2 December 2019

Austrian Climate- and Energy Plan - our Contribution to the Consultation

The Austrian Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism (sic!) has opened a consultation process for the Austrian Climate- and Energy Plan 2030. We decided to write our own contribution, which is copied below (in German).

Stellungnahme zum Konsultationsentwurf „Integrierter nationaler Energie- und Klimaplan für Österreich, Periode 2021-2030“

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

der vom Bundesministeriums für Nachhaltigkeit und Tourismus vorgelegte Konsultationsentwurf des Integrierten nationalen Energie- und Klimaplan für Österreich, Periode 2021-2030 (NEKP) vom 4. November 2019 ist aus unserer Sicht unzureichend um die unter anderem im Übereinkommen von Paris eingegangenen Selbstverpflichtungen zu erfüllen, die globale Erwärmung möglichst auf 1,5°C gegenüber dem vorindustriellen Zeitalter zu begrenzen. Aus unserer Sicht sind nicht nur die vielen, im NEKP großteils unscharf spezifizierten Maßnahmen mit fraglichen Wirkungen zu kritisieren, sondern vor allem die unklaren, in wesentlichen Punkten widersprüchlichen und teils kontraproduktiven Zielsetzungen. Erfolgreicher Klimaschutz kann nicht durch Eigeninteressen der Energiewirtschaft getrieben werden. Erfolgreicher Klimaschutz erfordert konsistente, effiziente und wirksame Ziele und Maßnahmen, welche die Interessen aller BewohnerInnen Österreichs berücksichtigt.

Im Einzelnen möchten wir folgende Stellungnahme zum Konsultationsentwurf des NEKP abgeben:

1 Klimaschutz für nachfolgende Generationen

Wie im NEKP auf Seite 7 ausgeführt bilden die öffentlichen Haushalte gemeinsam mit den Unternehmen und den privaten Haushalten die wesentlichen Finanzierungsquellen klima- und energiespezifischer Maßnahmen. Entgegen der dort vertretenen Ansicht ist eine „nachhaltige Konsolidierung der öffentlichen Haushalte“ und eine „dauerhafte Senkung des gesamtstaatlichen Schuldenstandes“ für die Erreichung klimapolitischer Zielsetzungen weder notwendig noch sinnvoll.

Treibhausgase sind langlebig und reichern sich über die Zeit in der Atmosphäre an. Selbst bei einem sofortigen Stopp aller Treibhausgasemissionen würde sich die globale Erwärmung noch über Jahrzehnte fortsetzen. Von Maßnahmen zur Minderung des Klimawandels und zur Anpassung an die sich verändernden klimatischen Bedingungen profitieren daher nicht nur heutige, sondern auch uns nachfolgende Generationen. Die Kosten dieser Maßnahmen müssen aber bereits heute aufgebracht werden – dies ist auch ein Problem intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit, welches zu einem zu geringen Ressourceneinsatz führen kann.(Nordhaus, 2008)

Um intergenerationelle Gerechtigkeit herzustellen und einen ökonomisch effizienten Einsatz von Ressourcen zu sichern, sollen Klimaschutzmaßnahmen daher über eine Verschuldung der öffentlichen Hand im Ausmaß des aus den Maßnahmen resultierenden Nutzens zukünftiger Generationen finanziert werden. (Rezai et al., 2012)

2 Klimaschutz für alle

Der Ausbau der Erneuerbaren Energien ist grundsätzlich zu begrüßen. Um die Pariser Klimaziele zu erreichen, muss Österreich einen höheren Anteil seines Energiebedarfs aus THG-emissionsfreien Quellen decken. Zugleich impliziert der Ausbau der Erneuerbaren Infrastruktur steigenden Flächenbedarf und sozial-ökologische Konfliktlagen (Höltinger et al., 2016; Scherhaufer et al., 2017). Der Sicherung der Akzeptanz der Erneuerbaren Energien muss daher hohe Priorität eingeräumt werden. Folgende Aspekte müssen bei der Bewertung von Maßnahmen daher berücksichtigt werden:

·        Kosten geringhalten: Alle Maßnahmen sind nicht nur auf ihre Wirksamkeit zur THG-Minderung zu prüfen, sondern auch auf ihre ökonomische Effizienz und Verteilungswirkung, insbesondere in ihrer Wechselwirkung und im Vergleich zu alternativen Maßnahmen. Diese Prüfung fehlt im derzeitigen, zur Konsultation vorliegenden Entwurf des NEKP noch. Er sollte nach Fertigstellung ebenfalls einer öffentlichen Konsultation zugänglich gemacht werden.

·        Eingriffe in Landschaft und Natur geringhalten: Der Ausbau Erneuerbarer Energien wird zwangsläufig zu Eingriffen in Natur und Landschaftsbild führen. Allerdings sollten notwendige Eingriffe geringgehalten werden. Insbesondere sollte der Energiebedarf zunächst durch Energieeffizienz-Maßnahmen weitest möglich reduziert werden und Energieversorgungskonzepte mit möglichst hoher technischer Effizienz bevorzugt werden, um den notwendigen Zubau Erneuerbarer Energien zu minimieren.

·        Akzeptanz durch Transparenz, Partizipation und Kompensation fördern: die Untersuchung der gesellschaftlichen Akzeptanz von erneuerbaren Energien, insbesondere Windkraftanlagen, hat gezeigt, dass neben den wahrgenommenen positiven sowie negativen Auswirkungen der Windkraft vor allem die Prozessqualität in der Planung von Projekten zentral ist (Liebe et al., 2017; Scherhaufer et al., 2017). Um die Akzeptanz der Erneuerbaren Energien zu stärken, soll zum einen die Beteiligung von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern in offenen Entscheidungsfindungsprozessen forciert werden. Zum anderen sollen betroffene Bürgerinnen und Bürger verstärkt kompensiert werden, indem Teile des durch Erneuerbare Energien geschaffenen Mehrwerts direkt oder über für die Allgemeinheit zur Verfügung gestellte Güter an diese verteilt werden.

