Energy and climate change最新文献

The logic of analysing the stationary features in energy series lays in the policy potentials that unit root assessments confer. This paper identifies the integration properties of renewable energy consumption series in Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Spain, and Netherlands: six energy leaders but also top carbon emitters in the Schengen area. A stepwise integration property testing framework is applied on data spanning more than five decades. It includes a set of univariate unit root tests (ADF, PP, DFGLS, and Kwiatkowski–Phillips–Schmidt–Shin tests); stationary procedures allowing for endogenously determined structural breaks in the intercept and the time-trends (CMR, ZA); double breaks in the deterministic trend (LS); along with the Bahmani-Oskooee et al. (2017)’s extension of the Koenker and Xiao (2004) Fourier Quantile Unit Root test incorporating smooth breaks in the deterministic trend. In neither France, nor Italy, Poland, or Spain, renewable energy consumption series reject the null hypothesis of non-stationarity. This contrasts with German data displaying quantiles-varied integrational properties, whereas the Netherlands presents stable stationary features along each stage of the procedure. In addition to prospects for future research, policy suggestions involving bridging fuels are proposed to offer a secure and less volatile supply of green energies, reach IPCC climate targets, and avoid transitory shocks transmitted back to macroeconomic variables.

The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) 37 study on deep decarbonization and high electrification analyzed a set of scenarios that achieve economy-wide net-zero carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in North America by mid-century, exploring the implications of different technology evolutions, policies, and behavioral assumptions affecting energy supply and demand. For this paper, 16 modeling teams reported resulting emissions projections, energy system evolution, and economic activity. This paper provides an overview of the study, documents the scenario design, provides a roadmap for complementary forthcoming papers from this study, and offers an initial summary and comparison of results for net-zero CO₂ by 2050 scenarios in the United States. We compare various outcomes across models and scenarios, such as emissions, energy use, fuel mix evolution, and technology adoption. Despite disparate model structure and sources for input assumptions, there is broad agreement in energy system trends across models towards deep decarbonization of the electricity sector coupled with increased end-use electrification of buildings, transportation, and to a lesser extent industry. All models deploy negative emissions technologies (e.g., direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) in addition to land sinks to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions. Important differences emerged in the results, showing divergent pathways among end-use sectors with deep electrification and grid decarbonization as necessary but not sufficient conditions to achieve net zero. These differences will be explored in the papers complementing this study to inform efforts to reach net-zero emissions and future research needs.

Conversations on how to assess, innovate, and develop policies for carbon removal are for now largely confined to the Global North – reflecting a concentration of academic interest (and concern), innovation capacity, early funding initiatives, and policy path-dependence in climate, energy, and land-use. However, future population growth, emissions trajectories, and even concentrations of economic (and technological power) are shifting to the Global South. Here, after explaining the positionality of the author, this paper summarizes the perspectives and concerns of 90 key academics, technologists, and policy entrepreneurs on expanding carbon removal assessment, innovation, and policy beyond early foci within (northern) Europe, the US, Japan, and Australia. It explores how concerns about systems (coupling and infrastructure deployment), justice (equity and inclusion), and governance (including pledges, funding, and offsets) markedly differ across Global North and Global South dynamics. It discusses how such issues intersect with each other, and concludes with insights for research and policy.

The residential sector is targeted for emission reduction in the climate action plans of many countries. These plans typically focus on reducing the operational energy of the residential sector only, with little focus on the embodied emissions of its construction. To fully decabonise the residential sector both operational and embodied carbon emissions would need to be eliminated.

This paper presents whole life carbon quantification of the Irish residential sector, which aggregates the carbon emitted in operating the national housing stock, as well as the carbon emitted year on year in building and maintaining it. A detailed methodology is presented for both baselining, and forecasting, the emissions due to the residential sector. Operational emissions from space heating, hot water provision and electricity usage in the home are amalgamated. Embodied emissions, which are distributed across almost all categories of the national carbon inventory, are also estimated. The whole life carbon emissions of the residential sector account for approximately 25% of the total GHG emissions reported in the national carbon inventories.

Modelled forecasts to 2030 are presented for national plans that aim to reduce emissions through retrofit and electricity decarbonisation, but will result in increased embodied emissions through planned housing development. The current Climate Action Plan for reduction of residential sector operational carbon fall short of achieving sectoral target reductions. Additional measures will be required if the sector is to meet its proportional share and sectoral emission ceiling. Even if these are achieved, gains that might accrue from home retrofit and electricity decarbonisation will be negated by the growth in embodied emissions deriving from housing development outlined in government plans, when the sector is considered from a whole life carbon perspective.

