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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.
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.
Chinese CSP for the world?
(2022)
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.
We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries. Based on the Energy Logics framework, we identify ideologically different transition strategies (state-centered, market-centered, grassroots-centered) contained in government policies and opposition party programs valid in 2019. We compare these policies and programs with citizen poll data. We find that ideology has a small effect: governments and political parties across the spectrum have similar, and relatively ambitious, decarbonization and renewables targets. This mirrors citizens' strong support for ambitious action regardless of their ideological self-description. However, whereas political positions on phasing out fossil fuel power are clear across the policy space, positions on phasing in new flexibility options to balance intermittent renewables are vague or non-existent. As parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims, the policy ambition is likely to remain high, even if governments change.
Energy models are used to inform and support decisions within the transition to climate neutrality. In recent years, such models have been criticised for being overly techno-centred and ignoring environmental and social factors of the energy transition. Here, we explore and illustrate the impact of ignoring such factors by comparing model results to model user needs and real-world observations. We firstly identify concrete user needs for better representation of environmental and social factors in energy modelling via interviews, a survey and a workshop. Secondly, we explore and illustrate the effects of omitting non-techno-economic factors in modelling by contrasting policy-targeted scenarios with reality in four EU case study examples. We show that by neglecting environmental and social factors, models risk generating overly optimistic and potentially misleading results, for example by suggesting transition speeds far exceeding any speeds observed, or pathways facing hard-to-overcome resource constraints. As such, modelled energy transition pathways that ignore such factors may be neither desirable nor feasible from an environmental and social perspective, and scenarios may be irrelevant in practice. Finally, we discuss a sample of recent energy modelling innovations and call for continued and increased efforts for improved approaches that better represent environmental and social factors in energy modelling and increase the relevance of energy models for informing policymaking.
Energy system models are advancing rapidly. However, it is not clear whether models are becoming better, in the sense that they address the questions that decision-makers need to be answered to make well-informed decisions. Therefore, we investigate the gap between model improvements relevant from the perspective of modellers compared to what users of model results think models should address. Thus, we ask: What are the differences between energy model improvements as perceived by modellers, and the actual needs of users of model results? To answer this question, we conducted a literature review, 32 interviews, and an online survey. Our results show that user needs and ongoing improvements of energy system models align to a large degree so that future models are indeed likely to be better than current models. We also find mismatches between the needs of modellers and users, especially in the modelling of social, behavioural and political aspects, the trade-off between model complexity and understandability, and the ways that model results should be communicated. Our findings suggest that a better understanding of user needs and closer cooperation between modellers and users is imperative to truly improve models and unlock their full potential to support the transition towards climate neutrality in Europe.
Sustainable electricity systems need renewable and dispatchable energy sources. Solar energy is an abundant source of renewable energy globally which is, though, by nature only available during the day, and especially in clear weather conditions. We compare three technology configurations able to provide dispatchable solar power at times without sunshine: Photovoltaics (PV) combined with battery (BESS) or thermal energy storage (TES) and concentrating solar power (CSP) with TES. Modeling different periods without sunshine, we find that PV+BESS is competitive for shorter storage durations while CSP+TES gains economic advantages for longer storage periods (also over PV+TES). The corresponding tipping points lie at 2-3 hours (current cost), and 4-10 hours if expectations on future cost developments are taken into consideration. PV+TES becomes only more competitive than CSP+TES with immense additional cost reductions of PV. Hence, there remain distinct niches for two technologies: PV+BESS for short storage durations and CSP+TES for longer ones.
