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The future development of CO2emissions in the German electricity sector by 2030 is unclear: On the one hand, the amendment to the Climate Protection Act (from August 2021) aims to tighten emission reduction targets in order to promote the path to a decarbonised energy system. On the other hand, the complex interplay between the main instruments for reducing carbon emissions, fuel prices and the current energy shortage as a result of Russia's attack on Ukraine is creating pressure for an increase in emissions.
In our study, we examine whether Germany is on track to achieve its climate protection targets for 2030 and which measures can increase the likelihood. To do this, we use an energy system model parameterized to reflect the situation in the energy market in 2021, i.e. before Russia's attack on Ukraine. In addition to the quantitative side, we provide a qualitative analysis of the energy market in the light of recent events. We stress the importance of introducing a carbon price floor that can be dynamically changed in response to the development of other market forces and policies. This instrument would institutionalize a more plausible path to decarbonization and provide reassurance to investors.
We study the effect of an employer’s communication concerning energy-efficient behavior on a firm’s employees’ behavioral responses. The management aims to enhance energy-efficient behavior performance by irregularly sending online messages to remote employees. We break down each message, analyzing the positive or negative emotions conveyed, collective or individual orientation, and ease of language. Comparing employees’ daily energy efficiency after receiving a message to their daily performance without a previous message, we find that messages generally result in an immediate increase in efficiency. Messages conveying negative emotions and those making a distinction between the manager and the employees have a smaller effect than messages conveying positive emotions and emphasizing a collective orientation that includes both the management and employees. Additionally, shorter messages are more likely to induce improved efficiency. Sending messages significantly impacts driver performance for up to six days after the message, resulting in economically relevant cost reductions.
Residents' acceptance of bioenergy is a prerequisite for its fast and efficient development but is ambiguously discussed in practice and research. We interpret a causal impact of bioenergy plant commissioning on housing prices in their vicinity as the average net external effects for residents. We utilize bioenergy plant construction data in Germany between 2007 and 2022 as a quasi-experiment with naturally occurring control groups in their vicinity and apply recently improved difference-in-difference estimation procedures to analyze instantaneous and heterogeneous treatment effects. We find a significant and negative impact on housing prices if plants use gaseous biofuel, generate electricity on-site, and are medium-sized. The magnitude of the effect is comparable to those for solar fields. In contrast, we find no impact for small and large bioenergy plants and those that use solid or liquid biofuels.
This paper analyses the potential impact of the world's two main coal phase-out instruments: 1) direct regulatory intervention restricting the operation of existing coal-fired generation capacity and prohibiting investment in new capacity and 2) market-based CO2-pricing instruments that make emission-intensive coal-fired generation less competitive. We quantify these instruments' potential effects in the empirical setting of Germany, where both instruments are employed concurrently. However, this paper's approach and methodology can be applied in any jurisdiction or energy system worldwide.
Our paper provides quantitative results with a pan-European partial-equilibrium electricity system model. The model applies an innovative three-step approach. Step 1 solves an investment and dispatch problem with reduced technical and temporal complexity for European countries. Step 2 computes the dispatch problem at a bihourly resolution and step 3 solves the investment and dispatch problem for Germany with increased technical complexity.
Our results confirm that both a regulated phase-out as well as a price on CO2 emissions can reduce the amount of coal-fired generation in an electricity system. If CO2 prices remain at current levels, coal-fired power plants leave the market significantly before the regulated phase-out date, reducing demand for employees in the Lusatian lignite industry. Regions and federal governments should take this finding into account when planning and preparing for structural change.
Since energy system models require a large amount of technical and economic data, their quality significantly affects the reliability of the results. However, some publicly available data sets, such as the transmission system operators’ day-ahead load forecasts, are known to be biased and inaccurate, leading to lower energy system model performance. We propose a time series model that enhances the accuracy of transmission system operators’ load forecast data in real-time, using only the load forecast error’s history as input. We further present an energy system model developed specifically for price forecasts of the short-term day-ahead market. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the improved load data as input by applying it to this model, which shows a strong reduction in pricing errors, particularly during periods of high prices and tight markets. Our results highlight the potential of our method the enhance the accuracy of energy system models using improved input data.
