A new approach for evaluation of renewable energy resources: A case of Turkey

Hydrogen farm concept: A Perspective for Turkey

This article reviews renewable energy programs and policies as a result of the resurgence in demand for fossil fuels. Australia and selected countries are considered through the lens of energy justice. The range of countries evidence a resurgence in demand for fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, in the wake of disruptive global events. For example, the war in Ukraine, Middle East conflicts and pandemics such as COVID, can be seen as major global disruptors of renewable energy policies and projects. While Australia’s renewable energy in contrast to non-renewable energy is the focus, a mix of selected countries are chosen as comparators. The selected countries capture how governments are navigating the fiscal/economic, political and environmental tensions between renewable and non-renewable energy sources, policies, programs and laws. The two research questions ask ‘What current and proposed policy and laws address the energy justice economic, environmental and political aspects of the climate-related transition plans to renewable energy?’ as well as ‘Can the mix of non-renewable and renewable energy resources be quantitively ranked against economic, political and environmental pressures?’ The first question adopts the method of desktop research, conducted to produce policy and legislation data that are linked together with the qualitative method of narrative. For instance, the Australian legislative focus will be taxation law. For the second question, a quantitative method using the ‘energy justice metric’ is adopted. In particular, the research builds and adapts the parameters of the energy justice metric for all comparator countries. The results are plotted on a ternary phase diagram. The highlights of this article include the raising of awareness of energy policy distractions to renewable programs as a result of the resurgence in demand for fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, in the wake of disruptive global events. The essence of the article points towards how energy justice principles can enable resilience in policy decisions despite these disruptor issues and countries can continue to move towards a just transition to a low carbon economy. Plain English summary There are major dilemmas facing countries today in the shift towards sustainable energy policies. Issues include funding for renewable energy programs and policies, alongside the resurgence in demand for fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, due to disruptive global events (such as military conflicts, COVID-19 and extreme weather). This research considers the energy market tensions for the supply of fossil fuels, and the impact on renewable energy policies and laws. Through qualitative and metric-based questions, the trajectory of Australia, a fossil fuel rich country, is evaluated, and then its progress is compared with a range of countries including France, Trinidad-Tobago, Guyana, French Guiana, Iran, Malaysia, Kenya and Uganda. Thus, energy policy success and failures are explored from across the world. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of data using the energy justice metric shows the progress of their just energy transitions. The findings indicate positive steps in the journey of a just transition to a low-carbon economy. The modelling supports the research outcomes on key dilemmas arising from energy resource policies in these selected countries. Achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement emission targets remains elusive, but a justice-framed energy policy transition is the first step for many of these fossil fuel intense nations.

Will blue hydrogen lock us into fossil fuels forever?

Reforming fossil fuel subsidies requires a new approach to setting international commitments

Environmental issues in energy policy, especially global warming, have received more attention lately than ever before. Excessive dependence on fossil fuels, deforestation, and land degradation are the three main factors that lead to increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Consequently, the global average temperature has doubled compared to anticipation. Various international protocols and agendas have been established, pledged to restore the global average temperature to the 1990 level. As a result, energy policies worldwide have also undergone various transformations to align with these protocols since then. As a developing nation, Malaysian’s electricity demand has continuously grown in the past two decades. To date, the electricity sector is still dominated by fossil fuels. Government incentives have been the most influential factor in the nation’s energy mix trend. Several energy policies implemented throughout the past 22 years have seen the shift from natural gas to coal power in power plants, and in more recent years, renewable energy resources. Numerous studies in the past have independently outlined the status of various energy source in Malaysia. However, they all fell short in providing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the Malaysian energy sector. Notably, the question that remains to be answered is how GHG emissions have changed in response to the amendment in the energy mix; hence, the effectiveness of policy change in this aspect remains unknown. This paper analysed the past and present trend of Malaysia electricity generation mix and the resultant GHG emissions. In particular, this paper focused on investigating the variation of combined specific GHG emissions in the Malaysian electricity sector, in response to the policy change within the past 22 years. This provides the insight for Malaysian policymakers to evaluate the effectiveness of past policies in GHG emissions and the measures to be taken in future. The finding of this paper shows the attention on the nation’s GHG emissions has evolved over the years, following the diversification in energy mix driven by the policy change. It was also found that, on average, it took a decade for a significant reduction in specific GHG emission to be visible since the government’s energy policy implementation.