3 Deckung des Stromverbrauchs zu 100% aus Erneuerbaren Quellen (national, bilanziell)

Im Sinne der Transparenz sollte statt eines „100%-Ziels“ von einem 90%-Ziel gesprochen werden, da das gesetzte Ziel die Eigenerzeugung der Industrie sowie die Regelenergie, welche zusammen etwa 10% des gegenwärtigen Stromverbrauchs ausmachen, ausschließt.

Das sog. „100%-Ziel“ ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit einer entsprechenden THG-Minderung oder gar einer 100% Dekarbonisierung des Stromsystems. Da die Stromerzeugung aus erneuerbaren Quellen vom Dargebot an Wind, Sonne und Wasser abhängt, wird auch bei bilanziell „100%iger“ Deckung des Strombedarfs die Stromerzeugung aus fossilen Quellen weiterhin erforderlich sein. Gemeinsam mit dem Ziel einer ausgeglichenen Bilanz von Stromimporten und -exporten kann dies sogar zu einem Anstieg der THG-Emissionen der öffentlichen Strom- und Wärmeerzeugung in Österreich führen. Sinnvoll ist das nur, wenn dadurch THG-Emissionen anderer Sektoren in stärkerem Ausmaß reduziert werden.

Das Ziel den Strombedarf aus Erneuerbaren Quellen zu decken, kann aber auch den falschen Anreiz setzen, die Elektrifizierung wichtiger Sektoren zu unterlassen, um den Stromverbrauch nicht zu stark ansteigen zu lassen. Eine „Kopplung“ des Strom- und Wärmesektors aber auch des Strom- und Mobilitätssektors hat große Potentiale, den Primärenergiebedarf durch die höhere Effizienz von Elektromotoren und Wärmepumpen drastisch zu senken (Jacobson et al., 2017). Solche emissionsmindernden Maßnahmen würden aber vorerst den Stromverbrauch erhöhen und damit – zumindest mittelfristig - den Anteil der Erneuerbaren Stromerzeugung am Energieverbrauch reduzieren. Dies wäre ein Konflikt zum „100%“ Ziel, obwohl in Summe die Wirkung der Elektrifizierung vieler Sektoren, starke Potentiale hat, die Treibhausgasemissionen zu senken, selbst wenn teilweise dafür Stromproduktion aus fossilem Gas zum Einsatz kommt.

Im Zusammenhang mit der Kopplung des Strom- und Wärmesektors behandelt der NEKP auch die Rolle hocheffizienter Anlagen zur Kraft-Wärme-Kopplung (KWK), die laut Konsultationsentwurf auch in Zukunft „zur Aufrechterhaltung der Strom- und Wärmeversorgung insbesondere in Ballungsräumen notwendig sind“.

Bei Einhaltung des „100%-Ziels“ wird der Strombedarf in Zukunft aber vor allem durch Erneuerbare, nicht durch KWK-Anlagen gedeckt. Da der Einsatz der KWK-Anlagen für die sichere Versorgung mit Wärme aber unerlässlich ist, werden die KWK-Anlagen in Zukunft vermehrt „wärmegeführt“ eingesetzt werden. Das bedeutet, dass die KWKs, deren Geschäftsmodell darauf beruht Wärme als Nebenprodukt der Stromerzeugung bereit zu stellen, in Zukunft stattdessen Strom als Nebenprodukt erzeugen müssen. In Folge werden die Kosten der Wärmeversorgung ansteigen.

Zudem führt der Einsatz von (fossilen) KWK-Anlagen notwendigerweise zu einer Überdeckung des Strombedarfs, da der Bedarf entsprechend dem „100%-Ziel“ ja bereits aus Erneuerbaren Quellen (nicht fossilen KWK-Anlagen) gedeckt wird. In einem freien Markt würde diese überschüssige Erzeugung exportiert. Allerdings sieht der NEKP vor, dass sich Exporte und Importe über das Jahr ausgleichen. Dauerhaft ist das nur möglich, wenn Überschüsse aus der Erneuerbaren Energieerzeugung nicht exportiert werden, oder auf den Einsatz von fossilen KWK-Anlagen verzichtet wird. Für den Verzicht auf fossile KWK-Anlagen fehlen aber vor allem in Ballungsräumen Alternativen zur Wärmeerzeugung im nötigen Ausmaß.

Weiters ist fraglich, wie die Bilanzierung der erzeugten Erneuerbaren Energie im Detail erfolgt. Sollten sog. „Überschüsse“, die nicht verbraucht werden können, auf die Erzeugung angerechnet werden, könnte der tatsächliche Verbrauch Erneuerbarer Energien nochmals geringer ausfallen.

Angesichts dessen erscheint es uns sinnvoll die Zielsetzung „100% des Verbrauchs aus nationaler Erneuerbare Energieerzeugung“ zu decken zu überdenken. Alternative, besser operationalisierbare und in ihrer Wirkung effizientere Zielsetzungen könnten beispielsweise auf den Ausstoß an THG im Stromsektor abzielen. Weiters erscheint es uns weder ökologisch noch ökonomisch sinnvoll das Ziel einer ausgeglichenen Stromhandelsbilanz weiter zu verfolgen, zumal dieses Ziel auch die Versorgungssicherheit nicht wesentlich verbessert. Durch die bilanzielle Berechnung des Anteils der Erneuerbaren Energieerzeugung ist ein Stromaustausch mit dem benachbarten Ausland weiterhin notwendig (und im Übrigen auch ökonomisch sinnvoll).

4 Greening the Gas

Die Nutzung von „grünem Gas“, also CO2-neutralem Gas, bietet Österreich zahlreiche Chancen. Die Dekarbonisierung wichtiger Wirtschaftsbereiche wie des Flugverkehrs oder der Stahlproduktion kann nach heutigem technologischem Stand nur durch die Nutzung entsprechender erneuerbarer Treib- und Brennstoffe gelingen. Auch die vollständige Dekarbonisierung der Stromerzeugung würde durch die Verfügbarkeit von kostengünstigen, CO2-freien Brennstoffen erleichtert.

