Zukünftige Energie- und Industriesysteme
The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and the consequent accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, have had consequences far beyond Japan itself. Reactions to the accident in three major economies Japan, the UK, and Germany, all of whom were committed to relatively ambitious climate change targets prior to the accident are examined. In Japan and Germany, the accident precipitated a major change of policy direction. In the UK, debate has been muted and there has been essentially no change in energy or climate change policies. The status of the energy and climate change policies in each country prior to the accident is assessed, the responses to the accident are described, and the possible impacts on their positions in the international climate negotiations are analysed. Finally, the three countries' responses are compared and some differences between them observed. Some reasons for their different policy responses are suggested and some themes, common across all countries, are identified. Policy relevance: The attraction of nuclear power has rested on the promise of low-cost electricity, low-carbon energy supply, and enhanced energy independence. The Fukushima accident, which followed the Japanese tsunami of March 2011, has prompted a critical re-appraisal of nuclear power. The responses to Fukushima are assessed for the UK, Germany, and Japan. Before the accident, all three countries considered nuclear as playing a significant part in climate mitigation strategies. Although the UK Government has continued to support nuclear new build following a prompt review of safety arrangements, Japan and Germany have decided to phase out nuclear power, albeit according to different timescales. The factors that explain the different decisions are examined, including patterns of energy demand and supply, the wider political context, institutional arrangements, and public attitudes to risk. The implications for the international climate negotiations are also assessed.
The Low Carbon Future Cities (LCFC) project aims at facing a three dimensional challenge by developing an integrated city roadmap balancing: low carbon development, gains in resource efficiency and adaptation to climate change. The paper gives an overview of the first outcomes of the analysis of the status quo and assessment of the most likely developments regarding GHG emissions, climate impacts and resource use in Wuxi - the Chinese pilot city for the LCFC project. As a first step, a detailed emission inventory following the IPCC guidelines for Wuxi has been carried out. In a second step, the future development of energy demand and related CO2 emissions in 2050 were simulated in a current policy scenario (CPS). In parallel, selected aspects of material and water flows for the energy and the building sector were analyzed and modeled. In addition, recent and future climate impacts and vulnerability were investigated. Based on these findings, nine key sectors with high relevance to the three dimensions could be identified. Although Wuxi's government has started a path to implement a low carbon plan, the first results show that, for the shift towards a sustainable low carbon development, more ambitious steps need to be taken in order to overcome the challenges faced.
A cost-minimizing electricity market model was used to explore optimized infrastructures for the integration of renewable energies in interconnected North African power systems until 2030. The results show that the five countries Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt could together achieve significant economic benefits, reaching up to EUR 3.4 billion, if they increase power system integration, build interconnectors and cooperate on joint utilization of their generation assets. Net electricity exports out of North Africa to Europe or Eastern Mediterranean regions, however, were not observed in the regime of integrated electricity markets until 2030, and could only be realized by much higher levels of renewable energy penetration than currently foreseen by North African governments.
Both focus group discussions and information-choice questionnaires (ICQs) have previously been used to examine informed public opinions about carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). This paper presents an extensive experimental study to systematically examine and compare the quality of opinions created by these two research techniques. Depending on experimental condition, participants either participated in a focus group meeting or completed an ICQ. In both conditions participants received identical factual information about two specific CCS options. After having processed the information, they indicated their overall opinion about each CCS option. The quality of these opinions was determined by looking at three outcome-oriented indicators of opinion quality: consistency, stability, and confidence. Results for all three indicators showed that ICQs yielded higher-quality opinions than focus groups, but also that focus groups did not perform poor in this regard. Implications for the choice between focus group discussions and ICQs are discussed.
Die Entscheidung für ein von volatilen Erzeugungsquellen dominiertes Stromsystem stellt an die Stabilisierung des Systems neue Anforderungen. Zugleich bieten sich neue Optionen. Die bisherige Asymmetrie, nach der für die Stabilisierung die Kraftwerksseite verantwortlich sei, ist überkommene Praxis, deswegen auch heute habituell naheliegend, aber vermutlich nicht länger effizient. Die im Titel genannten nachfrageseitigen Ausgleichsoptionen (SE & DSM) bieten sich an. Im Beitrag wird deren Potential abgeschätzt. In vier Gestaltungsfeldern wird zudem gefragt, ob die bislang von der Politik gegebenen rechtlichen Mandate konsequent SE & DSM als Option berücksichtigen. Das Ergebnis ist viermal (weitgehende) Fehlanzeige.
Das Verfahren der Öffentlichkeitsbeteiligung in der Stromnetz-Ausbauplanung : eine erste Bewertung
(2013)
Der Ausbau der Netze stellt nicht nur technisch, sondern auch politisch und rechtlich eine Herausforderung dar. Einigermaßen Einigkeit besteht wohl darüber, dass das Stromnetz im Zuge der Energiewende um- und ausgebaut werden muss. Darüber hinaus herrschen jedoch beträchtliche Differenzen zwischen der Öffentlichkeit sowie den Übertragungsnetzbetreibern und der Bundesnetzagentur in der Frage, welches Maß an Ausbau notwendig ist. Dies sollte sich im Prozess der Aufstellung des Bundesbedarfsplans Stromnetze in einem sauberen Kompromiss lösen lassen. Eine Analyse des ersten Erstellungsprozesses legt jedoch verschiedene Fehlentwicklungen offen, die rasch angepackt werden sollten.
Soll der Staat oder der Markt der Hauptakteur im Prozess einer "Großen Transformation" der Gesellschaft sein? Und: Welcher Staat und welcher Markt? Deutlich wird, dass eine Transformation Richtung Nachhaltigkeit nicht gelingen kann, wenn alte Rationalitäts muster - wie die vom starken Staat und vom selbstregulieren den Markt - fortbestehen. Dagegen muss ein demokratischer Prozess stehen, der auf den Fähigkeiten der Bürger(innen) basiert und der emanzipatorische und herrschafts kritische Bewegungen stärkt.