Evaluating and improving technologies for energy storage and backup power

The Turkish government has adopted a new energy policy to diversify electricity supply through exploitation of the remaining potential of the domestic fossil fuels and the renewable energy resources. The main goal of the new energy policy, so called “energy policy 2023” in this dissertation, is to increase the share of renewable in energy mix to at least 30% of the annual total generation in 2023; whereas to reduce that of natural gas to at least 30%. Accordingly, the target capacity expansion of renewable energy technologies (RETs) is anticipated to bring gains in gross domestic product, reductions in natural gas imports and CO2 emissions. The aforementioned assessments are limited in scope to the analysis of the impacts of substituting combined cycled gas power plants by RETs; although the governmental policies are principally analyzed taking into account their benefits and costs to the society considering alternative utilizations of the scarce resources. Therefore, this dissertation aims to carry out analyses on the energy policy 2023 regarding the development of the investments in RETs and the net social benefit of the proposed capacity expansion targets for the domestic energy resources. The investment analysis is carried out by quantifying the level of full load hours (FLHs) of operation to trigger investment in RETs by utilizing the net present value (NPV) and the real option methods taking into account the revenue streams from the feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme and the wholesale market price of electricity respectively. The results of the analysis are compared with the resource potential related to the FLHs of RETs in Turkey to discuss whether the capacity expansion targets are reachable or not. The novelty of this study lies in the application of the NPV and the real option methods to quantify threshold FLHs for the aforementioned investment analysis. The analyses on the development of the investments in RETs indicate that the targets for biomass, solar PV and geothermal power plants are anticipated to be reachable under the given assumptions; whereas the achievement of the targets for hydropower and wind power plants are considered to be dependent on the decision of the Turkish government whether the corresponding FiT rates should be increased. Indeed, the Turkish government has declared that the rates in FiT scheme can be raised; in order to reach the RET capacity expansion targets for the year 2023. The net social benefit of adopting energy policy 2023 is relatively measured by developing a capacity expansion model to conduct techno-economic analyses on the reference (i.e. energy policy 2023) and the alternative capacity expansion scenarios. Accordingly, the net social benefit of adopting energy policy 2023 indicates the 2015 present value of foregone/gained savings in capital, fuel and external costs in comparison to an alternative capacity expansion scenario. In total, four alternative capacity expansion scenarios are constructed dependent on renewable, imported hard coal and natural gas substituting for…

Plastics and climate change—Breaking carbon lock-ins through three mitigation pathways

Iran, endowed with abundant renewable and non-renewable energy resources, particularly non-renewable resources, faces challenges such as air pollution, climate change and energy security. As a leading exporter and consumer of fossil fuels, it is also attempting to use renewable energy as part of its energy mix toward energy security and sustainability. Due to its favorable geographic characteristics, Iran has diverse and accessible renewable sources, which provide appropriate substitutes to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Therefore, this study aims to examine trends in energy demand, policies and development of renewable energies and the causal relationship between renewable and non-renewable energies and economic growth using two methodologies. This study first reviews the current state of energy and energy policies and then employs Granger causality analysis to test the relationships between the variables considered. Results showed that renewable energy technologies currently do not have a significant and adequate role in the energy supply of Iran. To encourage the use of renewable energy, especially in electricity production, fuel diversification policies and development program goals were introduced in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Diversifying energy resources is a key pillar of Iran’s new plan. In addition to solar and hydropower, biomass from the municipal waste from large cities and other agricultural products, including fruits, can be used to generate energy and renewable sources. While present policies indicate the incorporation of sustainable energy sources, further efforts are needed to offset the use of fossil fuels. Moreover, the study predicts that with the production capacity of agricultural products in 2018, approximately 4.8 billion liters of bioethanol can be obtained from crop residues and about 526 thousand tons of biodiesel from oilseeds annually. Granger’s causality analysis also shows that there is a unidirectional causal relationship between economic growth to renewable and non-renewable energy use. Labor force and gross fixed capital formation cause renewable energy consumption, and nonrenewable energy consumption causes renewable energy consumption.

