This review article presents a description of contemporary developments and findings related to the different elements needed in future 4th generation district heating systems (4GDH). Unlike the ...first three generations of district heating, the development of 4GDH involves meeting the challenge of more energy efficient buildings as well as the integration of district heating into a future smart energy system based on renewable energy sources. Following a review of recent 4GDH research, the article quantifies the costs and benefits of 4GDH in future sustainable energy systems. Costs involve an upgrade of heating systems and of the operation of the distribution grids, while benefits are lower grid losses, a better utilization of low-temperature heat sources and improved efficiency in the production compared to previous district heating systems. It is quantified how benefits exceed costs by a safe margin with the benefits of systems integration being the most important.
•Provides a review of 4th Generation District Heating (4GDH) in scientific papers.•Shows how 4GDH is an important integrated part of future sustainable energy systems.•Quantifies costs and benefits of 4GDH in a future sustainable energy system.•Shows how benefits exceed costs by a safe margin.•Shows the significant benefits of systems integration.
Energy Storage and Smart Energy Systems Lund, Henrik; Poul Alberg Østergaard; Connolly, David ...
International journal of sustainable energy planning and management,
2016, Letnik:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
It is often highlighted how the transition to renewable energy supply calls for significant electricity storage. However, one has to move beyond the electricity-only focus and take a holistic energy ...system view to identify optimal solutions for integrating renewable energy. In this paper, an integrated cross-sector approach is used to determine the most efficient and least-cost storage options for the entire renewable energy system concluding that the best storage solutions cannot be found through analyses focusing on the individual sub-sectors. Electricity storage is not the optimum solution to integrate large inflows of fluctuating renewable energy, since more efficient and cheaper options can be found by integrating the electricity sector with other parts of the energy system and by this creating a Smart Energy System. Nevertheless, this does not imply that electricity storage should be disregarded but that it will be needed for other purposes in the future.
In the transition towards 4th generation district heating (4GDH), supply and demand side measures have to be coordinated better than in previous generations of district heating (DH). Building’s heat ...demand has to be reduced, and heating installations as well as consumer behaviour have to be adapted so as to be compatible with and support lower network temperatures. It is therefore necessary to investigate and understand how consumers can be meaningfully and strategically included in the transition towards 4GDH. This paper provides a literature review of the consumer levels role in 4GDH in the transition towards 100% renewable energy systems. Current literature of 4GDH have been investigated to identify the connection and involvement of consumers in the transition. Even though consumers within the existing building mass have a large role in the transition in terms of heat savings and instalment of energy efficient technologies in the buildings are almost none of the scientific literature addressing how these actions should be implemented at consumer level. From the results of the analysis it is recommended that further research should investigate how to strengthen the coordination between supply and demand sides in order to secure the right initiatives are implemented in the right order.
This paper presents Concrete Institutional Economics as an economic paradigm to understand how the wish for sustainable energy in times of economic crisis can be used to generate jobs as well as ...economic growth. In most countries, including European countries, the USA and China, the implementation of sustainable energy solutions involves the replacement of imported fossil fuels by substantial investments in energy conservation and renewable energy (RE). In such situation, it becomes increasingly essential to develop economic thinking and economic models that can analyse the concrete institutions in which the market is embedded. This paper presents such tools and methodologies and applies them to the case of the Danish heating sector. The case shows how investments in decreasing fossil fuels and CO2 emissions can be made in a way in which they have a positive influence on job creation and economic development as well as public expenditures.
► Presents Concrete Institutional Economics as an economic paradigm. ► Presents tools and methodologies to perform Concrete Institutional Economics. ► Applies the methodology to the case of the Danish heating sector. ► Presents a case that shows a positive influence on jobs as well as public expenditures.
In Denmark, a technological change towards cleaner energy technologies has been developed and implemented since around 1975. This development has had two phases: The first from 1975 until around ...1996, when wind power was a niche production that supplied only 3.5% of the electricity consumption and was brought close to cost competitiveness, and the present second phase, in which wind power supplies an increasing share (in 2004 18.6%) of electricity consumption along with combined heat and power plants, which supply around 50% of consumption. Denmark succeeded in overcoming the first phase, and a large green energy technology cluster was established. During the second phase, new difficulties and challenges have arisen, both with regard to local public acceptance and the need for integrating an increasing percentage of fluctuating energy sources into the energy system. In this Phase 2, a new offensive green energy policy should be introduced in order to secure both public and political acceptance. Local markets should be established in order to secure the technical integration of a large proportion of wind power and other fluctuating renewable energy sources into the energy system.
