Zukünftige Energie- und Industriesysteme
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Several countries with large coal deposits but limited domestic oil reserves show high interest in coal-to-liquid (CtL) technologies, which could reduce crude oil imports by converting coal into liquid hydrocarbon fuels. After decades of successful large-scale operating experiences in South Africa, CtL activities in the United States, China and Germany have been fanned by the high oil price in the last years. However, CtL indicates negative techno-economic and resource-related features, such as high capital costs, high greenhouse gas discharges and high water consumption. Therefore, the technology's diffusion strongly depends on a favourable framework of policies and strong technology advocates. Daniel Vallentin analyses interdependencies between technical and non-technical parameters affecting the diffusion of CtL technologies in the United States, China and Germany. Applying the inter-disciplinary technological system approach, he identifies factors which determine the market prospects of CtL in these countries, including costs, the geographic distribution of coal reserves, actor constellations and technology, energy and climate policies. At the end of his study, he derives general conclusions with regard to driving forces and barriers for CtL diffusion. As the investigated countries are major consumers of energy and belong to the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, their strategies in substituting crude oil based fuels are of utmost global relevance. Therefore, Vallentin's study is recommended to experts, planners, decision-makers, and politicians in the field of climate and resource protection.
The analysis of different global energy scenarios in part I of the report confirms that the exploitation of energy efficiency potentials and the use of renewable energies play a key role in reaching global CO2 reduction targets. An assessment on the basis of a broad literature research in part II shows that the technical potentials of renewable energy technologies are a multiple of today's global final energy consumption. The analysis of cost estimates for renewable electricity generation technologies and even long term cost projections across the key studies in part III demonstrates that assumptions are in reasonable agreement. In part IV it is shown that by implementing technical potentials for energy efficiency improvements in demand and supply sectors by 2050 can be limited to 48% of primary energy supply in IEA's "Energy Technology Perspectives" baseline scenario. It was found that a large potential for cost-effective measures exists, equivalent to around 55-60% of energy savings of all included efficiency measures (part V). The results of the analysis on behavioural changes in part VI show that behavioural dimensions are not sufficiently included in energy scenarios. Accordingly major research challenges are revealed.