Diffusion Of Renewable Technologies Research Articles

The impact of precarious security conditions on renewable electrification: The case of the West Bank

Recent energy-related writing has highlighted the spatiality of renewable energy and its possible affinity to geopolitics. Yet, energy geography and geopolitics literature lack reference to security and how it may shape the energy landscape. This study unpacks the elusive concepts of security and territoriality and operationalizes them into measurable variables. Using statistical and qualitative methods, including an original dataset based on planning and building protocols, this study tests the interplay between security conditions and territoriality on renewable energy adoption. It examines the case study of the contested Area C territory in the West Bank, within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The findings show that precarious security conditions discourage renewable energy diffusion, particularly when security is linked to territorial conflict. As land-intensive infrastructures, renewable energy systems challenge territorial claims. This study demonstrates how space acts as an intermediate variable connecting security concerns with the diffusion of renewable technology. Security interests use spatial planning as a key mechanism to negatively influence on renewable energy diffusion in contested territory, such as Area C, where power asymmetry heavily leans to the advantage of one party. These findings contradict the argument that renewable energy is a catalyst for peace building. They show how renewable energy projects create inequalities and are often held hostage by the territorial dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

The key role of historic path-dependency and competitor imitation on the electricity sector low-carbon transition

Market players in the energy sector transition are heterogeneous, have bounded rationality and are influenced by their own past failures, as well as imitating the successes of their competitors. However this agent heterogeneity and complex behaviour in investment choices is not taken into account in traditional energy-economy models used to inform energy sector policies. By using BRAIN-Energy, an agent-based model of investment in electricity generation, which enables to study the impact of actors’ heterogeneous characteristics on the transition pathways of the UK, German and Italian electricity sectors, this paper shows how historic path-dependency in investment choices displaces low-carbon in favour of high-carbon investments under a weak regulatory framework. By contrast, imitation can help the diffusion of renewable technologies, through a self-reinforcing positive feedback when government subsidies to low-carbon investments are in place.

European project \u201cCheap-GSHPs\u201d: installation and monitoring of newly designed helicoidal ground source heat exchanger on the German test site

Nowadays, the energy price fluctuations and the economic crisis are jeopardizing the development and diffusion of renewable technologies and sources. With the aim of both reducing the overall costs of shallow geothermal systems and improving their installation safety, an European project has took place recently, under the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. The acronym of the mentioned project is Cheap-GSHPs, meaning “cheap and efficient application of reliable ground source heat exchangers and pumps”; the Cheap-GSHPs project involves 17 partners among 9 European countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Romania, Spain and Switzerland. In order to achieve the planned targets, a holistic approach is adopted, where all involved elements that take part of shallow geothermal activities are here integrated. In order to reduce the specific costs of geothermal installations, some newly designed geometries of heat basket-type ground source heat exchanger (GSHE) are modified drastically to receive a better performance of the geothermal installation. Within the sector of very shallow geothermal systems, these new developments are also tested on six representative demonstration sites around Europe. At the German test site in Northern Bavaria, four heat basket-type GSHEs are installed and equipped with certain monitoring systems (moisture, two different temperature sensors) and various backfilling materials of different grain size classes. The different installations will be tested for 12 months to evaluate the best combination of the newly designed heat basket-type GSHE and corresponding backfilling material mixture.

An energy pricing scheme for the diffusion of decentralized renewable technology investment in developing countries

The purpose of this paper is to investigate price support for market penetration of renewable energy in developing nations through a decentralized supply process. We integrate the new decentralized energy support: renewable premium tariff, to analyze impacts of tariff incentives on the diffusion of renewable technology in Senegal. Based on photovoltaic and wind technologies and an assessment of renewable energy resources in Senegal, an optimization technique is combined with a cash flow analysis to investigate investment decisions in renewable energy sector. Our findings indicate that this support mechanism could strengthen the sustainable deployment of renewable energy in remote areas of Senegal. Although different payoffs emerged, profits associated with a renewable premium tariff are the highest among the set of existing payoffs. Moreover in analyzing impacts of price incentives on social welfare, we show that price tariffing schemes must be strategically scrutinized in order to minimize welfare loss associated with price incentives. Finally we argue that a sustainable promotion of incentive mechanisms supporting deployment of renewable technology in developing nations should be carried out under reliable institutional structures. The additional advantage of the proposed methodology is its ability to integrate different stakeholders (producers, investors and consumers) in the planning process.