Potential of renewable energy alternatives in Australia

Climate change, limited fossil fuel availability and the dependency on energy carrier imports lead the European Union to the formulation of an energy policy for Europe. The EU sets the following criteria for its future energy supply: sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness. Considering the carbon dioxide emissions of fossil fuels and the unsolved problem of the ultimate disposal of radioactive waste, only renewable energy can currently be considered sustainable if applied in a socially acceptable way and in accordance with nature conservation. The use of renewable energy can also reduce the dependency on energy carrier imports. Contrary to fossil fuels, renewable energy will become cheaper in the future due to technological learning. The main disadvantage of some renewable energy resources is their fluctuating availability. Adaptation of the energy supply system must take place especially in the power sector in order to reliably cover fluctuating demand with fluctuating resources at any time. In this work, the energy system model ‘REMix’ (Renewable Energy Mix for Sustainable Electricity Supply) is developed. It uses data on the availability of renewable energy across Europe and North Africa (EUNA) to dimension low-cost power supply structures for the EUNA-region, or parts of it, under specific conditions, such as specified shares of renewable energy in the power supply or specified national self-supply shares. The model takes into account the costs of generation technologies, transmission lines and storage units, and finds a combination of these technologies and their geographic locations that is least-cost under the given assumptions. A geographic information system was used for the analysis of the installable capacities and power generation potentials of typical technologies for harnessing renewable energy resources. This analysis is described and the potentials of solar PV, solar CSP, wind onshore and wind offshore, biomass, hydro and geothermal power plants are shown in tables and maps. The data are used as input into a linear programming energy system model which uses them as constraints on the power supply system to be dimensioned. The model, its sensitivity to input parameter variations and a test application are described. The findings confirm the basic findings of other work in this field: transmission lines can be a crucial element of a low-cost, renewable-energy-based electricity supply because they enable balancing effects in a large grid and the use of the highest quality resources even in remote areas, such as deserts or at sea. However, the international cooperation that is necessary to reach the cost-minimum for a given supply task may not be reached by politics or resulting dependencies may be opposed to political goals. Therefore, REMix was built such that countries can be examined individually and the influence of different parameters on their energy supply costs and structure can be investigated. In the test model application, power supply systems for 36 regions in Europe and North Africa, almost all individual countries, are designed with REMix as island grids on the one hand and on the other hand as a network without transmission restrictions (other than the costs of the transmission lines). The model shows that in certain regions the island grid electricity costs can be much higher than, only a little higher than, or even lower than the electricity costs in the network, under the given technological and economic assumptions. The sensitivity to parameter variations is shown to be high; the results of the test application must therefore be considered one example of a technically feasible and efficient supply system but cannot claim to be least-cost in general.

Pakistan has long relied on fossil fuels for electricity generation. This is despite the fact that the country is blessed with enormous renewable energy (RE) resources, which can significantly diversify the fuel mix for electricity generation. In this study, various renewable resources of Pakistan—solar, hydro, biomass, wind, and geothermal energy—are analyzed by using an integrated Delphi-analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (F-TOPSIS)-based methodology. In the first phase, the Delphi method was employed to define and select the most important criteria for the selection of RE resources. This process identified four main criteria, i.e., economic, environmental, technical, and socio-political aspects, which are further supplemented by 20 sub-criteria. AHP is later used to obtain the weights of each criterion and the sub-criteria of the decision model. The results of this study reveal wind energy as the most feasible RE resource for electricity generation followed by hydropower, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy. The sensitivity analysis of the decision model results shows that the results of this study are significant, reliable, and robust. The study provides important insights related to the prioritizing of RE resources for electricity generation and can be used to undertake policy decisions toward sustainable energy planning in Pakistan.

Net-zero emissions chemical industry in a world of limited resources

Various organizations all across the globe adopted a mechanics called ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM). Clean and renewable energy resources are developed due to the shortage of naturally available energy sources like fossil fuels and natural gases. Research-based on renewable energy has become an essential topic in the twenty-first century due to the higher energy crisis. On the other hand, the energy extraction process, like the combustion of fossil fuels, gives rise to the enormous pollution level in the world; thus, the utilization of these energy sources leads to the rapidly decreasing their reverse. Natural resources like sunlight, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc., are available all across the world, and free of cost are popularly known as renewable energy resources or non-conventional energy resources. Among all non-conventional energy resources, solar energy or sunlight energy is most popular as well as widely used for the extraction of useful energy and power. Solar energy has become one of the most promising alternatives for conventional energy resources. In contrast to conventional energy resources, renewable energy resources are much eco-friendly and much cleaner and produce energy without the harmful effect of pollution.

A review of current energy systems and green energy potential in Kazakhstan