The study presents the results of an integrated assessment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the power plant sector in Germany, with special emphasis on the competition with renewable energy technologies. Assessment dimensions comprise technical, economic and environmental aspects, long-term scenario analysis, the role of stakeholders and public acceptance and regulatory issues. The results lead to the overall conclusion that there might not necessarily be a need to focus additionally on CCS in the power plant sector. Even in case of ambitious climate protection targets, current energy policy priorities (expansion of renewable energies and combined heat and power plants as well as enhanced energy productivity) result in a limited demand for CCS. In case that the large energy saving potential aimed for can only partly be implemented, the rising gap in CO2 reduction could only be closed by setting up a CCS-maximum strategy. In this case, up to 22% (41 GW) of the totally installed load in 2050 could be based on CCS. Assuming a more realistic scenario variant applying CCS to only 20 GW or lower would not be sufficient to reach the envisaged climate targets in the electricity sector. Furthermore, the growing public opposition against CO2 storage projects appears as a key barrier, supplemented by major uncertainties concerning the estimation of storage potentials, the long-term cost development as well as the environmental burdens which abound when applying a life-cycle approach. However, recently, alternative applications are being increasingly considered–that is the capture of CO2 at industrial point sources and biomass based energy production (electricity, heat and fuels) where assessment studies for exploring the potentials, limits and requirements for commercial use are missing so far. Globally, CCS at power plants might be an important climate protection technology: coal-consuming countries such as China and India are increasingly moving centre stage into the debate. Here, similar investigations on the development and the integration of both, CCS and renewable energies, into the individual energy system structures of such countries would be reasonable.
If the current energy policy priorities are retained, there may be no need to focus additionally on carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the power plant sector of Germany. This applies even in the case of ambitious climate protection targets, according to the results of the presented integrated assessment study. These cover a variety of aspects: Firstly, the technology is not expected to become available on a large scale in Germany before 2025. Secondly, if renewable energies and combined heat and power are expanded further and energy productivity is enhanced, there is likely to be only a limited demand for CCS power plants, as a scenario analysis of CCS deployment in Germany shows. Thirdly, cost analysis using the learning curve approach shows that the electricity generation costs of renewable electricity approach those of CCS power plants. This leads to the consequence that, from 2020, several renewable technologies may well be in a position to offer electricity at a cheaper rate than CCS power plants. In addition, a review of new life cycle assessments for CO2 separation in the power plant sector indicates that the greenhouse gas emissions from 1 kW h of electricity generated by first-generation CCS power plants could only be reduced by 68 % to 87 % (95 % in individual cases). Finally, a cautious, conservative estimate of the effective German CO2 storage capacity of approximately 5 billion tonnes of CO2 is calculated, including a fluctuation range yielding values between 4 and 15 billion tonnes of CO2. Therefore, the total CO2 emissions caused by large point sources in Germany could be stored for 12 years (basic value) or for 8 or 33 years (sensitivity values).
Eine oft kontrovers diskutierte Frage ist, ob eine massive Dämmung von Häusern in der Gesamtbilanz nicht mehr Ressourcenverbrauch und Emissionen verursacht, als sie im Endeffekt einspart. Zur Untersuchung dieser Frage wurde nun erstmals eine trade-off Analyse durchgeführt. Hierzu wurde ein bottom-up Wirkungsanalyse-Modell entwickelt, dessen Kern ein Emissions- und Energiemodell für den Haushaltssektor bildet, gekoppelt mit einem Ökobilanzierungs-Tool. Den Rahmen für beide Modelle bilden Energieszenarien bis 2050, die für jede Dekade Sanierungsraten und Energiemixe vorgeben. Damit können "reine" Energieszenarien um ressourcenpolitische Analysen erweitert und die Auswirkungen verschiedener Dämmstrategien ermittelt werden.
Das zentrale Ergebnis der Modellierung ist, dass zusätzliche Aufwendungen für Dämmstoffe (untersucht wurden extrudierter Polystyrolhartschaum XPS und Zellulose) sowohl ressourcen- als auch emissionsseitig in fast allen Umweltwirkungskategorien durch erhebliche Einsparungen bei der Gebäudebeheizung überkompensiert werden. Im Wesentlichen sind keine Trade-offs erkennbar und der prozentuale Beitrag der Dämmstoffe an den Umweltwirkungsindikatoren ist gering. Relevant ist dagegen die Wahl des Treibmittels bei den aufgeschäumten XPS-Dämmstoffen: Gegenüber dem in Deutschland verwendeten XPS, das weitgehend mit CO2 aufgeschäumt wird, führt ein Dämmstoff, der hohe Anteile an Fluorkohlenwasserstoffen aufweist, zu einem hohen Trade-off bezüglich der Wirkungskategorie "stratosphärischer Ozonabbau" und zu einer erkennbaren, jedoch nicht so deutlichen Wirkung auf das Treibhaus-Potenzial. Eine Sensitivitätsanalyse mit dem alternativen Dämmmaterial Zellulose zeigt, dass sich die an sich schon geringen Anteile der Dämmstoffe an den Umweltwirkungsindikatoren weiter verringern. Hinsichtlich der Materialintensität sind XPS- und Zellulose-Dämmung jedoch mit vergleichbaren Auswirkungen verbunden.
Zusammenfassend lässt sich festhalten, dass für beide Materialien ambitionierte Dämmstoffstrategien im Hinblick auf alle in dieser Studie analysierten Faktoren einen wesentlichen Beitrag sowohl zu Materialeffizienz- als auch zu Emissionsminderungszielen leisten können.