• Energy Research
• 2025-2025close
• 13. Climate action close
• ES close
• EU close

Climate change is a spatial and temporarily non-uniform phenomenon that requires understanding its evolution to better evaluate its potential societal and economic impact. The value added of this paper lies in introducing a quantitative methodology grounded in the trend analysis of temperature distribution quantiles to analyze climate change heterogeneity (CCH). By converting these quantiles into time series objects, the methodology empowers the definition and measurement of various relevant concepts in climate change analysis (warming, warming typology, warming amplification and warming acceleration) in a straightforward and robust testable linear regression format. It also facilitates the introduction of new testable concepts like warming dominance to compare (globally or partially) the warming process experienced by different regions. Furthermore, the methodology holds the added significance of concurrently encompassing both temporal and spatial dimensions in temperature analysis, owing to the close alignment between unconditional quantiles and latitude measures. Applying our quantitative methodology for the period 1950-2019 to the Globe (2192 stations) and Spain (30 stations) as a benchmark region, we find that both experience a distributional warming process (beyond the standard average) but of very different types. While the Globe experiences a stronger warming in the lower temperatures than in the upper ones, Spain evolves from equal warming in the whole distribution toward a stronger warming in the upper quantiles (similar to the warming process experienced in the African continent). In the two cases, the warming process accelerates (non-linear behavior) over time and is asymmetrically amplified. Overall, although both the Globe and Spain suffer an equivalent warming process in the median (mean) temperature, Spain’s warming dominates the Globe in the upper quantiles and is dominated in the lower tail of the global temperature distribution that corresponds to the Arctic region. Our climate change heterogeneity results open the door to the need for a non-uniform causal-effect climate analysis that goes beyond the standard causality in mean and for a more efficient design of the mitigation-adaptation policies. In particular, the heterogeneity found suggests these policies should contain a common global component and a clear local-regional idiosyncratic element. The latter is usually more straightforward to implement.

While the operating cost of electricity grids based on thermal generation was largely driven by the cost of fuel, as renewable penetration increases, ancillary services represent an increasingly large proportion of the running costs. Electric frequency is an important magnitude in highly renewable grids, as it becomes more volatile and therefore the cost related to maintaining it within safe bounds has significantly increased. So far, costs for frequency-containment ancillary services have been socialised in most countries, but it has become relevant to rethink this regulatory arrangement. In this paper, we discuss the issue of cost allocation for these services, highlighting the need to evolve towards a causation-based regulatory framework. We argue that parties responsible for creating the need for ancillary services should bear these costs. However, this would imply an important change in electricity market policy, therefore it is necessary to understand the impact on current and future investments on generation, as well as on electricity tariffs. Here we provide a mostly qualitative analysis of this issue, defining guidelines for practical implementation and further study. Published in journal Energy Policy

AbstractAs the bones and muscles of our built environment, engineering structures support all kind of societal activities. However, they consume huge amounts of resources and significantly contribute to impact on our environment. Structural design codes play an important matter in this regard since they regulate the use of materials by use of prescribed decision rules. These relatively simple and generalized rules offer significant potential for improvement. Grounded on risk-based optimization approaches, this paper explores this potential in connection with the design of reinforced concrete floor systems. Assuming a large variety of realistic design situations, representative sets of such members are defined and designed according to the semi-probabilistic safety concept in the Eurocodes. The benefits of a risk-informed structural design compared to the use of these standardized decision rules are demonstrated in terms of material consumption and CO2 emissions.

In the last decade, the manufacturing capacity of silicon, the dominant PV technology, has increasingly been concentrated in China. This has led to PV cost reduction of approximately 80%, while, at the same time, posing risks to PV supply chain security. Recent advancements of novel perovskite tandem PV technologies as an alternative to traditional silicon-based PV provide opportunities for diversification of the PV manufacturing capacity and for increasing the GHG emission benefit of solar PV. Against this background, we estimate the current and future cost-competitiveness and GHG emissions of a set of already commercialized as well as emerging PV technologies for different production locations (China, USA, EU), both at residential and utility-scale. We find EU and USA-manufactured thin-film tandems to have 2 to 4% and 0.5 to 2% higher costs per kWh and 37 to 40%and 32 to 35% less GHG emissions per kWh at residential and utility-scale, respectively. Our projections indicate that they will also retain competitive costs (up to 2% higher)and a 20% GHG emissions advantage per kWh in 2050.