Allerdings ist die Erzeugung von „grünen Gasen“ auch kostenintensiv und thermodynamisch ineffizient. Der Einsatz „grüner Gase“ erfordert hohe zusätzliche Kapazitäten zur Erzeugung Erneuerbarer Energie, was mit sehr hoher Landnutzung und den damit einhergehenden Konflikten verbunden ist. Daher müssen Maßnahmen zur Einsparung des Energieverbrauchs (z.B. Wärmedämmung) und zur Elektrifizierung (z.B. Nutzung von Wärmepumpen), welche den Flächenbedarf des Energieverbrauchs minimieren, insbesondere im Gebäude- und Verkehrssektor den Vorrang gegenüber der Anwendung von „Grünem Gas“ erhalten.

Durch die alleinige Nutzung von „Überschussstrom“ werden keine ausreichenden Mengen „grüner Gase“ hergestellt werden können, da Stromüberschusse nur zu wenigen Zeitpunkten im Jahr auftreten werden. Zudem ist ein solches Konzept ökonomisch nicht nachhaltig, da die Produktionsanlagen (z.B. Elektrolyseure) wegen ihrer Vergleichsweise hohen Investitionskosten nur bei hoher Auslastung kostendeckend arbeiten können (McKenna et al., 2018). Das Potenzial zur nachhaltigen, nicht-elektrolytischen Erzeugung „grüner Gase“ aus Biomasse ist in Österreich beschränkt (Schmidt et al., 2011b).

Kann „grünes Gas“ in ausreichenden Mengen z.B. mangels Akzeptanz für den flächendeckenden Ausbau Erneuerbarer Energieerzeugung oder für „Carbon Capture and Storage“-Technologien nicht im Inland erzeugt werden, können importierte erneuerbare Brennstoffe zur Dekarbonisierung beitragen (Schmidt et al., 2019). Um Nachhaltigkeit auch bei importierten „grünen Gasen“ sicherzustellen, muss die Lieferkette bis in die Herkunftsregionen lückenlos rückverfolgbar sein. Auswirkungen des Exportes „grüner Gase“ auf THG-Emissionen in den Herstellerländern, etwa durch die Veränderung des Strommixes, müssen ebenso transparent nachvollziehbar sein wie die etwaige Gefährdung von Biodiversität und Menschenrechten in den exportierenden Ländern.

5 Biokrafstoffe

Aus Sicht der Wissenschaft ist unklar, ob der zusätzliche Einsatz von Biokraftstoffen tatsächlich Treibhausgasemissionen mindert. In jedem Fall ist das Reduktionspotential sehr gering (Schmidt et al., 2011a). Von einer Ausweitung von Beimischungsquoten ist daher abzusehen. Die österreichische Ethanolindustrie könnte aber zum Vorreiter in der langfristig nachhaltigen Brenn- und Kraftstoffproduktion werden, indem sie die im Prozess anfallenden CO2-Ströme in Verbindung mit durch Elektrolyse gewonnenem Wasserstoff zu Treibstoffen wie Methanol veredelt. Dies ist eine Technologie, die (1) langfristig global zu einer signifikanten Ausweitung der Treibstoffproduktion aus dem Biokraftstoffsektor führen kann, ohne zusätzliche Flächen zu beanspruchen und (2) den Sektor langsam von flächenintensiver Biokraftstoffproduktion zu flächeneffizienter Produktion von synthetischem Treibstoff transformieren kann. Während, wie in Abschnitt 4 beschrieben, Österreich selbst mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit zu keinem wichtigen Produzenten von synthetischen, erneuerbaren Treib- und Brennstoffen werden wird, könnte es so die technologische Führerschaft in einer wichtigen Zukunftstechnologie übernehmen.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Sebastian Wehrle, Katharina Gruber, Michael Klingler, Claude Klöckl, Luis Ramirez-Camargo, Peter Regner, Johannes Schmidt, Olga Turkovska

Quellen

Höltinger, S., Salak, B., Schauppenlehner, T., Scherhaufer, P., Schmidt, J., 2016. Austria’s wind energy potential – a participatory modeling approach to assess socio-political and market acceptance. Energy Policy 98, 49–61.

Jacobson, M.Z., Delucchi, M.A., Bauer, Z.A.F., Goodman, S.C., Chapman, W.E., Cameron, M.A., Bozonnat, C., Chobadi, L., Clonts, H.A., Enevoldsen, P., Erwin, J.R., Fobi, S.N., Goldstrom, O.K., Hennessy, E.M., Liu, J., Lo, J., Meyer, C.B., Morris, S.B., Moy, K.R., O’Neill, P.L., Petkov, I., Redfern, S., Schucker, R., Sontag, M.A., Wang, J., Weiner, E., Yachanin, A.S., 2017. 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World. Joule 1, 108–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2017.07.005

Liebe, U., Bartczak, A., Meyerhoff, J., 2017. A turbine is not only a turbine: The role of social context and fairness characteristics for the local acceptance of wind power. Energy Policy 107, 300–308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.04.043

McKenna, R.C., Bchini, Q., Weinand, J.M., Michaelis, J., König, S., Köppel, W., Fichtner, W., 2018. The future role of Power-to-Gas in the energy transition: Regional and local techno-economic analyses in Baden-Württemberg. Applied Energy 212, 386–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.12.017

Nordhaus, W., 2008. A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies. Yale University Press.

Rezai, A., Foley, D.K., Taylor, L., 2012. Global warming and economic externalities. Economic Theory 49, 329–351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-010-0592-4

Scherhaufer, P., Höltinger, S., Salak, B., Schauppenlehner, T., Schmidt, J., 2017. Patterns of acceptance and non-acceptance within energy landscapes: Acase study on wind energy expansion in Austria. Energy Policy. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.05.057

Schmidt, J., Gass, V., Schmid, E., 2011a. Land use changes, greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel substitution of biofuels compared to bioelectricity production for electric cars in Austria. Biomass and Bioenergy 35, 4060–4074. https://doi.org/16/j.biombioe.2011.07.007

Schmidt, J., Gruber, K., Klingler, M., Klöckl, C., Camargo, L.R., Regner, P., Turkovska, O., Wehrle, S., Wetterlund, E., 2019. A new perspective on global renewable energy systems: why trade in energy carriers matters. Energy Environ. Sci. 12, 2022–2029. https://doi.org/10.1039/C9EE00223E

Schmidt, J., Leduc, S., Dotzauer, E., Schmid, E., 2011b. Cost-effective policy instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction and fossil fuel substitution through bioenergy production in Austria. Energy Policy 39, 3261–3280.