Importing green chemical energy carriers is crucial for meeting European climate targets. However, estimating the costs of supplying these energy carriers to Europe remains challenging, leading to a wide range of reported supply-cost estimates. This study analyzes the estimated supply costs of green chemical energy carriers at the European border using a dataset of 1050 data points from 30 studies. The results reveal significant variations in supply costs, with a projected four-fold difference in 2030 and a five-fold difference in 2050 across all energy carriers. The main drivers of cost differences are varying production costs, particularly influenced by the weighted average costs of capital and capital expenditures of renewable energy sources, electrolyzers, and carrier-specific conversion processes. Transport costs also contribute to variations, mainly influenced by the choice of energy carrier and the weighted average costs of capital. To optimize cost-efficiency and sustainability in the chemical energy carrier sector, this paper recommends prioritizing transparency and sensitivity analyses of key input parameters, classifying energy carriers based on technological and economic status, and encouraging research and development to reduce production costs.
Investments in electricity transmission and generation capacity must be made despite significant uncertainty about the future developments. The sources of this uncertainty include, among others, the future levels and spatiotemporal distribution of electricity demand, fuel costs and future energy policy. In recent years, these uncertainties have increased due to the ongoing evolution of supply- and demand-side technologies and rapid policy changes designed to encourage a transition to low-carbon energy systems. Because transmission and generation investments have long lead times and are difficult to reverse, they are subject to a considerable – and arguably growing – amount of risk.
Auctions are a highly demanded policy instrument for the promotion of renewable energy sources. Their flexible structure makes them adaptable to country-specific conditions and needs. However, their success depends greatly on how those needs are operationalised in the design elements. Disaggregating data from the German onshore wind auction programme into individual projects, we evaluated the contribution of auctions to the achievement of their primary (deployment at competitive prices) and secondary (diversity) objectives and have highlighted design elements that affect the policy's success or failure. We have shown that, in the German case, the auction scheme is unable to promote wind deployment at competitive prices, and that the design elements used to promote the secondary objectives not only fall short at achieving their intended goals, but create incentives for large actors to game the system.
We conduct the first comprehensive meta-analysis of deterministic solar forecasting based on skill score, screening 1,447 papers from Google Scholar and reviewing the full texts of 320 papers for data extraction. A database of 4,687 points was built and analyzed with multivariate adaptive regression spline modelling, partial dependence plots, and linear regression. The marginal impacts on skill score of ten factors were quantified. The analysis shows the non-linearity and complex interaction between variables in the database. Forecast horizon has a central impact and dominates other factors' impacts. Therefore, the analysis of solar forecasts should be done separately for each horizon. Climate zone variables have statistically significant correlation with skill score. Regarding inputs, historical data and spatial temporal information are highly helpful. For intra-day, sky and satellite images show the most importance. For day-ahead, numerical weather predictions and locally measured meteorological data are very efficient. All forecast models were compared. Ensemble-hybrid models achieve the most accurate forecasts for all horizons. Hybrid models show superiority for intra-hour while image-based methods are the most efficient for intra-day forecasts. More training data can enhance skill score. However, over-fitting is observed when there is too much training data (longer than 2000 days). There has been a substantial improvement in solar forecast accuracy, especially in recent years. More improvement is observed for intra-hour and intra-day than day-ahead forecasts. By controlling for the key differences between forecasts, including location variables, our findings can be applied globally.
This article details our experience developing and teaching an “Energy Systems Modeling” course, which sought to introduce graduate-level students to operations research, energy economics, and system modeling using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). In this paper, we focus on (i) the mathematical problems discussed in the course, (ii) the energy-related empirical interpretations of these mathematical problems, and (iii) the best teaching practices (i.e., our experiences regarding how to make the content interesting and accessible for students).
The accurate prediction of short-term electricity prices is vital for effective trading strategies, power plant scheduling, profit maximisation and efficient system operation. However, uncertainties in supply and demand make such predictions challenging. We propose a hybrid model that combines a techno-economic energy system model with stochastic models to address this challenge. The techno-economic model in our hybrid approach provides a deep understanding of the market. It captures the underlying factors and their impacts on electricity prices, which is impossible with statistical models alone. The statistical models incorporate non-techno-economic aspects, such as the expectations and speculative behaviour of market participants, through the interpretation of prices. The hybrid model generates both conventional point predictions and probabilistic forecasts, providing a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape. Probabilistic forecasts are particularly valuable because they account for market uncertainty, facilitating informed decision-making and risk management. Our model delivers state-of-the-art results, helping market participants to make informed decisions and operate their systems more efficiently.
