Abstract
Many Caribbean island nations have historically been heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for both power and transportation, while at the same time being at an enhanced risk from the impacts of climate change, although their emissions represent a very tiny fraction of the global total responsible for climate change. Small island developing states (SIDSs) are among the leaders in advocating for the ambitious 1.5 °C Paris Agreement target and the transition to 100% sustainable, renewable energy systems. In this work, three central results are presented. First, through GIS mapping of all Caribbean islands, the potential for near-coastal deep-water as a resource for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is shown, and these results are coupled with an estimate of the countries for which OTEC would be most advantageous due to a lack of other dispatchable renewable power options. Secondly, hourly data have been utilized to explicitly show the trade-offs between battery storage needs and dispatchable renewable sources such as OTEC in 100% renewable electricity systems, both in technological and economic terms. Finally, the utility of near-shore, open-cycle OTEC with accompanying desalination is shown to enable a higher penetration of renewable energy and lead to lower system levelized costs than those of a conventional fossil fuel system.
Highlights
System integration of variable and dispatchable renewables with battery storage are shown in Section 3.2 and example system levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) results are given in Section 3.3 showing estimated costs both with and without the inclusion of desalination
Results for Balancing Dispatchable ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) Technology with Variable Renewables and Battery Storage In Figure 5, two cases are shown in which the dispatchable OTEC technology capacity is set at 10 MW (Figure 5a) and at 20 MW (Figure 5b), and the capacities of the variable renewable energy (VRE) technologies are varied from 0 to 200 or 100 MW (x- and y-axes)
The positive side of this scenario of transformation is that Caribbean islands are wealthy in the inexhaustible natural resources of solar and wind power; dispatchable renewable energy (RE) resources are more unevenly distributed among islands, even within a small region
Summary
One of the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 ◦ C [2,3] is that the world needs to be carbon-emissions neutral by 2050 or shortly thereafter. If this target is taken as a guiding concept, roughly thirty years remain for most, if not all, countries to decarbonize their energy systems; in a world largely free of fossil fuels, it will be critical for SIDSs to accelerate this transition
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