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28 November 2019

Speed dating and unfortunate dead end sequels

The following text contains a brief digression into the world of discrete mathematics, inspired by a situation where we stumbled on combinatorial and graph theory problems in everyday life, without expecting it. The fascination caused by the surprise motivated us to ponder and research existing solutions to the risen problems. Most of the following is probably well known in the field, but our story hopefully sheds light to the problems from an intriguing perspective.

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18 November 2019

The social costs and benefits of wind turbines

(by Sebastian Wehrle, reFUEL researcher)

This is work in progress, latest findings are presented at NoeG and EGU2020.

In Austria, social conflict around the installation of new wind turbines is intensifying. Opponents of wind energy mourn about the “verspargelung” (literally: “asparagus-ization”) of landscape and the related economic impacts, such as declining house prices in the vicinity of wind turbines [for a survey on negative externalities see Zerrahn, 2017]. As a result, some Austrian provinces restricted the areas available for the installation of wind turbines, while other regions never saw any expansion at all up to today. At the same time, Austrian policy makers have set the goal of meeting 100% of annual electricity consumption from “national renewable sources” by 2030. [mission 2030] (On a side note, “100%” is actually just 90% of total electricity consumption, as industrial self-consumption and balancing energy are exempt.) In addition, Austria seeks to reduce emissions from the transport sector by 7.2 million tons CO2 by 2030. If this is goal is to be achieved by electrification, we estimate the additional electricity consumption at 12.5 TWh.

Yet, not only wind turbines are contested. Austrians largely oppose nuclear power (against which they voted in a 1978 referendum), as well as many (large) hydro power projects. The adoption of biomass for energy generation is hindered by its lack of environmental and economic sustainability. In effect, solar PV today seems to be the only realistic, large-scale substitute for wind energy in Austria. (However, solar PV in Austria mostly exists on roof tops, also because subsidies for open-space PV are lower than for rooftop PV.)

While a large body of literature identifies wind energy as the dominant energy source in European power systems designed to minimize system cost, such analyses neglect negative externalities of wind turbines. Several papers seek to quantify these negative externalities, for example through the impact of wind turbines on house prices. Results are mixed, however. Some studies, mostly for the US, do not find significant impact of wind turbines on property prices [e.g. Hoen et al., 2011; Lang et al. 2014]. Others find the negative impact of wind turbines to be depending on the proximity to and visibility of wind turbines. Two recent papers [Sunak and Madlener, 2016; Kussel et al, 2019] estimate the negative impact of wind turbines in Germany at close to 7% of the property values within 2 km distance to the turbine.

To derive some insight on the socially optimal deployment of wind turbines (that is including all external costs and benefits), we complement these finding with an assessment of the benefits of wind turbines compared to their next best alternative, solar PV. For this purpose, we use the energy system model medea, which is set up to resemble a competitive Austrian electricity market in 2030 in combination with the coupled generation of district heat, either through combined heat and power (CHP) plants (including waste incineration), heat pumps, or electric or natural gas fired boilers. In addition, medea also incorporates the rapidly changing German electricity system with its projected status in 2030 (i.e. including nuclear exit, partial coal exit, renewables expansion as laid out in EEG 2017). This allows us to study the effect of interlinkages through electricity trade with Austria’s largest electricity trading partner. We abstract from any subsidy schemes, so that we can study the actual economic value generated by the analyzed policies.

A large strand of literature on the system cost minimal mix of renewable generation technologies suggests that relatively small shares of solar PV are cost minimizing in the European power system [e.g. Rodriguez et al. 2015; Reichenberg 2018]. Our analysis of a system cost-minimal renewables expansion in Austria confirms this result. Given the policy goal of meeting 100% of consumption from renewables sources on annual average, the system cost-minimal implementation suggested by our model is to add 16.3 GW of onshore wind turbines, backed by around 1.2 GW of conventional, natural gas-fired generators. Additional flexibility is provided by adding approximately 350 MW of heat pumps, which can be used to generate heat from electricity.

At an intermediate CO2 price of 50 €/t, this results in total system costs of 1.8 bn € at an annual electricity generation of 105.1 TWh or an average system cost of 17.05 €/MWh. According to our estimates, producer surplus amounts to 2.45 billion € in this setting, while 9.4 million tons of CO2 (corresponding to an average CO2 intensity of 0.09 t/MWh) are emitted from the power generation sector.

Starting from this least-cost set-up, we gradually restrict the capacity of wind turbines that can be added to the system, while maintaining the “100% renewables” policy. The effects of this on system cost, CO2 emissions and producer surplus are illustrated in Figure 1.

For each GW of wind power substituted by solar photovoltaics, system costs increase by approximately 1.7%. This effect is strongest up to the point where about one-third of wind power gets substituted and levels off to some extent for very high penetration of solar PV. Likewise, emissions of climate-damaging carbon dioxide increase by a considerable 0.7% for each of the first 10 GW of solar PV deployed instead of wind power. Further deployment of solar PV is less damaging to the climate. Finally, the economic surplus of Austrian producers increases particularly strong for the first 10 GW of solar PV deployed instead of wind power. Above 20 GW solar PV penetration, producer surplus starts to fall back towards initial levels.

As a direct consequence of this, producers have an incentive to overinvest in solar PV at the expense of rising system cost and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, producers’ incentives align with opposition against local wind power projects. Yet, residents in the vicinity of wind turbines face actual economics impacts from wind turbines that might lower the value of their property. Using the case of Germany, as we are lacking data for Austria, the value of the average affected house could decline by up to 19 500 Euros once wind turbines are situated nearby . [Kussel et al, 2019].

