Final Report: Energy Security in Scenarios for Europe's Future Electricity Supply

In the last few years, a number of studies concerning pathways for the very far-reaching decarbonisation of the European power system were published. These studies have had a considerable impact on both climate and energy policy and on the European energy debate in general, because they all conclude that it is technically possible and probably even economically beneficial to decarbonise the European power sector by 80-100% by 2050 using mainly, or exclusively, electricity from renewable sources in a pan-European, Supergrid, approach, supported by electricity imports from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Most of these studies also reach the conclusion that decarbonisation through renewables expansion is secure: that it can maintain or increase European energy security compared to today. The last statement is important, because energy security is a high priority for policy makers. At the same time, there is reason to be worried that the empirical and analytic basis for the security statement is less robust than the statements concerning technical and economic feasibility. In many energy and electricity scenarios, Europe will import a substantial share of it its energy needs, either in the form of fossil or nuclear power plant fuels or, as is the case in Supergrid decarbonisation scenarios, as renewable electricity. However, it is not always clear from which regions or countries these imports originate, or in which setting they will take place. In most cases, "energy security" is not even defined, and it lies at hand that the subject of the security considerations may vary widely across different studies. Generally speaking, the energy security statements in the Supergrid studies are often weakly underpinned or, in some cases, it is not at all clear what the base for such a strong conclusion is. Still, any scenario of the future electricity supply must prove that it is secure, or Europe would be well advised not to pursue policies that support developments in the direction pointed out in the scenario. Finding out whether importing renewable electricity from MENA would be a threat to European energy security was the aim of the project, the results and implications of which are summarised here, together with an overall conclusion. The project was carried out in three parts, all based on novel theoretical, epistemological and methodological approaches, which are described in detail in a series of scientific articles. First, we clarified the concept of energy security from a European policy-perspective, identifying the core components of the concept as they are relevant here. In the second part we explored the political risks, here narrowed down to the frequently discussed issues of dependence and "energy weapon" events on the one hand and terrorism attacks on the other. In the third part we assessed the overall failure risks of electricity scenarios. We describe each of these research tasks and results in section 1-3 of this document, and then in section 4 evaluate, holistically, overall energy security of renewable electricity imports for Europe

Linear magnetic spring and spring/motor combination

A magnetic spring, or a spring and motor combination, providing a linear spring force characteristic in each direction from a neutral position, in which the spring action may occur for any desired coordinate of a typical orthogonal coordinate system. A set of magnets are disposed, preferably symmetrically about a coordinate axis, poled orthogonally to the desired force direction. A second set of magnets, respectively poled opposite the first set, are arranged on the sprung article. The magnets of one of the sets are spaced a greater distance apart than those of the other, such that an end magnet from each set forms a pair having preferably planar faces parallel to the direction of spring force, the faces being offset so that in a neutral position the outer edge of the closer spaced magnet set is aligned with the inner edge of the greater spaced magnet set. For use as a motor, a coil can be arranged with conductors orthogonal to both the magnet pole directions and the direction of desired spring force, located across from the magnets of one set and fixed with respect to the magnets of the other set. In a cylindrical coordinate system having axial spring force, the magnets are radially poled and motor coils are concentric with the cylinder axis

Report on uncertainty methods

The issue of uncertainty is critical for climate change science and policy. A great deal of research analysis has gone into identifying the scope and character of uncertainty in climate change itself, in how analysts and assessment teams can and should communicate that uncertainty to policy- and decision-makers, and how policy- and decision-makers can then incorporate nowledge about the sources and magnitude of uncertainty in their choices. The primary purpose of this deliverable is to summarize that literature, and to synthesize it in a manner that is useful for the Mediation project, namely in improving the practice of assessing adaptaion needs and options, and in building a useful decision-support platform or system. The report starts with a user-driven focus, summarizing the literatures on both descriptive and normative models of decision-making under uncertainty, in order to identify the most effective and esential information inputs for each of these models. The report then summarizes some of the main guidance documents on communicating uncertanty, prepared for or in use by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States government, and the Dutch government. Fially, the report synthesizes these previous studies for use in the Mediation project and its users by focusing on three essential characteristics of uncertainty communication: parsimony, personalization, and practicality. It identifies specific strategies for using these three criteria to ensure that assessments for climate adaptation are salient, credible, and legitimate, and thus ultimately construtive inputs into policy- and decision-making

WACC the Dog: The Effect of Financing Costs on the Levelized Cost of Solar PV Power

