Electricity Spot Market Design 2030-2050

Driven by the climate conference in Paris in December 2015 countries worldwide are confronted with the question of how to shape their power system and how to establish alternative technologies to reduce harmful CO2 emissions. The German government plans that even before the year 2050, all electricity generated and consumed in Germany should be greenhouse gas neutral [1]. To successfully integrate renewable energies, a future energy system must be able to handle the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. One important means to address such electricity production variability is demand-side flexibility. Here, industry plays a major role in responding to variable electricity supply with adequate flexibility. This is where the Kopernikus project SynErgie comes in with more than 80 project partners from academia, industry, governmental, and non-governmental organizations as well as energy suppliers and network operators. The Kopernikus project SynErgie investigates how to best leverage demand-side flexibility in the German industry. The current electricity market design in Germany is not well suited to deal with increasing levels of renewable energy, and it does not embrace demand-side flexibility. Almost 6GW of curtailed power in 2019 provide evidence that changes are needed with respect to the rules governing electricity markets. These rules were designed at a time when electricity generation was concentrated on a few large and dispatchable conventional power plants and demand was considered inelastic. The SynErgie Cluster IV investigates how a future-proof electricity market design should be organized. The corresponding Work Package IV.3.1 more specifically deals with analyzing and designing allocation and pricing rules on electricity spot markets. The resulting design must be well suited to accommodate demand-side flexibility and address the intermittent nature of important renewable energy sources. This whitepaper is the result of a fruitful collaboration among the partners involved in SynErgie Cluster IV which include Germany’s leading research organizations and practitioners in the field. The collaboration led to an expert workshop in October 2020 with participation from a number of international energy market experts such as Mette Bjørndal (NHH), Endre Bjørndal (NHH), Peter Cramton (University of Maryland and University of Cologne), and Raphael Heffron (University of Dundee). The whitepaper details the key recommendations from this workshop. In particular, the whitepaper recommends a move to a locational, marginal price-based system together with new bidding formats allowing to better express flexibility. We argue in favor of a one-step introduction of locational, marginal prices instead of repeatedly splitting existing zones. Frequent zone splitting involves recurring political debates as well as short- and long-run instabilities affecting the basis for financial contracts, for example. Importantly, the definition of stable prize zones is very challenging with increasing levels of distributed and renewable energy sources. The recommendation is the outcome of an intense debate about advantages and downsides of different policy alternatives. However, such a transition to locational, marginal prices is not without challenges, and it is a call to arms for the research community, policymakers, and practitioners to develop concepts on how to best facilitate the transition and ensure a reliable and efficient electricity market of the future

Public's perspective on COVID-19 adenovirus vector vaccines after thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) reports and associated regulatory actions: A cross-sectional study in six EU member states

Objective: In 2021, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) was confirmed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a rare side effect of the COVID-19 adenovirus vector vaccines Vaxzevria® and Jcovden®. This study aimed to describe the public's knowledge of TTS and how it affected the willingness to be vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines in six European countries. Methods: From June to October of 2022, a multi-country cross-sectional online survey was conducted in Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Netherlands, Portugal, and Slovenia. The minimum target of participants to be recruited was based on the size of the country's population. The results were analysed descriptively. Results: In total, 3794 respondents were included in the analysis; across the six countries, 33.3 %–68.3 % reported being familiar with signs and symptoms of TTS, although 3.1–61.4 % of those were able to identify the symptoms correctly. The reported changes in willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and with other vaccines varied per country. The largest reported change in the willingness to be vaccinated with Vaxzevria® and Jcovden® was observed in Denmark (61.2 %), while the willingness to be vaccinated with other COVID-19 vaccines changed most in Slovenia (30.4 %). The smallest decrease in willingness towards future vaccination against COVID-19 was reported in the Netherlands (20.9 %) contrasting with the largest decrease observed in Latvia (69.1 %). Conclusion: Knowledge about TTS seemed to have influenced the public's opinion in Europe resulting in less willingness to be vaccinated with Vaxzevria® and Jcovden®. Willingness for vaccination against COVID-19 with other vaccines and widespread use of vaccines to prevent other diseases also differed and seemed to be determined by the approaches taken by national health authorities when reacting to and communicating about COVID-19 vaccination risks. Further investigation of optimal risk communication strategies is warranted

Joint use of fungicides, insecticides and inoculants in the treatment of soybean seeds

ABSTRACT The interference of the joint application of pesticides with seed inoculation on the survival of Bradyrhizobium has been reported in the last years. So, the objective of this study was to evaluate the joint use of fungicides, insecticides and inoculant in the treatment of soybean seeds on various parameters of Bradyrhizobium nodulation in soybean as well as on crop productivity parameters. The experiment was conducted during the 2013/2014 crop in the experimental field of the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Mato Grosso - Campo Novo do Parecis Campus. The seeds of TMG 133 RR variety were sown in pots. It was used a randomized block design in a 4 x 4 + 1 factorial, four fungicides (1: fludioxonil + metalaxyl-M, 2: carboxine + thiram, 3: difeconazole and 4: carbendazim + thiram), four insecticides (1: fipronil 250 SC, 2: thiamethoxam, 3: imidacloprid + thiodicarpe and 4: imodacloprid 600 FC) and an inoculant (SEMIA 5079 and SEMIA 5080), common to all treatments, with three replications. The experiment was not repeated. The joint application of fungicide and insecticide with inoculant does not affect nodulation, foliar N content and vegetative growth of the plants as well as the masses of grains per plant and 100-grain mass. The use of the carbendazim + thiram mixed with fipronil and carbendazim + thiram mixed with imidacloprid provides less number of pods per plant and grains per plant, reflecting in reductions in the production of soybean grains. In this way, the fungicide carbendazim + thiram, regardless of the combined applied insecticide, is the most harmful to Bradyrhizobium spp