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100% renewables by 2050 or earlier?

Europe could switch to low carbon sources of electricity, with up to 100% coming from renewables by 2050, without risking energy reliability or pushing up energy bills, according to a major new study, Roadmap 2050: a practical guide to a prosperous, low-carbon Europe, developed by the European Climate Foundation (ECF) with contributions from McKinsey, KEMA, Imperial College London and Oxford Economics. It says that a transition to a low- or zero-carbon power supply based on high levels of renewable energy would have no impact on reliability, and would have little overall impact on the cost of generating electricity.

Matt Phillips, a senior associate with the ECF, said: “When the Roadmap 2050 project began it was assumed that high-renewable energy scenarios would be too unstable to provide sufficient reliability, that high-renewable scenarios would be uneconomic and more costly, and that technology breakthroughs would be required to move Europe to a zero-carbon power sector. Roadmap 2050 has found all of these assertions to be untrue.” (As quoted by BusinessGreen.com).

ECF claimed that the widely held assumption that renewable energy is always more costly than fossil fuels is increasingly outdated, arguing that while the initial capital investment needed for low carbon energy infrastructure is more than for conventional high carbon system, the long term operating costs for low carbon energy will be lower. As a result of this, the reduction in use of increasingly expensive fuels and the gradual adoption of more efficient energy generation and using systems, it says that, although initially the GDP might be depressed very slightly, from 2020 it would rise and in the 2030 to 2050 period, the cost of energy per unit of GDP output could be about 20 to 30% lower.

The study focuses on electricity generation and use, including use in the transport and heating sectors, but says that ‘should other (non-electric) decarbonisation solutions emerge for some portion of either sector, these will only make the power challenge that much more manageable’.

It looks at scenarios supplying 40% more electricity than at present by 2050, with various mixes of renewables, from 40% up to 100%, all of which it claims are technically viable. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear are used in all its scenarios up to the 80% renewables mix, but in that scenario about half of the current level of nuclear production is replaced, and in the 100% renewable scenario all of it goes, as does CCS.

However the report notes that a successful transition to zero carbon power will depend on EU member states prioritising energy efficiency measures (it assumes a cumulative energy saving of 2% p.a.) and supporting the rapid development of a European electricity “supergrid” to help distribute and balance the green energy and manage demand.

For the 40–80% renewable scenarios there would also be a need for 190 to 270 GW of backup generation capacity to maintain the reliability of the electricity system, but ECF notes that 120 GW of that already exists. For new backup it looks to more gas-fired plants, biomass/biogas fired plants, and hydrogen-fueled plants, potentially in combination with hydrogen production for fuel cells.

In the case of the 100% renewables scenario, 15% of the energy would be imported via a supergrid link from Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants in North Africa, and 5% is also obtained from enhanced geothermal around the EU. But given the wider footprint and supergrid links, backup requirements in this scenario were reduced to 215 GW. However, the extra cost was put at 5–10% more than the 60% renewables option.

www.roadmap2050.eu

A study by consultants PriceWaterhouseCoopers, in collaboration with researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the European Climate Forum (ECF), has also claimed that Europe and North Africa could be powered exclusively by renewable electricity by 2050, if this is supported by a single European power market, linked with a similar market in North Africa.

Like ECF above, they also look to a cross-national power system, the proposed Super Smart Grid, to allow for load and demand management, and to integrate in green energy. They too see power coming from concentrating solar projects in the deserts of North Africa, and also in southern Europe, as well as from the hydro capability of Scandinavia and the European alps, onshore wind farms and offshore wind farms in the Baltic and North Sea, plus increasingly tidal and wave power and biomass generation across Europe.

Like the ECF study, they concludes that ‘the most recent economic models show that the short term cost of transforming the power system may not be as large as previously thought’, and that overall reliability would not be compromised. And they add that the development of North African resources ‘could pay big dividends in terms of regional development, sustainability and security.’

www.pwc.co.uk/eng/publications/100_percent_renewable_electricity.html

An even more radical conclusion was reached in the study by the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), Rethinking 2050, which claims that the EU could not only meet up to 100% of its electricity demand from renewables by 2050, but also all of its heating/cooling and transport fuel needs.

Like the studies above, it assumes a major commitment to energy saving – overall energy demand it says can be reduced by 30% against the consumption assumption for 2050. And there would be a parallel rapid rise in renewables, with an average annual growth rate of renewable electricity capacity of 14% between 2007 and 2020, and then an even more rapid expansion of some options. Between 2020 and 2030, geothermal electricity is predicted to see an average annual growth rate of installed capacity of about 44%, followed by ocean energy with about 24% and CSP with about 19%. This is closely followed by 16% for PV, 6% for wind, 2% for hydropower and biomass with about 2%. By 2030, total installed renewable capacity amounts to 965.2 GW, dominated in absolute terms by PV, wind and hydropower. Between 2020 and 2030, total installed renewable capacity would increase by about 46% with an average annual growth rate of 8.5%. And after 2030, expansion continues leading to almost 2,000 GW of installed capacity by 2050.

www.rethinking2050.eu/

Some even more radical scenarios have emerged, suggesting that we could move even more rapidly. For example, the German Energy Watch Group claims that (non hydro) renewables could supply 62% of global electricity, and 16% to global final heat demand, by 2030.

www.energywatchgroup.org/Renewables.52+M5d637b1e38d.0.html

And last November, Prof. Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi from Stanford University in the US published a very ambitious scenario in Scientific American, which suggested that up to 100% of global energy could be obtained from renewables by 2030, with electricity also meeting heating and transport needs.

www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf

Although they claimed that 100% was technically feasible by 2030, recognising that there were sunk costs in existing systems, in their conclusion they pulled back a bit and said that, in practice, ‘with sensible policies’, nations could set a goal of generating 25% of their new energy supply from renewables ‘in 10 to 15 years and almost 100% of new supply in 20 to 30 years’. But they insisted that ‘with extremely aggressive policies, all existing fossil-fuel capacity could theoretically be retired and replaced in the same period’ although, ‘with more modest and likely policies full replacement may take 40 to 50 years’.

Delucchi is scheduled to report on this analysis at a conference on long range scenarios being organised jointly by the UK Energy Research Centre and Claverton Energy Group on 21 May at University College London. Other contributors will include Dr Mark Barrett from UCL, who has developed a detailed 100% UK Renewables scenario. Visit www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/markbarrett/Elec/Electricity.htm.

Conference details: www.claverton-energy.com/.

Shortly the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales is expected to publish its revised and updated Zero Carbon Britain scenario for up to 2030. That too is likely to be very radical. Perhaps somewhat less so, the Department of Energy and Climate Change meanwhile is still working on its own 2050 Road Map. Some brief interim conclusions have emerged, but the full thing is still being developed. I’ll be reporting on that in my next blog. Clearly we are not short of scenarios!

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• Researchers conclude 100 per cent renewable electricity supply is feasible (businessgreen.com)

Posted by Dave Elliott on April 24, 2010 11:12 AM | Permalink