This paper defines the concept of 4th Generation District Heating (4GDH) including the relations to District Cooling and the concepts of smart energy and smart thermal grids. The motive is to ...identify the future challenges of reaching a future renewable non-fossil heat supply as part of the implementation of overall sustainable energy systems. The basic assumption is that district heating and cooling has an important role to play in future sustainable energy systems - including 100 percent renewable energy systems - but the present generation of district heating and cooling technologies will have to be developed further into a new generation in order to play such a role. Unlike the first three generations, the development of 4GDH involves meeting the challenge of more energy efficient buildings as well as being an integrated part of the operation of smart energy systems, i.e. integrated smart electricity, gas and thermal grids.
Recently, questions have arisen in Denmark as to how and why public funding should be allocated to wind power producers. This is, among other reasons, due to pressure from industrial electricity ...consumers who want their overall energy costs lowered. Utilising existing wind power subsidies across energy sectors may be an effective means of dealing with these concerns. The following article takes the case of a community owned renewable energy project as a microcosm for the entire Danish energy system. The local project seeks to integrate energy sectors so as to create physical and financial conditions which could allow wind power producers to reduce their reliance on subsidies. It is found that the strategy may be effective in lowering the overall energy costs of electricity consumers. Further, it is found possible to scale up this strategy and realise benefits on a national scale.
In a transition to 100% renewable energy, public regulation has to deal with, among other issues, price efficiency, security of supply, and the transition from sector based fossil fuel systems to ...sector integrated smart energy systems based on energy conservation and renewable energy. Most studies and practical policies only focus on building “green incentives” into the money flows. There is less research focus on the importance of citizen and consumer ownership models in the green energy transition process. This is problematic, as different ownership models have different influences on price efficiency as well as the ability of the smart energy system to integrate large amounts of fluctuating energy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze citizen and consumer ownership models both with regard to their influence on consumer prices and their capability to handle the multitude of coordination tasks in a transition from sector based to integrated smart energy systems. A consumer ownership model has positive potentials both in terms of maintaining low energy prices and securing low coordination transaction costs in smart energy systems. The realization of these positive potentials is dependent on the concrete institutional context and public regulation in which a given ownership construction is embedded.
•Consumer ownership of natural monopolies plus non profit governance gives low prices.•Low prices pays for the extra costs of early introduction of green energy technologies.•Consumer ownership gives low renewable energy integration transaction costs.•100% renewable energy mainly consists of consumer near energy systems.•Smart energy system technologies are at the outset mainly consumer owned.
Buildings account for a substantial part of the total energy consumption. In Denmark this number is about 40 % and this is approximately the same in most industrial countries. On this background ...there is an urgent need to develop strategies for reducing the energy demand in the building sector. Renovation of existing buildings must have high priority as houses often last for 50 to 100 years, while the time perspective for the desired transformation to low-energy houses is less than 30 years in order to mitigate global warming and avoid irreversible tipping-points. The only sustainable energy supply in the perspective of centuries is renewable energy provided by the sun and exploited in the form of solar heat, solar electricity (PVs), wind power, hydropower, wave power, and some types of biomass etc. A future dominating role of intermittent renewable sources requires new integrated systems thinking on both the supply and demand side for heat, electricity and transport. Implementing such Smart Energy Systems requires integrated strategic energy planning on the national and local level. With the fundamental changes in the energy supply technologies expected during the coming years, it is important to synchronize investments in energy conservation measures with investments in the supply side, in order to avoid overinvestment in supply systems and thus to minimize the total costs of the transformation to Smart Energy Systems. This paper highlights some of the most important barriers for renovation of existing buildings in Denmark and points to policies for overcoming these barriers. Some of the policies have been presented in the reports of a recent Danish research project (CEESA).
•Fruitfully combining a discursive dimension with an institutional perspective when analyzing policy processes.•Shows how a future frame materializes and consolidates.•Contributes to a better ...understanding and further academic elaboration of materialisation and consolidation in general and specifically of the sociological part of the Danish green energy transition.•Shows the importance of an additional focus upon the role of actors when analysing materialisation of futures.
The energy transition towards a more carbon neutral energy production has become a major topic for policy makers in recent years. Although the importance of a long-term vision and planning is widely acknowledged, the idea to speed up the energy transition with binding targets and timetables has also been criticised. Instead, societal transformations are created by the messy combination of actors and networks, stories and visions, regulations, agreements, local and regional initiatives, etc. Yet, there is still a lack of systematic analyses of how futures become mainstream in policy and practice. This article analyzes the context and actors in which the Danish energy transition emerges. We describe this process as materialization, referring to the process in which different representations of a future come together and incrementally organize the future. Although the Danish energy case has been analyzed by many authors over the last years, most analyses of the Danish energy transition are done from an institutional perspective. The importance of stories (about the future) has been mentioned as an important factor, but it has not been the focus of research. This research combines a discursive dimension with an institutional perspective to analyze how the future of renewable energy materialized and consolidated in Denmark. The case not only shows different phases of materialization, it also shows that different combinations of the interplay between actors, context and stories led to materialization and consolidation of the energy transition in Denmark.
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