Abstract
Social acceptance is increasingly becoming a limiting factor in implementing the energy transition in Germany. From today’s perspective, the expansion of wind energy and future transmission grids is only somewhat a technical or economic challenge rather than a social one. Since political decisions on the energy system transformation are often derived from findings of energy system modeling, it seems necessary to increasingly integrate the effects of socio-ecological aspects, such as acceptance issues in energy models. In this paper, an approach is introduced to address effects of social acceptance in energy system models by comparing the influence of different distribution scenarios of wind energy in Germany on the expansion need for future transmission lines. The results show that a socio-ecologic distribution of onshore wind installations according to a balanced burden of the German society does not reduce the grid expansion need significantly compared to an economic siting. An actual reduction of planned transmission grids could just be achieved by a more decentral scenario, including decentral market design. The sensitivity of regionalization is an opportunity to consider local acceptance issues within energy system models and should move more into focus inside the procedure of the current grid development process in Germany.
Highlights
The challenges of climate change, sustainable development and energy supply security have been met with policies to increase the share of renewable energy sources and the implementation of global and local emission reduction targets
For the socio-ecological scenario, itfor was that aThe distribution wind-onshore expansion isplants driven by the construction wind power northern based upon a local burden level has aofreducing effectplants on the in need for grid expansion compared to anfor economically optimized selection, as specified in the economic scenario
Regarding the grid expansion need, the results show that an actual reduction of the grid expansion need can only be achieved by a throughout decentral approach including regional market optimizations
Summary
The challenges of climate change, sustainable development and energy supply security have been met with policies to increase the share of renewable energy sources and the implementation of global and local emission reduction targets. The existence of these targets highlights that the global transformation of energy systems is necessary, and internationally accepted, scientifically confirmed and politically pursued. The shift to energy systems with a high proportion of renewable technologies will play a significant role in such a transformation [1]. As a relatively cost-efficient technology with high expansion potential, plays a significant role for this transformation in Germany [2]. The expansion of renewable generation plants is accompanied by the need to further expand the power grid, for example to transport wind power produced in the north to southern regions with high consumption
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