• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close

Heightened natural gas prices have emerged as a key energy-policy challenge for at least the early part of the 21st century. With the recent run-up in gas prices and the expected continuation of volatile and high prices in the near future, a growing number of voices are calling for increased diversification of energy supplies. Proponents of renewable energy and energy efficiency identify these clean energy sources as an important part of the solution. Increased deployment of renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) can hedge natural gas price risk in more than one way, but this paper touches on just one potential benefit: displacement of gas-fired electricity generation, which reduces natural gas demand and thus puts downward pressure on gas prices. Many recent modeling studies of increased RE and EE deployment have demonstrated that this ''secondary'' effect of lowering natural gas prices could be significant; as a result, this effect is increasingly cited as justification for policies promoting RE and EE. This paper summarizes recent studies that have evaluated the gas-price-reduction effect of RE and EE deployment, analyzes the results of these studies in light of economic theory and other research, reviews the reasonableness of the effect as portrayed in modeling studies, and develops a simple tool that can be used to evaluate the impact of RE and EE on gas prices without relying on a complex national energy model. Key findings are summarized.

Turkey is an important candidate to be the “energy corridor” in the transmission of the abundant oil and natural gas resources of the Middle East and Middle Asia countries to the Western market. Turkey is planning to increase its oil and gas pipeline infrastructure to accommodate its increased energy usage. The main objective of the present study is to investigate the place of natural gas in Turkey’s energy sources by presenting its historical development. Natural gas consumption started in 1976 with the usage of limited indigenous natural gas production in a few industrial plants in Turkey. However, natural gas began penetrating the energy market in the late 1980s. Its consumption is increasing rapidly. The first autoproducer natural gas-fired plant was installed in 1992, while imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Algeria started in 1994 after the completion of the Marmara LNG terminal. In 1995, natural gas represented 8% of the total final energy consumption. Gas sales started at 0.5 Bcm (billion...

The continuous growth of energy consumption, intensive exploitation of non-renewable energy sources, geopolitical turmoil, global recession have resulted in the fact that the days of cheap energy are over. This paper discusses the problems and challenges the energy sector faces, with special emphasis on those related to the oil and gas sector in the world and in our country. Serbian energy policy objectives, established by the new Energy Law, include the promotion of energy security, energy efficiency, competitiveness of the energy market, use of renewable energy resources and environmental protection. With regard to each goal, a series of regulatory measures, programs and acts have been adopted that comply with the requirements of European energy regulations. What follows is an intense work on the implementation of the adopted measures and programs. In terms of the implementation of the energy development strategy, 'Naftna industrija Srbije' (NIS) is the most advanced. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on analyzing the development strategy of NIS in the context of the Energy Sector Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia.

The MEU GIS-enabled web-platform [1] has been developed in close collaboration with four Swiss cities. The tool enables detailed monitoring and planning for both energy demand and supply at individual building, neighborhood and whole city scale (http://meu.epfl.ch). This web-platform acts like an interface between different tools and allows to establish detailed energy balances for entire cities comprising several thousand buildings. In its present configuration, the MEU tool does not allow yet to simulate energy networks behaviors, based on the real or projected energy demand in an urban zone. In order to meet this need from energy utilities partners, a specific data model, as well as an user-interface giving access to networks attributes and edition/simulation tools were developed, which will be then functionally integrated in the MEU platform. The idea is to create a “Natural Gas Networks” module built for energy utilities. The objectives of this project within the larger MEU endeavor were the following: 1) Create a platform gathering topological and geo-referenced data; 2) Develop a gas network pre-design/planning methodology including demand characteristics and gas supply for buildings in a selected area; 3) Interface with gas distribution system operators existing tools and add new functionalities within a single platform; 4) Include natural gas distribution system operator constraints and operational realities in the pre-design/planning process. In order to achieve those objectives, two tools and several visualization concepts have been created, along with an ad hoc data model: (i) a data model able to allow data import, storage and centralization from energy utilities databases: networks, buildings demands and specifications, as well as interface between edition, simulation and visualization tools; (ii) a network edition tool prototype (LEAFLET JavaScript based web page), which allows to display a network on a map, to add/delete or drag&drop pipes, nodes, consumption and biogas production/injection points and pressure let down stations; (iii) a network flows, and pressures simulation device (MATLAB® compressible fluids model) which computes the network behavior for each hour (pressures, flows, power equivalent and temperatures in each point); (iv) a detailed mock-up for visualization and display concept with interactive and GIS data: buildings area, networks paths, pipes characteristics, results from simulation, studied area energy balance, etc. This paper focuses more specifically on the visualization and network edition tool, as well as simulation results interactive representation on the MEU platform.