This paper focuses on seasonal demand swings in the European natural gas market. We quantify and compare the role of different flexibility options (domestic production, gas storage, and pipeline and LNG imports) to assess European demand fluctuations in monthly resolution. We contribute to the existing literature on seasonal flexibility by addressing the problem with a mathematical gas market optimization model. Our paper provides valuable empirical insights into the decline of gas production in northwestern Europe. Furthermore, we focus on how specific flexibility features differ between pipeline supplies and LNG supplies and between gas imports and storage dispatch. In terms of methodology, we construct a bottom-up market optimization model and publish the complete source code (which is uncommon for gas market models). Furthermore, we propose a new metric—the scaled coefficient of variation—to quantify the importance of supply sources for seasonal flexibility provision.
This paper is set up to answer the question: What do we know about future hydrogen import costs on the European border? Our work focuses on breaking down, structuring and analysing the body of literature on hydrogen supply chains. We provide a comprehensive analysis on (i) What ranges of costs exist in the literature for specific steps of hydrogen supply chains? (ii) Which assumptions show the highest uncertainty? (iii) Related, what assumption seems to have the most substantial effect on the resulting EUR/kgH2 import cost estimate? While we narrow our discussion focus on North Africa and Australia to Europe in 2050, we hope policymakers, research fellows and energy-sector stakeholders around the globe might be interested in our results.
In this paper, we endogenously compute worst-case weather events in a transmission system expansion planning problem using the robust optimization approach. Mathematically, we formulate a three-level mixed-integer optimization problem, which we convert to a bi-level problem via the strong duality concept. We solve the problem using a constraint-and-column generation algorithm. We use cardinality-constrained uncertainty sets to model the effects of extreme weather realizations on supply from renewable generators.
Operators seek to achieve economic objectives when dispatching assets in electricity markets subject to asset’s technical as well as market constraints. To ensure optimal operation in energy markets, the parametric uncertainty of key market drivers such as wholesale and balancing services prices should be investigated. The research problem to be covered in the paper deals with the revenue maximization of a price-taker battery storage power plant participating in competitive wholesale electricity and balancing markets. The paper uses a multi-stage optimization approach to model uncertainty of a battery energy storage system participating in the Spanish Market. The study reveals that a significant benefit of using stochastic solution (over 5 percent) is obtained when the role of battery energy storage system is analyzed for 2020.
Offshore wind energy is rapidly expanding, facilitated largely through auctions run by governments. We provide a detailed quantified overview of utilised auction schemes, including geographical spread, volumes, results, and design specifications. Our comprehensive global dataset reveals heterogeneous designs. Although most auction designs provide some form of revenue stabilisation, their specific instrument choices vary and include feed-in tariffs, one-sided and two-sided contracts for difference, mandated power purchase agreements, and mandated renewable energy certificates.
We review the schemes used in all eight major offshore wind jurisdictions across Europe, Asia, and North America and evaluate bids in their jurisdictional context. We analyse cost competitiveness, likelihood of timely construction, occurrence of strategic bidding, and identify jurisdictional aspects that might have influenced auction results. We find that auctions are embedded within their respective regulatory and market design context, and are remarkably diverse, though with regional similarities. Auctions in each jurisdiction have evolved and tend to become more exposed to market price risks over time. Less mature markets are more prone to make use of lower-risk designs. Still, some form of revenue stabilisation is employed for all auctioned offshore wind energy farms analysed here, regardless of the specific policy choices. Our data confirm a coincidence of declining costs and growing diffusion of auction regimes.
In this paper, 180 papers on photovoltaic (PV) output forecasting were reviewed and a database of forecast errors was extracted for statistical analysis. The paper shows that among the forecast models, hybrid models are most likely to become the primary form of PV output forecasting in the future. The use of data processing techniques is positively correlated with the forecast quality, while the lengths of the forecast horizons and out-of-sample test sets have negative effects on the forecast accuracy. The paper also found that the use of data normalization, the wavelet transform, and the inclusion of clear sky index and numerical weather prediction variables are the most effective data processing techniques. Furthermore, the paper found some evidence of “cherry picking” in the reporting of errors and we recommend that the test sets be at least one year long to avoid any distortion in the performance of the models.
This paper studies how individuals discount the utility they derive from their provision of goods over spatial distance. In a controlled laboratory experiment in Germany, we elicit preferences for the provision of the same good at different locations. To isolate spatial preferences from any other direct value of the goods being close to the individual, we focus on goods with “existence value.” We find that individuals put special weight on the provision of these goods in their immediate vicinity. This “vicinity bias” represents a spatial analogy to the “present bias” in the time dimension.