Abstract
Many countries worldwide have adopted policies to support the expansion of renewable energy sources aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, combating climate change, and, more generally, establishing a globally sustainable energy system. As a result, energy systems around the world are undergoing a process of fundamental change and transformation that goes far beyond the technological dimension. While energy system models have been developed and used for several decades to support decision makers in governments and companies, these models usually focus on the techno-economic dimension, whereas they fall short in addressing and considering behavioural and societal aspects of decisions related to technology acceptance, adoption, and use. In fact, it is often the societal dimension that comes with the greatest challenges and barriers when it comes to making such a socio-technical transformation happen in reality. This paper therefore provides an overview of state-of-the-art energy system models on the one hand and research studying behavioural aspects in the energy sector on the other hand. We find that these are two well-developed fields of research but that they have not yet been integrated sufficiently well to provide answers to the many questions arising in the context of complex socio-technical transformation processes of energy systems. While some promising approaches integrating these two fields can be identified, the total number is very limited. Based on our findings, research gaps and potentials for improvement of both energy system models and behavioural studies are derived. We conclude that a stronger collaboration across disciplines is required.
Highlights
In order to keep the consequences of anthropogenic global climate change within boundaries, the goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the average temperature increase compared to pre-industrial levels to well below 2 ◦ C [1]
We focus on technologies and services that are deemed to play a key role in the future energy system based on the prevailing literature: At utility scale these are large scale variable renewable energy sources (vRES) power plants and transmission lines [13,14]
Beyond defining the technologies of particular interest, it is important to define the categories of behavioural aspects that this paper focuses on, namely the acceptance, adoption and use of a technology or service
Summary
In order to keep the consequences of anthropogenic global climate change within boundaries, the goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the average temperature increase compared to pre-industrial levels to well below 2 ◦ C [1]. Being mainly driven by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the predominant measure to achieve this goal lies in emission reduction. In order to adequately assess these and to inform policymakers with regard to how emissions can be reduced costefficiently, energy system models (ESM) have been developed and used for several decades. These models have historically focused on the electricity sector, depicting generation, transmission and storage technologies in terms of their technological capabilities and cost structures. Solutions of ESMs are systems that meet energy demand optimally under a predefined objective function, typically the minimisation of cost
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