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This study intends to provide a comprehensive overview of the water-energy nexus' relevance to the Iranian electricity sector, by illustrating key trends, analysing water-related challenges and identifying knowledge gaps. It summarises the results of a workshop, and a series of dialogues with Iranian energy and water experts, in which both the current situation and future water-related risks and impacts on the Iranian power sector were discussed. Based on those results, it highlights research needs and further options for scientific collaboration.
Implementation of nationally determined contributions : Islamic Republic of Iran country report
(2018)
The study analyses the country background, emissions trends, ongoing activities and barriers relating to the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the UNFCCC. A special emphasis is laid on further mitigation potentials in the fields of demand-side efficiency through energy-price reform, upstream oil and gas efficiency (with an emphasis on gas flaring) and a sustainable energy mix (with an emphasis on renewable energies).
The study analyses the country background, emissions trends, ongoing activities and barriers relating to the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of Morocco under the UNFCCC. A special emphasis is laid on further mitigation potentials in the fields of urban environment, the mineral sector and the transport sector. A chapter is dedicated to the relevance and perspectives of coal use.
Energy and climate change
(2018)
The Ernst Strüngmann Forum seeks to link justice, sustainability, and diversity agendas. In support, this chapter discusses how linkages between these three concepts have formed and changed in the climate change discourse, particularly in light of the recent Paris Agreement. As the latest addition to the portfolio of international climate change agreements, the Paris Agreement establishes a landscape in which nation-states, subnational actors, and transnational networks will be able to reconfigure existing linkages between sustainability, diversity, and justice, and perhaps improve upon them.
Here, three possible developments are identified which may substantially influence the reconfiguration process. Recognition is given to the sustainability and justice deficits that have plagued the "top-down" character of the international climate change discourse, and it is hypothesized that the Paris Agreement opens the door for "bottom-up" movements to claim a larger segment of climate change policy decision making and design. In turn, the "polycentric" landscape created by such "movement from below" appears to emphasize concepts such as inclusivity and transparency perhaps allowing for explicit climate justice commitments. Finally, to advance societal transformation and embrace diversity, it is hypothesized that the scientific endeavor needs to be transformed from a purely analytical pursuit to an effort that makes use of the wide range of scientific competences and provides support for transformative innovations to change unsustainable sociotechnical systems.
Transition modelling is an emerging but growing niche within the broader field of sustainability transitions research. The objective of this paper is to explore the characteristics of this niche in relation to a range of existing modelling approaches and literatures with which it shares commonalities or from which it could draw. We distil a number of key aspects we think a transitions model should be able to address, from a broadly acknowledged, empirical list of transition characteristics. We review some of the main strands in modelling of socio-technological change with regards to their ability to address these characteristics. These are: Eco-innovation literatures (energy-economy models and Integrated Assessment Models), evolutionary economics, complex systems models, computational social science simulations using agent based models, system dynamics models and socio-ecological systems models. The modelling approaches reviewed can address many of the features that differentiate sustainability transitions from other socio-economic dynamics or innovations. The most problematic features are the representation of qualitatively different system states and of the normative aspects of change. The comparison provides transition researchers with a starting point for their choice of a modelling approach, whose characteristics should correspond to the characteristics of the research question they face. A promising line of research is to develop innovative models of co-evolution of behaviours and technologies towards sustainability, involving change in the structure of the societal and technical systems.
The Port of Rotterdam is one of the pioneers in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the largest port in Europe and extends over 40 kilometres to the North Sea coast. Its ambitious goal: the port wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its industrial cluster as well as from freight traffic to a large extent. For the study "Deep Decarbonisation Pathways for Transport and Logistics Related to the Port of Rotterdam" the Wuppertal Institute analysed available options for the maritime as well was hinterland transports on behalf of the Rotterdam Port Authority.
The 2050 scenarios by the Wuppertal Institute show that decarbonisation will significantly change both, volume and structure of the transported goods - which add to the on-going trend from bulk to container transport. This will have considerable structural effects on port operations and in particular on hinterland traffic. A comprehensive decarbonisation (>95 per cent) will require significant efficiency improvements through operational and technical measures and the switch to non-fossil fuels, as well as a strong shift of container transport from road transport to rail and inland navigation. For maritime shipping to and from Rotterdam two feasible pathways towards full decarbonisation by 2050 are presented. Both include a stepwise shift towards renewable electricity based energy carriers for ships (liquids and gaseous for long distances and hydrogen and electricity for shorter distances).
