• Energy Research

Rising energy costs, anthropogenic climate change, and fossil fuel depletion calls for a concerted effort within energy planning to ensure a sustainable energy future. This article presents an overview of global energy trends focusing on energy costs, energy use and carbon dioxide emissions. Secondly, a review of contemporary work is presented focusing on national energy pathways with cases from Ireland, Denmark and Jordan, spatial issues within sustainable energyplanning and policy means to advance a sustainable energy future. International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, Vol 1 (2014)

District heating is considered an important component in a future highly renewable European energy system. With the turn towards developing 4th generation district heating (4GDH), the integral role of district heating in fully renewable energy systems is emphasized further. Norway is a country that is expected to play a significant role in the transition of the European energy system due to its high shares of flexible hydropower in the electricity sector. At the same time, the country is moving towards electrification in all sectors and higher shares of variable renewable electricity generation, potentially reducing the flexibility of the system. District heating has played a minor role in Norway but could potentially decrease the need for electric capacity expansion and increase the flexibility of the system. In this paper we investigate the role of 4GDH in a highly electrified future Norwegian energy system. A highly electrified scenario for the Norwegian energy system is constructed based on a step-by-step approach, implementing measures towards electrification and expansion of renewable electricity generation. Then, a 4GDH scenario is constructed for the purpose of analysing the role of 4GDH. EnergyPLAN is used for simulation. Results show that an expansion of 4GDH will increase the total system efficiency of the Norwegian energy system due to the introduction of heat savings, more efficient heating solutions and low-temperature excess heat. However, the flexibility provided from increased heat storage capacity is limited. International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, Vol. 27 (2020): Special Issue from the 5th International Conference on Smart Energy Systems

This article deals with possible future electricity mix of Saudi Arabia. Three scenarios are evaluated from techno-economic and environmental aspects. In addition to renewable energy technologies, the baseline scenario considers nuclear power, whilst the alternative scenarios exclude the nuclear power and include combined heat and cooling power plants (CHCP) and individual solar thermal cooling to substitute the conventional cooling load. Scenarios II and III differ from each other on the basis of the installed capacity of CHCP, where the latter has higher than the former. We have found that without any subsidy on fossil fuels, the levelised production cost (LPC) of electricity in Scenarios I, II and III are 197, 157 and 149 €/MWh, respectively. Alternatively, if the existing fossil fuel-fired power plants are facilitated with subsidy, excluding the new installations, the LPCs are 117, 70 and 62 €/MWh, respectively. Scenario III leads to direct emissions at 0.39 t CO2eq/MWh, which is 22% and 13% lower tha...

Increasing wind power shares enhances the need to integrate wind power into the energy system and to improve its economy. In this study we propose two ways of achieving this end. One is to increase the value of wind power by integrating the heat and power markets, and thus ensures that wind power is never sold at a lower price than the most expensive heat alternative.The other is to lower the average costs of wind power by building more onshore wind power capacity, and proportionally less offshore wind power. This is facilitated by local and regional majority ownership models that increase the acceptance rate of onshore wind.The economy of wind power is thus improved by both increasing its value and reducing its costs.

Denmark’s future energy system is to be entirely based on renewable energy sources. Municipalities will play an important role as local energy planning authorities in terms of adopting and refining this vision in different local contexts. Based on a review of 11 municipal energy plans, this paper examines to what extent municipal energy planning matches national 100% renewable energy strategies. The results indicate a willingness among Danish municipalities to actively carry out energy planning, and the plans reveal a large diversity of (new) activities. At the same time, however, there is a strong need for better coordination of municipal energy planning activities at the central level. It is suggested that the role of municipalities as energy planning authorities needs to be outlined more clearly in, e.g., strategic energy planning which integrates savings, efficiency and renewable energy in all (energy) sectors. This requires the state to provide municipalities with the necessary planning instruments and establish a corresponding planning framework. Consequently, there is a need for a simultaneous centralisation and decentralisation during the implementation of the 100% renewable energy vision. The paper outlines a basic division of tasks between the central and the local level within such a strategic energy planning system.

This study discusses about the environmental performance of Miscanthus conversion to district heat. Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is used as a tool to assess the environmental impacts related to the biomass conversion to heat. Energy conversion of Miscanthus is compared in two combustion scenarios: (i) in Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant and (ii) in a Boiler (producing heat only). Biomass conversion to heat is also compared with the conversion of natural gas (NG). The environmental impact categories considered for the assessment are: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Non-Renewable Energy (NRE) use and Land use (LU). The current study revealed that for 1MJ of heat production, Miscanthus fired in the CHP plant would lead to a GWP at -0.071kg CO2-eq, an NRE use -0.767-MJ primary, and LU 0.09m2-a (square metre-annual). For the same heat output, Miscanthus fired in the boiler would lead to a GWP of 0.005kg CO2-eq, NRE use 0.172MJ-primary and land use 0.063m2-a. Miscanthus fired in the CHP plant is better than in the boiler from the stand point of lowering the GWP and increasing the savings in fossil fuel, but with slightly higher LU. A comparison between Miscanthus and NG has showed that despite the biomass possessed advantage in reducing GWP and NRE use, additional land required for Miscanthus could be seen as a disadvantage.

Cities all over the world are setting ambitious targets of achieving zero carbon emissions and 100% renewable energy in the near future. Such energy transitions are highly complex societal processes, however, necessitating intensive collaboration among regional and national governments, energy companies and utilities, research institutions, advocacy groups, and local communities. Although there has been a rising interest in collaborative approaches such as co-creation in energy transition studies, existing literature on this topic sometimes lacks theoretical rigour or faces problems in practical application. This poses a challenge in assessing what makes co-creation useful for accelerating energy transitions. The aim of this paper is to critically review co-creation and other selected collaborative approaches across the public sector literature in order to develop an assessment framework for co-creation in strategic planning for energy transitions. Based on this review, we suggest that co-creation can be assessed according to the following criteria: 1) the involvement of actors (state, market, community, and third sector) and their roles in different phases (initiation, design, and implementation) of co-creation; 2) the use of four sets of activities (expectation alignment, social learning, resource acquisition, assessment, and evaluation) to foster transformative power; and 3) the outcomes of co-creation. The latter may include new knowledge, new relationships, and new solutions, as well as increased efficiency and social acceptability of the transition processes. We illustrate the application of this conceptual framework with an example from an ongoing energy transition led by the ProjectZero organization in Sønderborg, Denmark.

Local governments will play an important role in the transition towards fully renewable energy systems. In order to develop new roles for themselves in climate and energy planning, they have to be creative and find new ways of acting within existing regulatory frameworks. The objective of this paper is to explore the kinds of arguments and discussions local key actors use and encounter when developing innovative activities. We study two exemplary cases using a qualitative research approach based on interviews with key informants: a municipality-owned nearshore wind farm, and a local funding scheme for energy-efficiency refurbishment in single-family houses. Our findings indicate that i) innovative projects grow out of the momentum of previous visions and experiences; ii) key actors balance ‘green’ and economic arguments in order to gain project approval; and iii) innovative projects can sometimes only be realized by drawing on resources from outside the municipal sphere. Even though committed key actors may be successful, it is worth considering how the grip of narrow economic motives can be loosened in order to support the local experimentation and innovation that will become more and more important in green energy transitions.