Constructing Success in the Electric Power Industry: Flexibility and the Gas Turbine

This paper explains the success and failure of two technologies that generate electricity from fossil fuels. Both the Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) and fluidised bed boiler burn fossil fuels more cleanly than more traditional technologies. Whereas the CCGT has been used for an increasing number of new power plants during the past fifteen years, the latter has struggled to attract attention outside a small-scale niche. The paper draws on economic and social constructivist approaches to technical change. It shows how a combination of economic, institutional and political factors can be used to explain success and failure. It also demonstrates the importance of technological flexibility for the long term development of the CCGT and its acceptance as the power industry's current technology of choice.technical change, flexibility, CCGT, fluidised bed boiler,

China’s low carbon technology ambitions: the relationship between indigenous innovation and technological transfer

No description supplie

UK energy in a global context: synthesis report

No description supplie

UK energy strategies under uncertainty: synthesis report

No description supplie

Lessons from China: building technological capabilities for low carbon technology transfer and development

Using case study analysis across three sectors in China (cement, electric vehicles and coal fired electricity generation) and theoretical insights from the innovation studies literature, this paper analyses the development of China’s technological capabilities in low carbon technologies and the ways in which public policies have contributed to developing these capabilities. It finds that China has developed significant capabilities via a strategic approach. The paper’s findings have significant implications for international policies designed to support low carbon technology transfer to developing countries and broader processes of low carbon technological change and development. Such policies should go beyond the traditional focus on the transfer of technology hardware to focus on the development of low carbon technological capabilities in developing country firms

Climate change policy and the transition to a low-carbon economy

Energy is of fundamental importance for modern industrialised economies. Access to affordable energy is vital for the services we enjoy – from keeping warm to cooking our food, the ability to travel to providing entertainment. In recent years, policy concerns about the availability, security and affordability of energy have once again risen up the agenda. Energy prices have risen dramatically, and the UK has returned to the club of net energy importers after twenty years in which production exceeded consumption. Since the early 2000s, climate change has been at the heart of energy policy debates. Unlike some industrialised countries (notably Australia and the United States), the UK’s energy and climate change policies have been underpinned by a strong degree of cross-party consensus, with all the main political parties in agreement that something must be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This consensus has been reinforced by the increasing strength of climate science and evidence to suggest that action on emissions is in the UK’s economic interest (Stern 2006). Armed with a comprehensive case for emissions cuts, the UK’s political parties have often competed with each other to propose tougher policies and laws. For this reason, the UK has some of the most ambitious targets for emissions reduction in the world, with legal backing through the Climate Change Act 2009

The UK's global gas challenge

A UKERC Research Report exploring the UK's global gas challenge. This report takes an interdisciplinary perspective, which marries energy security insights from politics and international relations, with detailed empirical understanding from energy studies and perspectives from economic geography that emphasise the spatial distribution of actors, networks and resource flows that comprise the global gas industry. Natural gas production in the UK peaked in 2000, and in 2004 it became a net importer. A decade later and the UK now imports about half of the natural gas that it consumes. The central thesis of the project on which this report is based is that as the UK’s gas import dependence has grown, it has effectively been ‘globalising’ its gas security; consequently UK consumers are increasingly exposed to events in global gas markets. - See more at: http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/publications/the-uk-s-global-gas-challenge.html#sthash.wEP831Zn.dpu

Low carbon technology transfer: lessons from India and China

No description supplie

A bridge to a low carbon future? Modelling the long-term global potential of natural gas

This project uses the global TIMES Integrated Assessment Model in UCL (‘TIAM-UCL’) to provide robust quantitative insights into the future of natural gas in the energy system and in particular whether or not gas has the potential to act as a ‘bridge’ to a low-carbon future on both a global and regional basis out to 2050. This report first explores the dynamics of a scenario that disregards any need to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such a scenario results in a large uptake in the production and consumption of all fossil fuels, with coal in particular dominating the electricity system. It is unconventional sources of gas production that account for much of the rise in natural gas production; with shale gas exceeding 1 Tcm after 2040. Gas consumption grows in all sectors apart from the electricity sector, and eventually becomes cost effective both as a marine fuel (as liquefied natural gas) and in medium goods vehicles (as compressed natural gas). It next examines how different gas market structures affect natural gas production, consumption, and trade patterns. For the two different scenarios constructed, one continued current regionalised gas markets, which are characterised by very different prices in different regions with these prices often based on oil indexation, while the other allowed a global gas price to form based on gas supply-demand fundamentals. It finds only a small change in overall global gas production levels between these but a major difference in levels of gas trade and so conclude that if gas exporters choose to defend oil indexation in the short-term, they may end up destroying their export markets in longer term. A move towards pricing gas internationally, based on supply-demand dynamics, is thus shown to be crucial if the if they are to maintain their current levels of exports. Nevertheless, it is also shown that, regardless of how gas is priced in the future, scenarios leading to a 2oC temperature rise generally have larger pipeline and LNG exports than scenarios that lead to a higher temperature increase. For pipeline trade, the adoption of any ambitious emissions reduction agreement results in little loss of markets and could (if carbon capture and storage is available) actually lead to a much greater level of exports. For LNG trade, because of the significant role that gas can play in replacing future coal demand in the emerging economies in Asia, markets that are largely supplied by LNG at present, we demonstrate that export countries should actively pursue an ambitious global agreement on GHG emissions mitigation if they want to expand their exports. These results thus have important implications for the negotiating positions of gas-exporting countries in the ongoing discussions on agreeing an ambitious global agreement on emissions reduction