620 Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.