Resilience against infrastructure failure is essential for ensuring the health and safety of communities during and following natural hazard situations. Understanding how natural hazards impact society in terms of economic cost, recovery time, and damages to critical infrastructure is essential for developing robust approaches to increasing resilience. Identifying specific vulnerabilities allows for better communication, planning, and situation-specific interventions. This is particularly relevant in areas recovering from a natural hazard that have the opportunity to build back their infrastructure, and for those currently planning infrastructure expansions. This study considers recent hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, heat waves, extreme wind and rainfall events, ice and thunder storms as well as wildfires. For many of these, data are available for the same type of hazard in different geographies which provides information not only on specific vulnerabilities, but whether the impacts are location dependent. Where available, specific design considerations, cost information for repairs, and the recommendations for 'building back better' are presented. Above-ground transmission systems were the most commonly affected power system component, with fuel and maintenance supply chains representing a major vulnerability for isolated regions and islands. Generation systems were most commonly affected when a hazard exceeded design limits, particularly in relation to water temperature or wind speeds. Institutional capabilities are important throughout the sector. In all case studies analyzed, the design standards of the infrastructure asset, and the ongoing maintenance of assets and the organized response (or lack of) has major implications for the performance of the electricity grid.

Elk Valley Rancheria; Tribe; renewable energy; energy options analysis. The Elk Valley Rancheria, California ('Tribe') is a federally recognized Indian tribe located in Del Norte County, California, in the northwestern corner of California. The Tribe, its members and Tribal enterprises are challenged by increasing energy costs and undeveloped local energy resources. The Tribe currently lacks an energy program. The Tribal government lacked sufficient information to make informed decisions about potential renewable energy resources, energy alternatives and other energy management issues. To meet this challenge efficiently, the Tribe contracted with Frank Zaino and Associates, Inc. to help become more energy self-sufficient, by reducing their energy costs and promoting energy alternatives that stimulate economic development. Frank Zaino & Associates, Inc. provided a high level economic screening analysis based on anticipated electric and natural gas rates. This was in an effort to determine which alternative energy system will performed at a higher level so the Tribe could reduce their energy model by 30% from alternative fuel sources. The feasibility study will identify suitable energy alternatives and conservation methods that will benefit the Tribe and tribal community through important reductions in cost. The lessons learned from these conservation efforts will yield knowledge that will serve a wider goal of executing energy efficiency measures and practices in Tribal residences and business facilities. Pacific Power is the provider of electrical power to the four properties under review at $ 0.08 per Kilowatt-hour (KWH). This is a very low energy cost compared to alternative energy sources. The Tribe used baseline audits to assess current and historic energy usage at four Rancheria owned facilities. Past electric and gas billing statements were retained for review for the four buildings that will be audited. A comparative assessment of the various energy usages will determine the demand, forecast future need and identify the differences in energy costs, narrowing the focus of the work and defining its scope. The Tribe's peak demand periods will help determine the scope of need for alternative energy sources. The Tribe's Energy Efficiency and Alternatives Analysis report included several system investigations which include fuel cells, wind turbines, solar panels, hydro electric, ground source heat pumps, bio mass, cogeneration & energy conservation and implementation for the existing properties. The energy analysis included site visits to collect and analyze historical energy usage and cost. The analysis also included the study of the building systems for the Elk Valley Casino, Elk Valley Rancheria administration complex, United Indian Health Service/Small Community Center complex and the Tribal Gaming Commission Offices. The analysis involved identifying modifications, performing an engineering economic analysis, preparation of a rank ordered list of modifications and preparation of a report to provide recommendations and actions for the Tribe to implement.

The recent energy crises of natural gas supply in Europe caused by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine have put a spotlight on the interdependence between the energy transition towards climate neutrality and security of supply of conventional fuels from to today until 2030 and 2035. This paper therefore assesses the impact of a sustained energy crisis and resulting higher fossil resource prices, in particular for natural gas and oil, and options for dedicated measure to reduce the dependence on imports in particular of natural gas and oil. The results are based on a common scenario approach in the ARIADNE Kopernikus project and are calculated by using the energy system REMod which was used in several important scenario studies recently. There are multiple studies analyzing the German energy transformation considering its national CO2 reduction goals, i.e. with the target of net-zero emissions in 2045 (Brandes et al. 2021; Luderer, Kost, and Dominika 2021; Prognos, Öko-Institut, and Wuppertal-Institut 2021). However, all of them have been published before the current energy crisis in 2022. A second detailed analysis of this paper is the role of heat pumps as they are a central substitution technology of natural gas in the building sector of Germany. As electricity demand by heat pumps will grow, this demand will be analyzed in a statistical analysis of the operation of heat pumps.