Forecasts for operational emissions including business as usual and national sectoral targeted reduction scenarios of 40% are outlined. A range of scenarios are then presented to achieve emission reduction across the whole of the residential sector in line with the national 51% reduction targets. These will require; strategic targeting of the worst performing homes for retrofit first, complete decarbonisation of electricity, reduction in the size of future homes, as well as a major reduction in the embodied carbon of building materials used for residential construction. Activation, and renovation, of existing and vacant properties could accelerate the number of homes available while offsetting the need for extensive new construction.

State-level electricity standards are proliferating and becoming more ambitious, with numerous US states adopting a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and a small but increasing number of states participating in carbon pricing programs. The State of Hawai‘i has an ambitious RPS that requires 100% electricity generation through renewable sources by 2045. This study uses a general equilibrium model to compare a range of state-level carbon reduction strategies that achieve the same level of GHG emissions reductions in Hawai‘i as the RPS. We find that the RPS has regressive welfare outcomes. In contrast, an electric-sector-only carbon tax can be progressive if revenues are returned to households in equal-share dividends. Without dividends, there is little difference in welfare impacts between the RPS and electric-sector-only carbon tax. An economywide carbon tax has the lowest marginal cost of GHG abatement and highest level of electric vehicle adoption. When revenues are returned to households, the economywide carbon tax also has the most progressive welfare outcomes. Without revenue recycling to households, however, the economywide carbon tax yields the worst welfare impacts.

Global energy sector decarbonization efforts are contingent on technology choices for energy production and end-use in emerging markets such as India, where air conditioning (AC) is expected to be a major driver for electricity demand growth. Here, we assess the impact of demand and supply side-drivers on the long-term evolution of the electricity sector in India under various technology and policy scenarios. Our analysis is based on developing: (a) multiple demand scenarios produced from a bottom-up forecasting model with high temporal resolution that capture structural changes in electricity consumption resulting from (AC) and electric vehicle (EV) adoption, and (b) a multi-period power system capacity expansion model with high temporal resolution of grid operations to model supply-side evolution in response to changes in demand and technology and policy factors. Such a framework allows us to, for example, quantify the impacts of improving appliance efficiency standards for AC systems or shifts in EV charging patterns on power system decarbonization prospects. Under projected renewables and Li-ion storage cost declines, our modeling points to solar and wind generation contributing substantially (46–67%) to meet annual electricity demand in India by 2030. However, without appropriate policy measures to phase out existing coal generation, even such rapid adoption of variable renewable energy coupled with one or more technological levers such as low-cost energy storage and demand-side measures such as setting aggressive AC efficiency standards and deploying distribution level storage, are insufficient to reduce annual CO₂ emissions in 2050 vs. 2020 because of the relatively higher growth rate of projected electricity demand over this period. This suggests that deep decarbonization of India's power sector will require policy measures beyond efforts related to accelerating renewables deployment.

Policies for transitions to decarbonised energy and transport systems have implications for social welfare. Here we firstly investigate, via focus groups, public support for policies that have implications for energy and transport poverty in a country with a sizeable incidence of both, the United Kingdom (UK). We then examine which of the publics’ policy preferences concur with those of a wider group of expert stakeholders (n = 47), observing concurrence in the top choices of both for: (i) better public transport; mandating improved energy efficiency in (ii) rental housing and (iii) new homes; and (iv) expanding an income supplement scheme (such as the Warm Home Discount). While the public are relatively supportive of policy for electric vehicles, expert stakeholders see the shift to convergent electrification and digitalisation in domestic contexts as carrying risks for lower income households and those less digitally literate. We highlight that many of the public questioned view themselves as likely to be worthy of assistance, given the level of price inflation in the UK. We conclude that decarbonisation policies require careful attention not only to infrastructure, but to social welfare policy if they are to carry public support.

Imminent climate change impacts call for stronger energy system modeling approaches in order to design resilient communities. This study presents a flexible framework to integrate resilience analysis within the scope of long-term energy system optimization models (ESOMs). It employs a multi-objective resilience metric approach for energy system design, which allows for the independent representation and treatment of resilience and sustainability metrics. Several energy system-characterizing resilience and sustainability metrics are identified and integrated into a composite resilience metric, which is maximized as the objective function in an open-source ESOM. The cost performance of the resulting energy system design is tested across a range of short-term resilience scenarios, capturing different shocks. The method is demonstrated on two municipal case studies (located in China and Ghana). Three energy systems are designed and compared based on cost, emission, and resilience optimization objectives. Results illustrate a wide range of cost impacts depending on the system and resilience scenario. Systems designed based on a resilience objective offer more flexibility to adapt to and absorb shocks, thus reducing damage costs. Case study findings illustrate the value of incorporating resilience analysis into conventional ESOM and energy planning approaches in order to build more resilient communities.

Successful net zero governance calls for the fundamental reshaping of energy law, but it is not always receptive to changes required by decarbonization. If energy law's restrictive effects emerging from the field's legal traditions are not properly acknowledged and addressed, they may hamper the achievement of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in the energy sector.