From a societal perspective, however, these negative impacts need to be complemented with the benefits of wind power. Depending on the level of wind turbines deployment, wind turbines save between 29 000 Euro and 38 500 Euros per year and MW installed capacity in system costs compared to solar PV. Thus, over its lifetime, a standard 3.5 MW wind turbines generates system cost saving worth between 1.5 and 2.3 million Euros at the time of turbine installation. Hence, between 80 and 120 property owners could, on average, be fully compensated for accepting a wind turbine in their vicinity.

As a corollary, our analysis suggests that wind turbines should ideally be grouped in larger wind farms that are situated on or near property with below-average value. Compensating residents for living near wind turbines might increase social acceptance and counterbalance adverse impacts on the distribution of wealth that would otherwise arise from such an allocation of wind turbines.

However, these results hinge on several assumptions taken in the literature on negative local externalities on wind turbines. First, if impacts are not proportional to property values but constant, situating turbines in low-value regions is no longer indicated. Second, one would need to carefully account for the marginal negative externality of adding an additional wind turbine to a wind farm. It might be reasonable to expect larger negative impacts from a huge wind farm than from a small turbine in the surrounding.

Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism, Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation, and Technology, 2018. #mission 2030. Austrian Climate and Energy Strategy.

Hoen, B., Brown, J., Jackson, T., Thayer, M., Wiser, R., Cappers, P., 2015. Spatial Hedonic Analysis of the Effects of US Wind Energy Facilities on Surrounding Property Values. J. Real Estate Finance Econ. 51, 22–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11146-014-9477-9

Kussel, G., Frondel, M., Vance, C., Sommer, S., 2019. Local Cost for Global Benefit: The Case of Wind Turbines, in: Beiträge Zur Jahrestagung Des Vereins Für Socialpolitik 2019 - Session: Environmental Economics I, No. A15-V1. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the German Economic Association.

Lang, C., Opaluch, J., Sfinarolakis, G., 2014. The windy city: Property value impacts of wind turbines in an urban setting. Energy Econ. 44, 413–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2014.05.010

Rodriguez, R.A., Becker, S., Greiner, M., 2015. Cost-optimal design of a simplified, highly renewable pan-European electricity system. Energy 83, 658–668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.02.066

Schlachtberger, D.P., Brown, T., Schramm, S., Greiner, M., 2017. The benefits of cooperation in a highly renewable European electricity network. Energy 134, 469–481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2017.06.004

Scholz, Y., Gils, H.C., Pietzcker, R.C., 2017. Application of a high-detail energy system model to derive power sector characteristics at high wind and solar shares. Energy Econ. 64, 568–582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2016.06.021

Sunak, Y., Madlener, R., 2016. The impact of wind farm visibility on property values: A spatial difference-in-differences analysis. Energy Econ. 55, 79–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2015.12.025

Zerrahn, A., 2017. Wind Power and Externalities. Ecol. Econ. 141, 245–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.02.016

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8 November 2019

After its first year, reFUEL powers past coal

On the 5th of November, the reFUEL project had its first public event in the framework of BOKU’s energy cluster. Advisory board member Jessica Jewell presented her work on the global coal phase out while Johannes Schmidt gave an overview over the reFUEL project and showed results from the first project year.

Jessica discussed the global Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) and its contribution to the 1.5 degree target (see her presentation here and her paper here). A closer look at PPCA membership reveals that members are characterized by a low degree of coal dependence, i.e. coal makes up a small fraction of total power generation, comparatively high GDP and a high score on a functioning of government-index. Accordingly, PPCA’s contribution to the necessary global coal phase-out is very low. As a comparison, the German coal phase-out alone (not part of PPCA) is of about the same magnitude as all phase-out pledges in the PPCA. Jessica’s results also show that increasing the impact of PPCA means to bring countries on board which have a lower GDP, a higher share of coal, and a lower score on a functioning of government index. But it also means to prevent new, rapidly developing countries becoming member of the club of major coal users. This is a huge challenge, but one fact that Jessica pointed at may help: the rapidly decreasing cost of renewable energy, in particular solar PV and wind power. Jessica’s figures impressively showed the necessary magnitude and speed of the required transition.

Johannes presented perspectives on the future of trade in renewable energy carriers in low-carbon energy systems. A decrease in the trade of energy carriers is widely expected by the modelling community. Moreover, such a decline is also a political goal, for example in Austria, which aims to cover its entire power demand from “national renewables” by 2030. Strongly decreasing costs of renewables over the past decade may help achieving this goal. Yet, the uptake of renewables is sluggish in some markets, recently. In Germany, once a global frontrunner of the renewables expansion, onshore wind energy installations have virtually grinded to a halt as the government struggles to attract sufficient bids in its auctions for wind energy. While there is a multitude of reasons for that slow down, increasing conflicts over the expansion of new infrastructure in a country that has very high energy-use density per area of available land are an important contributing factor. But even if we manage to overcome such obstacles on the way towards fully renewable energy systems, integration costs of intermittent power generators are increasing strongly for penetration levels above 60%. The use of dispatchable, renewable fuels could be one way forward as such power generation could be an important source of flexibility. This, however, would likely give rise to the need to import renewable energy carriers. Consequently, Johannes discussed how synthetic fuels made from renewable electricity might become a globally traded energy commodity.

However, building up an export industry in resource-rich regions can give rise to substantial negative impacts, as was shown for the case of Brazil, where environmental and social conflicts revolve around the wind power expansion. The presentation can be found here.

After their presentations, Jessica and Johannes discussed with the audience about the role of coal and nuclear power in future energy systems, about trade in renewable energy carriers as a double-edged option that might speed-up decarbonization, but also export European land-use conflicts to other world regions. Moreover, it was pointed out that trade is not necessarily long-distance. Rather, trade within continents and even within communities can also increase flexibility of energy systems.