Finally the report derives a set of recommendations for the Port Authority as well as the Dutch, German and European policymakers to support the transition towards a drastic reduction of greenhouse gase (GHG) emissions from in the transport sector and for using this as a strategy for a sustainable economic development.
For many years, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been discussed as a technology that may make a significant contribution to achieving major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. At present, however, only two large-scale power plants capture a total of 2.4 Mt CO2/a. Several reasons are identified for this mismatch between expectations and realised deployment. Applying bibliographic coupling, the research front of CCS, understood to be published peer-reviewed papers, is explored to scrutinise whether the current research is sufficient to meet these problems. The analysis reveals that research is dominated by technical research (69%). Only 31% of papers address non-technical issues, particularly exploring public perception, policy, and regulation, providing a broader view on CCS implementation on the regional or national level, or using assessment frameworks. This shows that the research is advancing and attempting to meet the outlined problems, which are mainly non-technology related. In addition to strengthening this research, the proportion of papers that adopt a holistic approach may be increased in a bid to meet the challenges involved in transforming a complex energy system. It may also be useful to include a broad variety of stakeholders in research so as to provide a more resilient development of CCS deployment strategies.
It is widely recognised that access to sustainable and affordable energy services is a crucial factor in reducing poverty and enhancing development. Accordingly, various positive effects beyond simple access to energy are associated with the implementation of sustainable energy projects. One of these assumed positive outcomes is the productive use of energy, which is expected to create value - for example in the form of increased local availability of goods or higher incomes - thereby having a positive impact on local livelihoods. Many projects and programmes are based on such expectations regarding the productive use of energy but systematic evidence of these outcomes and impacts is still limited. This study analyses the results of an impact evaluation of 30 small-scale energy development projects to better understand whether and how the supply of sustainable energy services supports productive use activities and whether these activities have the expected positive impacts on local livelihoods. A contribution analysis is applied to systematically evaluate the impact pathways for the productive use of energy. The results show that access to sustainable energy does not automatically result in productive activities and that energy is only one of the input factors required to foster socio-economic development. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that activities, materials and information to support the productive use of energy - such as training, equipment or market research - need to be an integrated part of the energy project itself to allow for productive activities to develop on a wider scale.
Access to clean and affordable modern energy services has been widely recognised as a significant factor for enabling social and economic development. Stand-alone systems and mini-grids are presumed to play an important role in the provision of sustainable energy to those people who currently lack access. Accordingly, an increasing number of small-scale energy projects are being implemented in developing countries and emerging economies. However, despite the large number of energy development projects, only limited evidence exists about the actual contribution they make to sustainable development. This paper addresses this research gap by providing a systematic assessment of three selected impact pathways based on the evaluation of over 30 small-scale sustainable energy projects. Applying a theory-based evaluation approach in the form of a contribution analysis, the aim of this research is to better understand if and how these types of technical interventions can create development outcomes and impacts. The results show that technological issues are often not the most decisive factor in achieving development effects, but that embedding the technology in a set of actions that address social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects is essential.
The Paris Agreement calls on all nations to pursue efforts to contribute to limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, due to limited global, regional and country-specific analysis of highly ambitious GHG mitigation pathways, there is currently a lack of knowledge about the transformational changes needed in the coming decades to reach this target. Through a meta-analysis of mitigation scenarios for Germany, this article aims to contribute to an improved understanding of the changes needed in the energy system of an industrialized country. Differentiation among six key long-term energy system decarbonization strategies is suggested, and an analysis is presented of how these strategies will be pursued until 2050 in selected technologically detailed energy scenarios for Germany. The findings show, that certain strategies, including the widespread use of electricity-derived synthetic fuels in end-use sectors as well as behavioral changes, are typically applied to a greater extent in mitigation scenarios aiming at high GHG emission reductions compared to more moderate mitigation scenarios. The analysis also highlights that the pace of historical changes observed in Germany between 2000 and 2015 is clearly insufficient to adequately contribute to not only the 1.5 °C target, but also the 2 °C long-term global target.
The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is increasingly recognised as a conceptual framework able to support the efficient implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite growing attention paid to the WEF nexus, the role that renewable energies can play in addressing trade-offs and realising synergies has received limited attention. Until now, the focus of WEF nexus discussions and applications has mainly been on national or global levels, macro-level drivers, material flows and large infrastructure developments. This overlooks the fact that major nexus challenges are faced at local level. Aiming to address these knowledge gaps, the authors conduct a systematic analysis of the linkages between small-scale energy projects in developing countries and the food and water aspects of development. The analysis is based on empirical data from continuous process and impact evaluations complemented by secondary data and relevant literature. The study provides initial insights into how to identify interconnections and the potential benefits of integrating the nexus pillars into local level projects in the global south. The study identifies the complex links which exist between sustainable energy projects and the food and water sectors and highlights that these needs are currently not systematically integrated into project design or project evaluation. A more systematic approach, integrating the water and food pillars into energy planning at local level in the global south, is recommended to avoid trade-offs and enhance the development outcomes and impacts of energy projects.