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) offers flexible and decarbonised power generation and is one of the few switchable renewable technologies that can generate renewable power on demand. Today (2018), CSP only contributes 5 TWh to European electricity generation but has the potential to become an important generation asset for decarbonising the electricity sector within Europe as well as globally. This chapter examines how factors and key political decisions lead to different futures and the associated CSP use in Europe in the years up to 2050. In a second step, we characterise the scenarios with the associated system costs and the costs of the support policy. We show that the role of CSP in Europe depends crucially on political decisions and the success or failure of policies outside of renewable energies. In particular, the introduction of CSP depends on the general ambitions for decarbonisation, the level of cross-border trade in electricity from renewable sources and is made possible by the existence of a strong grid connection between the southern and northern European Member States and by future growth in electricity demand. The presence of other baseload technologies, particularly nuclear energy in France, diminishes the role and need for CSP. Assuming a favourable technological development, we find a strong role for CSP in Europe in all modelled scenarios: Contribution of 100 TWh to 300 TWh of electricity to a future European electricity system. The current European CSP fleet would have to be increased by a factor of 20 to 60 over the next 30 years. To achieve this, stable financial support for CSP would be required. Depending on framework conditions and assumptions, the amount of support ranges at the EU level from € 0.4 to 2 billion per year, which represents only a small proportion of the total support requirement for the energy system transformation. Cooperation between the Member States could further help reduce these costs.
Aviation and shipping currently contribute approximately 8% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions, with growth in tourism and global trade projected to increase this contribution further(1-3). Carbon-neutral transportation is feasible with electric motors powered by rechargeable batteries, but is challenging, if not impossible, for long-haul commercial travel, particularly airtravel(4). A promising solution are drop-in fuels (synthetic alternatives for petroleum-derived liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as kerosene, gasoline or diesel) made from H2O and CO2 by solar-driven processes(5-7).Among the many possible approaches, the thermochemical path using concentrated solar radiation as the source of high-temperature process heat offers potentially high production rates and efficiencies(8), and can deliver truly carbon-neutral fuels if the required CO2 is obtained directly from atmospheric air(9) . If H2O is also extracted from air(10), feedstock sourcing and fuel production can be colocated in desert regions with high solar irradiation and limited accessto water resources. While individual steps of such a scheme have been implemented, here we demonstrate the operation of the entire thermochemical solar fuel production chain, from H2O and CO2 captured directly from ambient air to the synthesis of drop-in transportation fuels (for example, methanol and kerosene), with a modular 5 kW(thermal) pilot-scale solar system operated under field conditions. We further identify the research and development efforts and discuss the economic viability and policies required to bring these solar fuels to market.
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.
Green recovery
(2023)
This chapter reviews how the European Union has fared in enabling a green recovery in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, drawing comparisons to developments after the financial crisis. The chapter focuses on the European Commission and its evolving role in promoting decarbonisation efforts in its Member States, paying particular attention to its role in financing investments in low-carbon assets. It considers both the direct effects of green stimulus policies on decarbonisation in the EU and how these actions have shaped the capacities of the Commission as an actor in the field of climate and energy policy. The analysis reveals a significant expansion of the Commission’s role compared to the period following the financial crisis. EU-level measures have provided incentives for Member States to direct large volumes of financing towards investments in climate-friendly assets. Nevertheless, the ultimate impact will largely be shaped by implementation at the national level.
The European Union’s 2030 climate and energy package introduced fundamental changes compared to its 2020 predecessor. These changes included a stronger focus on the internal market and an increased emphasis on technology-neutral decarbonization while simultaneously de-emphasizing the renewables target. This article investigates whether changes in domestic policy strategies of leading member states in European climate policy preceded the observed changes in EU policy. Disaggregating strategic change into changes in different elements (goals, objectives, instrumental logic), allows us to go beyond analyzing the relative prioritization of different goals, and to analyze how policy requirements for reaching those goals were dynamically redefined over time. To this end, we introduce a new method, which based on insights from social network analysis, enables us to systematically trace those strategic chances. We find that shifts in national strategies of the investigated member states preceded the shift in EU policy. In particular, countries reframed their understanding of supply security, and pushed for the internal electricity market also as a security measure to balance fluctuating renewables. Hence, the increasing focus on markets and market integration in the European 2030 package echoed the increasingly central role of the internal market for electricity supply security in national strategies. These findings also highlight that countries dynamically redefined their goals relative to the different phases of the energy transition.
Friends or foes?