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14 October 2019

Simulating wind power from local to Continental scale: A data and Model comparison for Brazil

Studying the possibilities of integration of higher shares of renewables into the energy production matrix requires long time series of renewable power generation in order to assess diurnal, seasonal and inter-annual fluctuations in power generation. Timeseries should possibly also be highly resolved spatially to account for resources in different locations.

Reanalysis data are a freely accessible source for climate data which can be used to simulate time series of several decades of renewable power generation – but do these time series match with actual power generation?

In our new paper in Energy, we have simulated and validated Brazilian wind power generation from MERRA-2 on the spatial scale of windparks, states, subsystems and the whole country with a turbine specific power curve model from Ryberg et al.

As the spatial resolution of MERRA-2 data is rather coarse with about 50 km, different approaches were tested to increase the spatial resolution. Horizontal interpolation methods had low influence on model quality. A further attempt to downscale the data was using the Global Wind Atlas (i.e. adapting the mean wind speed to the GWA) and comparing it to another approach using locally measured wind speeds. Both data sources helped increase the simulation quality (lower RMSE) in many cases, however on wind park level data quality of locally measured wind speeds may produce outliers. Also temporal bias correction was attempted using the measured wind speeds, but it had only little impact on the results, as it was hardly applied due to limits in data availability.

In general results looked good: For Brazil and state level correlations > 90% were achieved with some exceptions only. For single windparks correlations are lower (range of 60%-80%). The knowledge that the Global Wind Atlas can compete with local measurements in terms of improving model quality opens opportunities for developing a global model.

Not shown in the paper, but also relevant: In an original approach a standard turbine model was used to convert wind speeds into power which was updated to Ryberg et al.'s turbine specific models. This helped increase correlation (slightly) and decrease RMSE (slightly, in most cases) compared to assuming one generic turbine model (Vestas V80, Enercon E82 or Siemens SWT2.3). See figure below.

The paper is online behind a paywall, but the accepted manuscript can be found on arxiv. The corresponding code is available hereand the resulting data sets here.

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28 May 2019

Updates on Brazil's status on research into social and environmental impacts of wind energy

by Adryane Gorayeb and Christian Brannstrom

Please find the portuguese version below!

Brazil’s rapid and recent increase in wind power installed capacity has attracted little social and environmental science, but since 2011 studies have begun to accumulate and now offer some generalizations and help sustain new research networks.  The Wind Energy Observatory, launched in 2018, is one such network, aiming at gathering wind energy related social and environmental research in Brazil. It includes researchers from the post-graduate program in Geography at the Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) and partners from several universities who are dedicated to the study of socio-environmental impacts caused by the wind farms in Brazil.  The principal goal is to stimulate national-level dialogue and discussion about this topic, be a source of information for researchers and the general public, and disseminate relevant studies on this topic.

One outcome of the Wind Energy Observatory is the edited book, "Socio-environmental impacts of wind farms in Brazil," to be published in June 2019. It will synthesize research conducted since 2011 on wind farm impacts in Brazil. The book is edited by professors from the Department of Geography of the Universidade Federal do Ceara (Brazil) and Texas A&M University (USA) with more than 20 chapters authored by scholars from five Brazilian universities, located in the areas with greatest wind power output such as Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul, Ceará and Piauí.  The book will be published in Portuguese and will be made available freely through online means and in print. The Wind Energy Observatory will soon have more information about this book.

An article published in Energy Research & Social Science, titled “Wind power gone bad: Critiquing wind power planning processes in northeastern Brazil” and led by Dr. Gorayeb from UFC, analyzed the largest (104.4 MW) and oldest (2009) wind farm at the time in north-eastern Brazil. The article focuses on the planning and licensing processes of wind farms and the approval steps that involve corruption in various stages, from project description, project approval, and construction, to the inadequate mitigation policies used by firms after construction.

Another article published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, titled “Is Brazilian wind power development sustainable? Insights from a review of conflicts in Ceará state” and led byDr. Brannstrom from Texas A&M University (CV ), synthesizes conflicts caused by the construction of wind farms in sites inappropriate from environmental, legal, and social points of view in coastal north-east Brazil.  The article concludes that environmental impacts caused by wind farms located on dune fields and other coastal systems created severe conflicts because they denied access of communites to natural resources that sustain livelihoods and cultural identity.  Both articles offer several suggestions to governments, communities, and wind firms on how to reduce current and future conflicts.

Portuguese Version

O aumento rápido e recente da energia eólica no Brasil possui pouco estudo social e ambiental, mas a partir do ano de 2011 os estudos vêm acumulando e sustentam novas redes de pesquisa. O Observatório da Energia Eólica é criado nesse contexto de dar visibilidade às pesquisas que abordam energia eólica no Brasil e, em junho de 2019, estará lançando uma obra que sintetiza os resultados de pesquisas desenvolvidas desde 2011 sobre os impactos socioambientais da implantação de parques eólicos no Brasil. Esta obra, cujo título é “Impactos socioambientais da implantação dos parques de energia eólica no Brasil” está sendo organizada por professores dos departamentos de Geografia da Universidade Federal do Ceará (Brasil) e da Texas A&M University (EUA) e contará com mais de vinte capítulos de autores oriundos de cinco universidades brasileiras localizadas nas regiões de maior produtividade eólica, como Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, Rio Grande do Sul, Ceará e Piauí. Em sua primeira versão, o livro será publicado em língua portuguesa, sob o título “Impactos socioambientais da implantação dos parques de energia eólica no Brasil” e será disponibilizado ao público em formato digital (distribuição on-line gratuita) e impresso. Em breve, o site do Observatório da Energia Eólica trará maiores informações sobre a publicação.

O Observatório da Energia Eólica, lançado em 2018, reúne um grupo de pesquisadores do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geografia da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC) e seus parceiros de diversas universidades que se dedicam em estudar os impactos socioambientais causados pela implantação dos parques eólicos no Brasil. O intuito principal é o de estimular o diálogo e a discussão em nível nacional sobre o tema, servir de fonte de consulta para pesquisadores e curiosos e divulgar os estudos científicos mais relevantes ao tema.