The photovoltaic (PV) power industry has grown rapidly in recent years, and associated with that growh has been a decline in costs. There are indications that PV has already reached cost-parity with power off the grid in some markets and projections that it will attain such grid parity in many more markets over the coming decade. Analysts have suggested that the growth in PV has come at an unnecessariy high price, with unnecessarily high subsidies. However, the factors influencing the cost of PV, and the subsidies required to sustain its construction, include more than just the strength of the sun. While differences in costs of such factors as initial capital spending, operation and maintenance, and decommissioning are hard to ascertain, it is possible to account for the cost of capital, on a counry-by-country basis. In this paper, we therefore map the cost of solar PV globally, accountng for both the quality of the solar resource and the cost of capital in order to differentiate levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) from PV. Our results suggest that northern countries may not be an unwise location to subsidize PV construction, and further suggest that efforts to expand PV installation in developing countries may benefit greatly from policies designed to make low cost finance more widely avaiable

Vulnerability of solar energy infrastructure and output to extreme events: Climate change implications (Conference paper)

This paper explores the potential vulnerability of solar energy systems to future extreme event risks as a consequence of climate change. We describe the three main technologies likely to be used to harness sunlight -- thermal heating, photovoltaic (PV), and concentrating solar power (CSP) -- and identify critical extreme event vulnerabilities for each one. We then compare these vulnerabilities with assessments of future changes in extreme event risk levels. We do not identify any vulnerabilities severe enough to halt development of any technology, although we do find a potential value in exploring options for making PV cells more heat resilient, and for improving the design of cooling systems for CSP

Common protocol for data collection and recording to ensure comparability across pilot projects of the quantified indicators

In addition to producing results in the form of more effective discourse and ultimately, greater public acceptance, the pilot projects will generate a great deal of information. It is essential that this information will be collected in a standardised format across the four pilot projects, in order that the data generated be of a comparable form and quality. IIASA has draft a common data protocol based on iterative discussions with other consortium partners

Methodological and theoretical framework mapping commonalities and differences of separate pilot study action plans onto a common framework of actions and guiding principles

The individual action plans from the pilot projects differ across project partners for a variety of locally specific reasons. In order to later compare the results from the different pilot projects, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the commonalities and differences across the action plans. IIASA provides this understanding by the development of a common methodological framework, categorising all of the separate actions taken in the pilot projects, and mapping each of the pilot projects onto this framework

Report on review of cross-sectoral impact of decisions and types of problems and contexts in which different dimensions of uncertainty play a role: An exploration of tipping points in climate policy responses

Adaptation to climate change is becoming increasingly necessary, with potentially severe climate-induced changes still ahead. Of key relevance for decision-making is the potential existence of points in time where the decision situation changes from one type to another because an impact threshold is exceeded. Such a change in the decision situation is, for instance, when the deciion shifts from being the concern of one actor or agency to multiple actors at multiple scales. We call these points adaptation crossroads. Their existence has important implications for adaptation decision support because they are where strategic and transformational adaptation decisions will have to be considered. We present three cases to explore adaptation crossroads and look at the implicatons fo scientific decision support. We draw some first conclusions, present a typology of adaptation crossoads, and lay groundwork for further inquiries into this area

Lessons from the Congested Clique Applied to MapReduce

The main results of this paper are (I) a simulation algorithm which, under quite general constraints, transforms algorithms running on the Congested Clique into algorithms running in the MapReduce model, and (II) a distributed $O(\Delta)$-coloring algorithm running on the Congested Clique which has an expected running time of (i) $O(1)$ rounds, if $\Delta \geq \Theta(\log^4 n)$; and (ii) $O(\log \log n)$ rounds otherwise. Applying the simulation theorem to the Congested-Clique $O(\Delta)$-coloring algorithm yields an $O(1)$-round $O(\Delta)$-coloring algorithm in the MapReduce model. Our simulation algorithm illustrates a natural correspondence between per-node bandwidth in the Congested Clique model and memory per machine in the MapReduce model. In the Congested Clique (and more generally, any network in the $\mathcal{CONGEST}$ model), the major impediment to constructing fast algorithms is the $O(\log n)$ restriction on message sizes. Similarly, in the MapReduce model, the combined restrictions on memory per machine and total system memory have a dominant effect on algorithm design. In showing a fairly general simulation algorithm, we highlight the similarities and differences between these models.Comment: 15 page