There is an increasing pressure that enhanced and novel energy technologies are swiftly adopted by the market to ensure meeting the energy and climate targets. An important issue with such novel developments is their risk to be stuck in the "valley of death", i.e. that their transition to the market is delayed or unsuccessful. Publicly supported demonstration projects could help to bridge the valley of death by reducing barriers to the adoption caused by missing information and perceived risks. A challenge for technology demonstrations in the industrial context is their often high investments that are required to prove their real-world benefits. Given the magnitude of such investments, it becomes crucial that public funding focuses on the most promising demonstration proposals. Structured evaluation processes can help to facilitate the identification of promising proposals and to improve the quality and transparency of decisions. This paper deals with a corresponding multi-staged multi-criteria decision support system (DSS) suggested to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It deals with the evaluation of demonstration proposals across three stages: The first stage represents a filtering stage to identify those proposals relevant for further considerations. The second stage comprises a multi-criteria scoring method drawing on an evaluation against nineteen criteria. The final third stage serves to critically review the need for public funding of well-scored proposals. This contribution outlines the development of the DSS and its design and thus provides insights on proposal evaluating in energy research.
Converting electricity into heat offers the opportunity to make of use large scales of renewable (surplus) energy in the long run in order to reduce shut-downs of renewable power plants and to substitute fossil fuels. Electrification seems to be also very promising for industrial heat applications, as it enables high process temperatures to be achieved in a tailor-made and efficient way and enables the utilisation of other energy sources like waste heat, geothermal or ambient heat (via heat pumps). This article analyses theoretical and technical electrification potentials of Steam Generation and Other Process Heat Generation in the following energy-intensive branches: iron & steel, non-ferrous metal, iron foundries, refineries, base chemicals, glass, cement clinker and paper industry in Germany. Literature research, expert interviews as well as own modelling were conducted to determine potentials and their implementation barriers. Based on these methods, market potential to electrify industrial steam generation was estimated. On the basis of two climate protection scenarios, the effects of both a monovalent and a hybrid industrial power-to-heat strategy were quantified with regard to greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency (primary energy saving). The pathway towards electrification will be reflected by criteria such as path dependency, dependency of infrastructure and system compatibility. Recommendations for research and development as well as policies are derived from the overall analysis. The article shows that electrification can be an important option to achieving high CO2-savings in the industrial heating sector in a long-term perspective. However, the scenario calculations show that electrification does not in itself guarantee reduction of greenhouse gases or savings of primary energy. To reach these goals, it is essential to further develop industrial heat pumps and to map electrification and further development of renewable energy (including infrastructure such as power networks and storage facilities) in a concerted strategy.
The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to important clusters of energy-intensive basic materials industries. 15% of the EU's primary steel as well as 15% of high-value base chemicals are produced here. Together with refinery fuels, cement, lime and paper production (also overrepresented in NRW) these are the most carbon-intensive production processes of the industrial metabolism. To achieve the ambitious regional and national climate goals without relocating these clusters, carbon-neutral production will have to become standard by mid-century. We develop and evaluate three conceptual long-term scenarios towards carbon-neutral industry systems for NRW for 2050 and beyond:
* a first scenario depending on carbon capture and storage or use for heavy industries (iCCS),
* a second scenario sketching the direct electrification of industrial processes (and transport) and
* a third scenario relying on the import of low carbon energies (e.g. biomass, and synthetic fuels (like methanol) for the use in industries and transport. All scenarios share the assumption that electricity generation will be CO2-neutral by 2050.
For all three scenarios energy efficiency, primary energy demand for energy services and feedstock as well as the carbon balance are quantified. We apply a spatial-explicit analysis of production sites to allow for discussion of infrastructure re-use and net investment needs. Possible symbiotic relations between sectors are also included. The robustness of the three conceptualised future carbon-neutral industry systems is then analysed using a multi-criteria approach, including e.g. energy security issues and lock-ins on the way to 2050.