(2020)
Energy efficiency measures and the deployment of renewable energy are commonly presented as two sides of the same coin-as necessary and synergistic measures to decarbonize energy systems and reach the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Here, we quantitatively investigate the policies and performances of the EU Member States to see whether renewables and energy efficiency policies are politically synergistic or if they rather compete for political attention and resources. We find that Member States, especially the ones perceived as climate leaders, tend to prioritize renewables over energy efficiency in target setting. Further, almost every country performs well in either renewable energy or energy efficiency, but rarely performs well in both. We find no support for the assertion that the policies are synergistic, but some evidence that they compete. However, multi-linear regression models for performance show that performance, especially in energy efficiency, is also strongly associated with general economic growth cycles, and not only efficiency policy as such. We conclude that renewable energy and energy efficiency are not synergistic policies, and that there is some competition between them.
The economic context for renewable power in Europe is shifting: feed-in tariffs are replaced by auctioned premiums as the main support schemes. As renewables approach competitiveness, political pressure mounts to phase out support, whereas some other actors perceive a need for continued fixed-price support. We investigate how the phase-out of support or the reintroduction of feed-in tariffs would affect investors' choices for renewables through a conjoint analysis. In particular, we analyse the impact of coordination - the simultaneousness - of policy changes across countries and technologies. We find that investment choices are not strongly affected if policy changes are coordinated and returns unaffected. However, if policy changes are uncoordinated, investments shift to still supported - less mature and costlier - technologies or countries where support remains or is reintroduced. This shift is particularly strong for large investors and could potentially skew the European power mix towards an over-reliance on a single, less mature technology or specific generation region, resulting in a more expensive power system. If European countries want to change their renewable power support policies, and especially if they phase out support and expose renewables to market competition, it is important that they coordinate their actions.
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.
To meet the Paris Agreement targets, carbon emissions from the energy system must be eliminated by mid-century, implying vast investment and systemic change challenges ahead. In an article in WIREs Climate Change, we reviewed the empirical evidence for effects of carbon pricing systems on technological change towards full decarbonisation, finding weak or no effects. In response, van den Bergh and Savin (2021) criticised our review in an article in this journal, claiming that it is "unfair", incomplete and flawed in various ways. Here, we respond to this critique by elaborating on the conceptual roots of our argumentation based on the importance of short-term emission reductions and longer-term technological change, and by expanding the review. This verifies our original findings: existing carbon pricing schemes have sometimes reduced emissions, mainly through switching to lower-carbon fossil fuels and efficiency increases, and have triggered weak innovation increases. There is no evidence that carbon pricing systems have triggered zero-carbon investments, and scarce but consistent evidence that they have not. Our findings highlight the importance of adapting and improving climate policy assessment metrics beyond short-term emissions by also assessing the quality of emission reductions and the progress of underlying technological change.
In order to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, the world must reach net-zero carbon emissions around mid-century, which calls for an entirely new energy system. Carbon pricing, in the shape of taxes or emissions trading schemes, is often seen as the main, or only, necessary climate policy instrument, based on theoretical expectations that this would promote innovation and diffusion of the new technologies necessary for full decarbonization. Here, we review the empirical knowledge available in academic ex-post analyses of the effectiveness of existing, comparatively high-price carbon pricing schemes in the European Union, New Zealand, British Columbia, and the Nordic countries. Some articles find short-term operational effects, especially fuel switching in existing assets, but no article finds mentionable effects on technological change. Critically, all articles examining the effects on zero-carbon investment found that existing carbon pricing scheme have had no effect at all. We conclude that the effectiveness of carbon pricing in stimulating innovation and zero-carbon investment remains a theoretical argument. So far, there is no empirical evidence of its effectiveness in promoting the technological change necessary for full decarbonization. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics > Economics of Mitigation
The history of concentrating solar power (CSP) is characterized by a boom-bust pattern caused by policy support changes. Following the 2014-2016 bust phase, the combination of Chinese support and several low-cost projects triggered a new boom phase. We investigate the near- to mid-term cost, industry, market and policy outlook for the global CSP sector and show that CSP costs have decreased strongly and approach cost-competitiveness with new conventional generation. Industry has been strengthened through the entry of numerous new companies. However, the project pipeline is thin: no project broke ground in 2019 and only four projects are under construction in 2020. The only remaining large support scheme, in China, has been canceled. Without additional support soon creating a new market, the value chain may collapse and recent cost and technological advances may be undone. If policy support is renewed, however, the global CSP sector is prepared for a bright future.
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.
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.