Recentemente, foram publicados pelo grupo da UFC artigos em Energy Research & Social Science (2018) e Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2017).

O artigo publicado na Energy Research & Social Science, intitulado Wind power gone bad: Critiquing wind power planning processes in northeastern Brazilfoi liderado pela Dra. Gorayeb da UFC e analisou o então maior (104,4 MW) e mais antigo (2009) parque eólico localizado no Nordeste do Brasil. No artigo estão em foco os processos de planejamento e licenciamento da implantação de parques eólicos, assim como as etapas de aprovação que envolvem corrupção em diversos níveis, desde a apresentação, aprovação e construção de grandes obras, às políticas de mitigação inadequadas impostas pela empresa já instalada.

O artigo publicado publicado na Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, intitulado Is Brazilian wind power development sustainable? Insights from a review of conflicts in Ceará state foi liderado pelo Dr. Brannstrom da Texas A&M University (CV) e sintetizou os conflitos causados pela instalação de parques eólicos em territórios inapropriados (ambientalmente, legalmente e socialmente) no litoral do Nordeste do Brasil. O artigo conclui que os impactos ambientais causados ​​por parques eólicos que se localizam em campos de dunas e outros sistemas costeiros, criam graves conflitos ao negar o acesso das comunidades aos recursos naturais que sustentam seus meios de subsistência e sua identidade cultural.

Ambos os artigos oferecem sugestões para governo, comunidades e empresas sobre como reduzir os conflitos atuais e futuros.

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30 April 2019

Compensating for the cost of carbon pricing emphasizes the benefits of substitution

by Sebastian Wehrle (reFUEL team member)

In recent weeks and months, a lively debate has evolved on the pros and cons of carbon pricing, be it through cap & trade schemes or taxation. While some are questioning whether carbon pricing is reducing GHG emissions effectively, an impressive agglomeration of renowned economists recently reiterated the idea of combining carbon pricing with compensating payments, something that was also advocated in a joint contribution from Johannes Schmidt, Mathias Kirchner and myself.

The effect of carbon pricing is to raise the cost of emission intense activities, such as driving your petrol-guzzler to work or starting up your gas furnace to have a warm and cozy home. Yet, raising the cost of such essential activities would consume a substantial part of the income, in particular of low-income households. The “yellow vests” in France have demonstrated potential impacts of such policies. Thus, economists suggest compensating households for higher cost through payments financed from the proceeds of pricing carbon emissions.

But what is the point of first making something more expensive to purchase and then handing over the required additional money? Wouldn’t that be highly ineffective?

Indeed, Evgeny Slutsky thought about such issues more than 100 years ago. In 1915 he published a cornerstone of modern consumer theory. The Slutsky equation decomposes the effect of a change in a good’s price on demand for this good into a substitution effect and an income effect. The former arises due to changes in relative prices, while the latter reflect the fact that the same income buys fewer goods when price increases.

In the case of energy and thus emission intense activities, substitution is indeed often rather difficult. Many people depend on their car to commute to work; frequently tenants have no other option than using the pre-installed, emission intense system for heating their homes. Thus, the short-run substitution effect is, quite likely, limited. To be effective at the level of households, carbon pricing would thus have to work through the income effect. Yet, this effect is (hopefully) largely eliminated by compensation payments. So how can carbon pricing be effective?

The important point here is that such a policy does not aim at reducing final energy consumption. Rather it aims at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And doing so is not limited to households, but also affects producers.

In the short term, carbon pricing works by providing incentives for substitution, mostly on the supply side. For instance, electricity systems nowadays frequently have significant fossil spare capacity as renewable generators keep being added to these systems. Typically, the most emission intense coal or lignite-fired generators have the lowest cost, while less polluting natural gas-fired units are more costly to dispatch. A sufficiently high carbon price can reverse cost-based dispatch in such a system. Besides, the additional cost from carbon pricing will only be partly passed through to consumers.

Even more importantly, a credible carbon price also provides long-run incentives for investment on the supply side and for durable consumer goods on the demand side. When companies decide on investment options, a carbon price changes future revenues in the favor of low emitting technologies. This also helps to avoid lock-in effects arising from continued investment in emission intense technologies with long life times.

In addition, credible carbon pricing also increases the potential gains from innovating low or no emission products, either through raising final demand, e.g. because an innovation enables cost-saving substitution at the level of final consumers, or potential revenues, e.g. because an innovation allows saving costs of production.

Carbon pricing can go a long way even without reducing energy consumption from final consumers. This, however, does not mean that carbon pricing is a panacea. There are good reasons for combining carbon pricing with other, reinforcing polices that foster low or no carbon innovations. Ultimately, we will need to find a sensible mix of policies to mitigate climate change. Carbon pricing is one of them.

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26 November 2018

Session on spatio-temporal modelling of renewable energies at EGU2019

The call for abstracts for EGU 2019 has started today. There, Luis and Johannes from the reFUEL-team organize (together with Wolfgang Dorner) a session on "Spatiotemporal modelling of distributed renewable energy systems" and kindly invite you to submit your abstracts.

Modelling approaches which assess renewable energy systems - from local to global - and focus on spatial and/or temporal variability of resources are highly welcome.

Details about the session can be found at https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/session/30279

Submission deadline is 10th of January 2019.

The 2019 edition of EGU - European Geoscience Union meeting in Vienna will take place from 7th-12th of April 2019.

Further information can be found at http://egu2018.eu/

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us - contact details can be found here.

Please forward this invitation to interested colleagues. We are looking forward to meet you at EGU 2019 in Vienna.

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15 October 2018

Should district heating system owners embrace higher emission prices?

by Sebastian Wehrle (Doctoral researcher in reFUEL)

While the world is debating a 1.5°C global warming goal, greenhouse gas emissions in self-proclaimed climate pioneer states such as Germany turn out to retreat far slower than was pledged. As a result, calls for increasing the cost of greenhouse gas emissions are growing louder, supported amongst others by the OECD.

