Decarbonising the EU energy supply: the study of the studies
Ανάρτηση:
Mavromatidis Dimitrios
την
21 Ιουλ 2012
The
EU has a major role to play in the transition from fossil fuels to
renewable energy. The need to have an "EU Energy Roadmap 2050" triggered
between 2009 and 2012 a multitude of studies, scenarios and roadmaps
from national and international stakeholders such as the European
Commission, NGOs and industry associations. The fact that each study
used different assumptions, approaches and methodologies can make it
difficult for policy makers to apply the results to concrete policy
decisions.
That is why the Smart Energy for Europe Platform has commissioned a comparative study of Europe's leading energy scenarios from two leading experts: Dr. Stefan Lechtenböhmer (Wuppertal Institute) and Dr. Felix Christian Matthes (Öko-Institut).
The
comparative study has developed a comprehensive methodology, which
enables the analysis, comparison and better understanding of robust
results across different scenario studies, and applied this methodology
on 11 selected energy scenarios of the four most relevant 2050 energy
scenario studies:
- Energy Roadmap 2050 (European Commission 2011)
- Energy [r]evolution (EREC/Greenpeace 2010)
- Roadmap 2050 (European Climate Foundation 2010)
- Power Choices (EURELECTRIC 2009)
Main findings
The
comparison between the scenarios demonstrates several similarities and
reveales a few important differences. The following mitigation
strategies play a key role in all of the scenarios and can thus be
regarded as “robust” strategies in the decarbonisation process:
• Significantly speeding up energy end-use efficiency improvements. The
future growth in electricity demand will have to be limited in order
to be able to achieve large emission reductions in the power sector.
End-use efficiency needs to improve considerably faster than in the
past. This strongly suggests that additional policy initiatives are
required.
• Ensuring high growth dynamics of renewables until 2020 and beyond. While
many EU Member States have successfully increased the share of
renewable energy sources in electricity generation in recent years, the
analysis has shown that for the EU as a whole an acceleration of recent
trends is required to be able to follow a plausible long-term
decarbonisation pathway.
• Preventing or at least limiting the construction of CO2 intensive power plants. All
of the decarbonisation scenarios analysed suggest that climate change
mitigation leaves no room for many additional high-emitting power plants
that do not use CCS technology. However, the current (July 2012) CO2
price of well below 10 €/t CO2 is too low to sufficiently disincentive
the use and construction of such plants.
• Ensuring sufficient flexibility of the power system to deal with growing share of renewables. The
increasing share of renewable energy sources, especially of wind and
solar energy will require the use of multiple options to increase
flexibility within the power system. The grid will need modifications
and complementary power plants will have to be sufficiently flexible in
the years to come. In the longer term additional storage capacity will
be required.
The main area of disagreement between the various decarbonisation scenarios analysed is the respective role of nuclear power and CCS technology
in any future European power sector. Uncertainty about these
technologies is driven by questions about their costs, their
social acceptance but also about their compatibility within a future
electricity system dominated by fluctuating renewable energy sources.
Downloads
- The meta study full report can be found in SEFEP's publications here.
- A policy briefing paper is available here.
- Two working papers can be downloaded here: Decarbonisation Scenarios leading to the EU Energy Roadmap 2050 and Analysis of the EU's Energy Roadmap 2050 scenarios.
- A common roster of scenario data and information is available here. This roster can be made use of in modelling exercices to improve data transparency and availability.
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