The Port of Rotterdam is an important industrial cluster mainly comprising of oil refining, chemical manufacturing and power and steam generation. In 2015, the area accounted for 18 % of the Netherlands' total CO2 emissions. The Port of Rotterdam Authority is aware that the port's economy is heavily exposed to future global and EU decarbonization policies, as the bulk of its activities focuses on trading, handling, converting and using fossil fuels. Based on a study for the Port Authority, our paper explores possible pathways of how the industrial cluster can keep its strong market position in Europe and still reduce its CO2 emissions by 98 % by 2050. The "Biomass and CCS" scenario assumes that large amounts of biomass can be supplied sustainably and will be used in the port for power generation as well as for feedstock for refineries and the chemical industry. Fischer-Tropsch fuel generation plays an important role in this scenario, allowing the port to become a key cluster for the production of synthetic fuels and feedstocks in Western Europe. The "Closed Carbon Cycle" scenario assumes that renewables-based electricity will be used at the port to supply heat and hydrogen for the synthetic generation of feedstock for the chemical industry. The carbon required for the chemicals will stem from recycled waste. Technologies particularly needed in this scenario are water electrolysis and gasification or pyrolysis to capture carbon from waste, as well as technologies for the production of base chemicals from syngas. The paper compares both scenarios with regard to their respective technological choices and infrastructural changes. The scenarios’ particular opportunities and challenges are also discussed. Using possible future pathways of a major European petrochemical cluster as an example, the paper illustrates options for deep decarbonisation of energy intensive industries in the EU and beyond.
New energy technologies may fail to make the transition to the market once research funding has ended due to a lack of private engagement to conclude their development. Extending public funding to cover such experimental developments could be one way to improve this transition. However, identifying promising research and development (R&D) proposals for this purpose is a difficult task for the following reasons: Close-to-market implementations regularly require substantial resources while public budgets are limited; the allocation of public funds needs to be fair, open, and documented; the evaluation is complex and subject to public sector regulations for public engagement in R&D funding. This calls for a rigorous evaluation process. This paper proposes an operational three-staged decision support system (DSS) to assist decision-makers in public funding institutions in the ex-ante evaluation of R&D proposals for large-scale close-to-market projects in energy research. The system was developed based on a review of literature and related approaches from practice combined with a series of workshops with practitioners from German public funding institutions. The results confirm that the decision-making process is a complex one that is not limited to simply scoring R&D proposals. Decision-makers also have to deal with various additional issues such as determining the state of technological development, verifying market failures or considering existing funding portfolios. The DSS that is suggested in this paper is unique in the sense that it goes beyond mere multi-criteria aggregation procedures and addresses these issues as well to help guide decision-makers in public institutions through the evaluation process.
As part of this dissertation, a categorisation of the social costs of electricity supply is suggested. The following three main cost categories are differentiated: plant-level costs, system costs and external costs. Different types of costs are allocated to these categories and are examined and quantified (to the extent possible) for several power generation technologies. The limits of monetizing certain types of costs are also discussed. In a further step, and based on a large number of empirical studies, individual factors that have had a significant influence on the development of plant-level costs in the past, are identified and categorized. Finally, based on an online survey conducted among energy modellers, the dissertation examines to what extent the identified relevant types of costs and cost-influencing factors are taken into account in different types of energy models.
The production of commodities by energy-intensive industry is responsible for 1/3 of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The climate goal of the Paris Agreement, to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, requires global GHG emissions reach net-zero and probably negative by 2055-2080. Given the average economic lifetime of industrial facilities is 20 years or more, this indicates all new investment must be net-zero emitting by 2035-2060 or be compensated by negative emissions to guarantee GHG-neutrality. We argue, based on a sample portfolio of emerging and near-commercial technologies for each sector (largely based on zero carbon electricity & heat sources, biomass and carbon capture, and catalogued in an accompanying database), that reducing energy-intensive industrial GHG emissions to Paris Agreement compatible levels may not only be technically possible, but can be achieved with sufficient prioritization and policy effort. We then review policy options to drive innovation and investment in these technologies. From this we synthesize a preliminary integrated strategy for a managed transition with minimum stranded assets, unemployment, and social trauma that recognizes the competitive and globally traded nature of commodity production. The strategy includes: an initial policy commitment followed by a national and sectoral stakeholder driven pathway process to build commitment and identify opportunities based on local zero carbon resources; penetration of near-commercial technologies through increasing valuation of GHG material intensity through GHG pricing or flexible regulations with protection for competitiveness and against carbon leakage; research and demand support for the output of pilot plants, including some combination of guaranteed above-market prices that decline with output and an increasing requirement for low carbon inputs in government procurement; and finally, key supporting institutions.