ERNEST ORLANDO LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY Environmental Energy Technologies Division 1 Cyclotron Rd., MS 90-4000, Berkeley, CA 94720 ph: 510-486-5474, fax: 510-486-6996, RHWiser@lbl.gov To Robert Pratt, Fran Cummings, Karlynn Cory Massachusetts Technology Collaborative From Ryan Wiser and Mark Bolinger Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Subject The Potential Impact of Renewable Energy Deployment on Natural Gas Prices in New England Date September 20, 2004 INTRODUCTION Concerns about the price and supply of natural gas have deepened in recent years both nationally and in New England. Renewable energy (RE) technologies can directly hedge natural gas price risk by reducing the need to purchase variable-price natural gas-fired electricity generation, and replacing that generation with fixed-price renewable electricity supply. In addition to its direct contribution to price stability, an increasing number of studies show that renewable energy deployment can also put downward pressure on natural gas prices by reducing demand for gas among gas-fired generators. These gas price reductions are, in turn, expected to reduce electricity prices and – more importantly – directly reduce consumer natural gas bills. Many recent studies have found that this effect may be significant, substantially benefiting consumers. These studies are reviewed in the attached paper, published in the proceedings of a recent national energy conference. An important consideration is that – strictly speaking – this price reduction represents a consumer benefit that comes at the expense of producers; it therefore represents a wealth transfer, not a net gain in social welfare. That said, current concerns about the price and supply of natural gas suggest that policymakers may want to pursue actions that reduce the strain of high prices on consumer energy bills. Using previous studies as a guide, this memorandum focuses on New England, and calculates the potential impact of increased deployment of renewable energy on regional natural gas prices, as well as consumer benefits associated with those price reductions. We do this by extrapolating the findings of previous studies to the New England region. Pertinent caveats are noted, though we

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. The need to develop the UK supply for domestic heat pumps (HPs) and to evaluate the empirical performance of HP systems in the field has led to the establishment of two major UK field trials of HPs (the first one took place between 2008 and 2012). These data were generated from the second field trial, established by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in conjunction with the Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) grant scheme, which ran from 2011-2014 (note that the data included here cover the period October 2013-March 2015). Please note that this study contains the raw data - a cleaned version is available under SN 8151. See the RAPID-HPC statement below for information on data quality. The RHPP policy provided subsidies for private householders, Registered Social Landlords and communities to install renewable heat measures in residential properties. Eligible measures included air and ground-source heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal panels. Around 14,000 heat pumps were installed via this scheme. DECC (now BEIS) funded a detailed monitoring campaign, which covered 700 heat pumps (around 5% of the total). The aim of this monitoring campaign was to provide data to enable an assessment of the efficiencies of the heat pumps and to gain greater insight into their performance. The RHPP scheme was administered by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) who engaged the Buildings Research Establishment (BRE) to run the meter installation and data collection phases of the monitoring program. They collected data from 31 October 2013 to 31 March 2015. RHPP heat pumps were installed between 2009 and 2014. Since the start of the RHPP Scheme, the installation requirements set by MCS standards and processes have been updated. Further information about the RHPP scheme (which has now closed), including statistics, can be found on the Gov.uk Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme statistics webpage. DECC contracted the RAPID-HPC to analyse these data. The data provided to RAPID-HPC included physical monitoring data, and metadata describing the features of the heat pump installations and the dwellings in which they were installed. As the analysis has progressed, limitations with the underlying data have been identified. See RAPID-HPC's statement (below). (See also SN 8151 for a cleaned version of the data.) RAPID-HPC's Statement on Data Anomalies and Interpretation, February 2016 (covered in the Detailed Analysis of Data report and the spreadsheets included with SN 8151) The work of the RAPID-HPC consisted of cleaning the data, selection of sites and data for analysis, analysis, and the development of conclusions and interpretations. The monitoring data and contextual information are imperfect. Discussion of the data limitations are provided in the DECC Detailed analysis of data from heat pumps installed via the Renewable Heat Premium Payment Scheme report on the gov.uk website which is essential to the understanding of these data. RAPID-HPC has used a top-down rules-based approach to identifying data anomalies to clean the data. The advantages of this approach are that it is transparent and replicable and enables analysis of the very large (over 0.5 billion data points) dataset as a whole. It is important to note that the data was collected from domestic heat pumps installed via the RHPP policy. [RAPID-HPC] have not assessed the degree to which the heat pumps assessed are representative of the general sample of domestic heat pumps in the UK. Therefore, results from any analysis undertaken using these data should not be assumed to be representative of any other sample of heat pumps. Downloading the data - using suitable zip software Users should note that the download zip file for this study is around 5.5GB in size. The standard Windows system zip compression software is not able to unzip a file of this size completely and may mean that problems are encountered with some of the data or documentation files. Therefore, it is recommended that users install one of the following software packages in order to unzip the file: 7zip (free open source software for Windows, check 7zip website for Linux/Unix); WinZip (free to try for Windows and Mac); iZip (free software for Mac). Main Topics: The data cover a number of technical parameters from monitoring heat pump systems (such as flow temperature, heat output) in timeseries form (2-minutely data) for each of the monitored sites. Heat pump efficiencies (such as Seasonal Performance Factor) can be calculated from the variables present. No sampling (total universe) Physical measurements