findings show that crises can affect structural change and support decarbonization but suggest that such effects depend on pre-existing trends, the severity of the crisis and political manoeuvring during the crisis.