In a recent paper written together with Johannes Schmidt, I introduced the power system model medea, which I developed during my doctoral thesis. The model will also be used in the reFUEL project to study the impact of renewable fuels on the central European power system. We examined how an increase im CO2 emission prices would affect district heating systems. This is less straight-forward as it might seem at first sight, as higher emission cost would not only raise the cost of co-generating electricity and heat, but also increase the price of electricity, which is a key source of revenue for combined heat and power plants.

Whether higher emission costs are a net improvement for CHP profitability depends on technical characteristics and the CO2 intensity of the fuel burned in the CHP unit as well as on the amount of the emission cost increase that is passed-through to electricity prices.

In a nutshell, you are not going to benefit from increasing emission cost if you are operating a coal or lignite-fired CHP plant. If, however, your unit is fired by natural gas and at least moderately efficient, you can expect to be a net beneficiary of higher emission cost. In consequence, you have an interest in raising emission prices. This is particularly relevant when considering that many large district heating systems are fully majority owned by municipalities or federal states in Germany and Austria.

Higher emission prices improve district heating system profitability, because the units that are determining the electricity price in the German market are, at many times, more polluting and thereby stronger affected by the emission cost increase than your efficient natural gas-fired co-generation unit. To recover their operating cost, these emission-intense plants have to pass a considerable share, we estimate it in the range of 60% to 80%, of the (additional) emission cost through to electricity prices.

This should delight low emission generators as they can not only expect higher profit margins, but, due to increasing electricity prices, also more frequent dispatch and increased energy generation. Yet, this is bad news for consumers, as they have to pay for the larger part of the additional emission cost through higher electricity prices.

This finding is also quite robust to changes in the underlying assumptions. Variations in international electricity exchange or in fuel prices are not changing our pass-through estimates substantially. However, investments in low-emission energy generation technologies that are incentivized by higher emission cost, are likely to change the picture substantially. Increasing electricity generation from PV by 40% and from wind energy by 50% while shutting down 10% of the coal and lignite-fired power plant capacity would reduce the pass-through from emission cost to electricity prices by around 15 percentage points, according to our estimates (see RES2025 in Figure). Yet, consumers should not rejoice too quickly. Increasing system flexibility, which we modeled as reduced must-run requirement for the provision of ancillary services, could offset much of the reduction in the pass-through from emission cost to electricity prices. And increasing system flexibility is a top priority on the agenda of European policy makers. It seems as if the Energiewende will be paid for largely by consumers.

The paper, code, and data can be downloaded here.

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15 October 2018

Welcome to the reFUEL Blog!

by Johannes Schmidt (reFUEL Project Leader)

reFUEL – that’s a five years research project on the role of trade in future renewable energy systems. It is strongly interdisciplinary, linking quantitative modelling approaches from economics and the natural sciences to qualitative case studies on local impacts of renewable energies in Europe and Brazil. As an important principle to increase reproducibility of our research, increase its quality, and allow for a full re-use of our research results by others, we will apply open data and open source standards in the course of the project.

reFUEL will assess global bio-physical differences in the availability of renewables, thus increasing our understanding of potential efficiency increases due to trade of renewable fuels. But reFUEL will also add to our understanding of land availability for the deployment of large-scale infrastructure - by quantitatively analyzing spatial data, but also in a qualitative way by gathering data on impacts of renewables on affected populations in Brazil and in Europe. Thus, we aim at drawing a rich picture of potentials and impacts of renewable fuel trade between world regions.

Our blog is one way of keeping you posted about the progress in our project – and of opening up the research process to our peers and the general public. We will discuss project publications, give some insights into the research process, and will also use it as a forum to briefly discuss ideas or present data that will not necessarily always end up in a publication. Guest posts are very welcome!

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2 October 2018

The link of Brazilian wind-power generation to El Niño and La Niña events

by Katharina Gruber (Doctoral Researcher in reFUEL)

Within the reFUEL project, one aim is to bio-physically simulate electric and solar fuel production. For this purpose, we use climate timeseries for simulation. While they are readily available in reanalysis datasets, bias-correction is often necessary to make them applicable to the specific regional context. In this master thesis, I have developed a bias-correction approach for the case of Brazil and applied the resulting dataset to a practically relevant research question: in recent years, wind power generation in Brazil has experienced a significant boom – as a result of increasing electricity demand, and as it can very well balance seasonal and inter-annual variability from hydropower generation, the biggest source of electricity in Brazil. Being able to better predict power generation from wind power plants on a seasonal level allows for an improved operation of large hydropower reservoirs.

We therefore assessed, if El Niño and La Niña events can be used as indicators for future wind power generation. For that purpose, very long timeseries of windpower generation are necessary – however, they are not available as the first wind power plants were built in Brazil starting in 2006. Long timeseries of several decades therefore have to be simulated from climate data. We use wind speed data provided by the NASA, the MERRA-2 Reanalysis data, for this purpose. Reanalysis data are consistent climate timeseries derived from satellite and earth observation data and are available globally. While the data are consistent, local bias may remain in the datasets as a result of coarse spatial resolution of the underlying models. We therefore apply two types of bias correction to improve the modelling results.

In the first correction step, wind speeds are corrected with the help of measured wind speeds from several meteorological stations throughout Brazil. In the second step, wind power generation time series from the national grid operator of Brazil are used to correct wind power. As power generation data are available for the states, wind power correction is performed on that level of spatial disaggregation. For the simulation of wind power and subsequent wind speed bias correction, different methods are tested and the method with highest fit to historical generation is selected for comparison to time series of El Niño and La Niña events.

Results show that especially wind power correction has a positive effect on the quality of the simulation. The impact of wind speed correction is lower, but still affects results in a positive way, in particular in the North-East of Brazil. The analysis of correlations with El Niño and La Niña indices does not show clear results. In some regions an event has impacts on wind power generation after one to three months, in others after five to eight. The influence of El Niño is in general higher than that of La Niña or if both events are combined. In some regions a positive impact is observed: if a strong El Niño or La Niña event occurs, wind speeds are higher and thus wind power generation too. In other regions, however, the impact is negative.

The thesis, code, and data can be downloaded here.

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