In this paper, we present findings from a systematic review on job creation, quality, and skills, focusing on decarbonisation in the energy sector. We compare a range of gross job employment factors ...which indicate that overall, investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency can deliver more jobs than gas or coal power generation. In addition, we review a subset of recent studies which estimate the net employment effects of decarbonisation in the energy sector at a national scale, across various international contexts. These national studies largely agree that the most likely outcome over the next few decades is a modest net positive creation of jobs and moderate economic growth. In certain regions within these countries, jobs in fossil fuel industries may be lost faster than the pace at which low carbon energy sectors can offer new employment. There may be mismatches between regions where displaced workers live and where new opportunities become available, which may be a barrier to accepting alternative employment even if former workers have the requisite skills. In these cases national government transition plans are recommended, coordinated with local governments, to manage the impacts of displacement from carbon-intensive sectors and respond to the need to build a new low carbon workforce including through skills development and training. We highlight a lack of metrics and data in the literature on job quality, skills, and the geographic distribution of employment impacts in decarbonising energy systems, and these should be priority areas for further research.
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•The study is a comparison of influential energy and ecosystem service scenarios.•Across domains, scenarios exercises explore similar futures.•There exist barriers to comparisons that ...limit policy relevance.•Integration of ecosystem services would inform optimal routes to decarbonisation.
There is increasing recognition that a whole systems approach is required to inform decisions on future energy options. Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of forty influential energy and ecosystem services scenario exercises, we consider how the benefits to society that are derived from the natural environment are integrated within current energy scenarios. The analysis demonstrates a set of common underlying themes across scenario exercises. These include the relative contribution of fossil sources of energy, rates of decarbonisation, the level of international cooperation and globalisation, rate of technological development and deployment, and societies focus on environmental sustainability. Across energy scenario exercises, ecosystem services consideration is primarily limited to climate regulation, food, water resources, and air quality. In contrast, ecosystem services scenarios consider energy systems in a highly aggregated narrative form, with impacts of energy options mediated primarily through climate and land use change.Emerging data and tools offer opportunities for closer integration of energy and ecosystem services scenarios. This can be achieved by incorporating into scenarios exercises both monetary and non-monetary values of ecosystem services, and increasing the spatial representation of both energy systems and ecosystem services. The importance of ecosystem services for human well-being is increasingly recognised in policy at local, national and international scales. Tighter integration of energy and ecosystem service scenarios exercises will allow policy makers to identify pathways consistent with international obligations relating to both anthropogenic climate change and the loss and degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is seen as a key technology to tackle climate change. The principal idea of CCS is to remove carbon from the flue gases arising from burning fuels for electricity ...generation or industrial applications and to store the carbon in geological formations to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. Policy makers in several countries are supportive of the technology, but a number of uncertainties hamper its further development and deployment. The paper makes three related contributions to the literatures on socio-technical systems and technology assessment: 1) It systematically develops an interdisciplinary framework to assess the main uncertainties of CCS innovation. These include technical, economic, financial, political and societal issues. 2) It identifies important linkages between these uncertainties. 3) It develops qualitative and quantitative indicators for assessing these uncertainties. This framework aims to help decision making on CCS by private and public actors and is designed to be applicable to a wider range of low carbon technologies. The paper is based on a systematic review of the social science literature on CCS and on insights from innovation studies, as well as on interviews about assessment of new technologies with experts from a range of organisations and sectors.
► The paper analyses seven technical, economic, political and social uncertainties about CCS. ► Integrated analysis allowed identification of important causal links between the uncertainties. ► An interdisciplinary, socio-technical framework for assessing these uncertainties is presented.
Residential heat pumps are a critical energy transition technology, but their installed costs are often much higher than incumbent technologies – imposing a policy imperative, in the UK and ...elsewhere, to reduce deployment costs. Here, we systematically review historic and forecast UK and international data on heat pump installed costs.
Installed costs are reported using three main metrics: Single Point Cost, Experience Rates and Percentage Cost Reduction. Experience Rates offer the highest quality metric, but there are few available studies, particularly for non-equipment costs. Single Point Cost is the most widely reported metric, but conflates diverse technologies and contexts. Percentage Cost Reduction is a relatively common forecasting metric, but may lack rigour.
Historic data suggests that there has been no significant reduction in the average installed cost of heat pumps over the past decade in the UK, while modest cost reductions were seen internationally. At times, particular countries have aligned deployment growth with significant cost reduction.
Forecast data suggests reductions in installed costs of 20–25 % between 2020 and 2030 in the UK – significant, but relatively modest compared to current UK policy goals. We conclude that heat pump deployment policy support should be resilient to fluctuations in installed costs, as the market grows.
•We systematically review historic and forecast domestic heat pump installed costs.•High quality installed cost data is scarce, both in the UK and internationally.•No reduction found in average installed costs over the past decade in the UK.•Forecasts suggest significant but relatively moderate cost reductions by 2030.•Policy support should be resilient to fluctuations in installed costs over time.
Recent climate change initiatives, such as ‘Mission Innovation’ launched alongside the Paris Agreement in 2015, urge redoubled research into innovative low carbon technologies. However, climate ...change is an urgent problem – emissions reductions must take place rapidly throughout the coming decades. This raises an important question: how long might it take for individual technologies to emerge from research, find market opportunities and make a tangible impact on emissions reductions? Here, we consider historical evidence for the time a range of energy supply and energy end-use technologies have taken to emerge from invention, diffuse into the market and reach widespread deployment. We find considerable variation, from 20 to almost 70 years. Our findings suggest that the time needed for new technologies to achieve widespread deployment should not be overlooked, and that innovation policy should focus on accelerating the deployment of existing technologies as well as research into new ones.
•Power generation and consumer products are compared, to chart the time to go from invention to market.•Invention of new technology to widespread commercialisation is a multi-decadal process.•How to measure widespread commercialisation is contested. We provide a clear and simple definition.•Power generation technologies often take decades to get to widespread commercialisation.•Deploying current low carbon technology is just as important as ‘Mission Innovation’ into new ones.
Carbon capture and storage update Boot-Handford, Matthew E; Abanades, Juan C; Anthony, Edward J ...
Energy & environmental science,
01/2014, Letnik:
7, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In recent years, Carbon Capture and Storage (Sequestration) (CCS) has been proposed as a potential method to allow the continued use of fossil-fuelled power stations whilst preventing emissions of CO
...2
from reaching the atmosphere. Gas, coal (and biomass)-fired power stations can respond to changes in demand more readily than many other sources of electricity production, hence the importance of retaining them as an option in the energy mix. Here, we review the leading CO
2
capture technologies, available in the short and long term, and their technological maturity, before discussing CO
2
transport and storage. Current pilot plants and demonstrations are highlighted, as is the importance of optimising the CCS system as a whole. Other topics briefly discussed include the viability of both the capture of CO
2
from the air and CO
2
reutilisation as climate change mitigation strategies. Finally, we discuss the economic and legal aspects of CCS.
A comprehensive discussion of CCS technologies, deployment and prospects across the world.
Energy policy goals frequently depend upon investment in particular technologies, or categories of technology. Whilst the British government has often espoused the virtues of technological ...neutrality, UK policies now seek to promote nuclear power, coal with CO
2 capture and storage, and renewable energy.
Policy decisions are often informed by estimates of cost per unit of output (for example, £/MWh), also known as levelised costs. Estimates of these costs for different technologies are often used to provide a ‘ballpark’ guide to the levels of financial support needed (if any) to encourage uptake, or direct investment away from the technologies the market might otherwise have chosen. Levelised cost estimates can also help to indicate the cost of meeting public policy objectives, and whether there is a rationale for intervention (for example, based on net welfare gains).
In the UK electricity sector, investment is undertaken by private companies, not governments. Investment is driven by expected returns, in the light of a range of risks related to both costs and revenues. Revenue risks are not captured in estimates of cost or cost-related risks. An important category of revenue risk is associated with electricity price fluctuations. Exposure to price risks differs by technology. Low electricity prices represent a revenue risk to technologies that cannot influence electricity prices. By contrast, ‘price makers’ that set marginal prices are, to an extent, able to pass fuel price increases through to consumers. They have an inherent ‘hedge’ against fuel and electricity price fluctuations.
Based on recent research by the UK Energy Research Centre, this paper considers the implications of such price risks for policy design. The authors contrast the range of levelised costs estimated for different generating options with the spread of returns each is exposed to when electricity price fluctuations are factored in. Drawing on recent policy experiences in the renewable energy arena, in the UK and elsewhere, the authors provide an assessment of investment risk in policy effectiveness and consider how policy design can increase or ameliorate price risk. They discuss the circumstances under which policy goals might be best served by ‘socialising’ price risk, through fixed price policies. The importance of increased and explicit attention to revenue risk in policymaking is discussed, along with the means by which this might be achieved.
Offshore wind power is anticipated to make a major contribution to the UK’s renewable energy targets but, contrary to expectations, costs have risen dramatically in recent years. This paper considers ...the context of these cost increases, and describes a disaggregated levelised cost model used by the authors to explore the effect of different assumptions about the direction and scale of the major cost drivers. The paper identifies the competing upward and downward pressures on costs in the medium term, and discusses the range of future costs that emerges from the analysis. The paper goes on to analyse the implications of these cost projections for the policy support levels that offshore wind may require. The paper suggests that there are good reasons why it is reasonable to expect a gradual fall in costs in the period to the mid-2020s, although it is unlikely that costs will fall as rapidly as they have risen, or that it will be a smooth downward trajectory. A key challenge is to reconcile the scale and pace of development desired for UK offshore wind with the potential growth rate that the supply chain can sustain without creating upward pressure on costs.
► Analysis suggests that offshore wind may see modest cost falls in the medium term. ► These cost reductions are unlikely to be as marked as recent cost rises. ► Competing upward and downward cost pressures remain. ► The ambitious scale of UK offshore wind may bring in new capacity and reduce costs. ► But the pace of growth has the potential to sustain upward pressure on costs.
Wind power is widely expected to expand rapidly in Britain over the next decade. Large amounts of variable wind power on the system will increase market risks, with prices more volatile and load ...factors for conventional thermal plant lower and more uncertain. This extra market risk may discourage investment in generation capacity. Financial viability for thermal plant will be increasingly dependent on price spikes during periods of low wind. Increased price risk will also make investment in other forms of low-carbon generation (e.g. nuclear power) more challenging.
A number of policies can reduce the extent to which generators are exposed to market risks and encourage investment. However, market risks play a fundamental role in shaping efficient investment and dispatch patterns in a liberalised market. Therefore, measures to improve price signals and market functioning (such as a stronger carbon price and developing more responsive demand) are desirable. However, the scale of the investment challenge and increased risk mean targeted measures to reduce (although not eliminate) risk exposure, such as capacity mechanisms and fixed price schemes, may have increasing merit. The challenge for policy is to strike the right balance between market and planned approaches.
► Analyses how increases penetrations of wind power effect electricity market functioning. ► Assesses the impacts of this on investment incentives for different technologies. ► Discusses implications for policy and market design.
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