Energiewende Research Articles

The potential supply risk of vanadium for the renewable energy transition in Germany

Vanadium-based Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs) seem to be a promising solution for medium and large storage systems required to smooth the fluctuating provision of solar and wind energy. Beside technological considerations, the challenge for VRFBs is the availability of vanadium, influenced by the high demand by the steel and chemical sectors and the small number of mines operating worldwide. Given vanadium's toxicity, the health, safety, and environmental (HSE) implications might, too, affect vanadium's availability.This study assesses the risks of supply disruptions associated with vanadium for VRFBs for the German market through the Holistic Risk Analysis and Modelling (HoRAM) method. The analysis includes not only technological parameters but also HSE and societal ones. In total, 242 variables were selected to characterize vanadium's supply chain. Considering a successful energy transformation in 2050, four logic-stochastic models were created to assess the supply risks associated with four different market shares of VRFBs at the storage market, i.e. 10%, 25%, 50%, and 100%.The most crucial factor influencing the overall risk of supply turned out to be mining activities. These are driven by a lack of qualified personnel, but the HSE and societal aspects can also hamper the supply chain. Therefore, both the Government and companies should consider these aspects to better orientate their future strategies.Of the four analysed market shares, surprisingly the 50% one has shown the lowest risk. Further, the mitigation strategy of opening the domestic market could reduce the risk of vanadium supply disruption, i.e. high impacts for VRFBs.

Transferring awareness into action: A meta-analysis of the behavioral drivers of energy transitions in Germany, Austria, Finland, Morocco, Jordan and Iran

Energy transition is a so-called wicked policy problem which requires involvement of stakeholders and laypeople. This support should go beyond social acceptance, which is a rather passive attitude, and should include social factors such as willingness to participate in energy transition and willingness to use renewable energy sources. However, moving from awareness to action is a complex process and requires understanding of social factors. Until recently scientific research was mainly focused on technical and economic factors of energy transition however the volume of scientific results published by social science energy research is growing. The focus of this paper is on how people are making choices and which factors are influencing their choices. Research based on social sciences and behavioral economics shows preferences and rationalities of people when it comes to the question of available in frames of energy transition alternatives. The results of this paper are based on large-scale surveys, decision-making experiments and interviews conducted in Germany, Austria, Finland, Morocco, Jordan and Iran. The results show high level of awareness about the need of climate change mitigation across countries, which is decreasing with the level of details about the projects or the energy transition processes. The results also show dominance of economic rationality with concerns about energy prices and socio-economic impacts from energy transition over other concerns such as environmental protection. Also, such factors as maintenance and reparation of technology and possibility to participate in decision-making processes have impact on willingness to support energy transition which goes beyond social acceptance.

From Green Energy to the Green Car State? The Political Economy of Ecological Modernisation in Germany

ABSTRACT In recent years, the role of the state in sustainability transitions has received increasing attention. Germany is often perceived as a forerunner in climate and environmental politics. Building on critical theories of the state, this paper explores the role of the German state in two key fields of society–nature relationships: energy (electricity) and transportation. Whereas Germany's energy transition (Energiewende) is widely praised internationally, its mobility transition (Verkehrswende) is a more difficult endeavour, as the German car industry is at the core of the national model of capitalism, specialising in the premium market segment. Against this background, Germany's status as an environmental leader is questioned as there is a strong state–capital nexus, which admittedly leaves space for green politics in case of intense social struggles. If, in addition, technological alternatives are developed embracing the potential to renew the country's ‘accumulation strategy’, the window of opportunity for green politics widens. In contrast to the Energiewende, which was at least partially accompanied by a decentralisation of power generation and the questioning of existing power relations, there is little indication that the German state will push for a mobility turnaround that goes beyond a limited greening of the automobile.

Local Renewable Energy Initiatives in Germany and Japan in a Changing National Policy Environment.

Our article explores the contribution of local initiatives to the creation of path dependencies for energy transition in Germany and Japan in the face of resistance from entrenched incumbents at the national level. We use a process-tracing methodology based partly on interviews with local participants. In particular, we explore the role of local initiatives in securing "socio-political space" for the expansion of renewable energy and in embedding themselves in "ecosystems" of public and private institutions. German energy activists were more successful than their Japanese counterparts in expanding this space and creating positive feedbacks in part because they were able to build horizontal networks that anchored the energy transition firmly in local communities. Although problems with grid technology have led to retrenchment in both cases, Japanese activists' reliance on vertical networks has limited their ability to weather a backlash from national government and utility actors. Our study demonstrates the interaction of political, economic/technological, and legitimation paths to energy transition and highlights the importance of the latter two.

Household Costs and Resistance to Germany's Energy Transition

AbstractGermany is an exemplary case of an energy transition from nuclear energy and fossil fuels toward renewables in the electricity sector, but it also demonstrates repeated, increasingly successful countermobilization by energy incumbents and their allies. The course for Germany's energy transition was largely set with the adoption of a feed‐in tariff law in 1990, but since then the energy transition has been altered by a series of policy‐making episodes, each of which was shaped by the outcomes of the previous episodes; there has been a combination of reinforcing and reactive sequences. This article uses policy windows and advocacy coalition theory, supplemented by work on resistance to carbon pricing, to analyze the four periods in which opponents of the energy transition had the greatest opportunities to limit or reverse it. It makes three main arguments intended to influence future research on energy transitions: (1) episodes of opposition to the feed‐in tariff policy occurred when problem awareness and political commitment converged, (2) the outcomes of those conflicts depended on the balance of mobilization by advocacy and opposing coalitions, and (3) rising household costs due to the renewable energy surcharge drove both problem awareness and the composition of the opposing coalition, which helped lead to a more far‐reaching retrenchment of renewable energy policy in 2014 than in earlier periods.

A participatory stakeholder process for evaluating sustainable energy transition scenarios

This paper presents an evaluation of four energy transition scenarios under consideration of multiple stakeholder opinions. We construct a multi-criteria group decision model that applies Value-Focused Thinking to construct a holistic objective system and uses Multi-Attribute Utility Theory to evaluate the energy transition scenarios. Although the individual scenario evaluations show that the opinions of the stakeholders towards a sustainable energy transition differ largely, we are able to identify three main strands of opinions among the considered stakeholders. By bundling the stakeholder interests by employing a k-means clustering technique, we derive detailed policy recommendations for a sustainable energy transition. For the case of Germany, these are to reduce GHG and pollutant emissions and at the same time enable citizens’ participation, limit the visual impact on landscapes, and ensuring internationally comparable energy-related political frameworks for the economy. For the case of a sustainable energy transition in Germany, we find that the stakeholders considered prefer either the highly ambitious Climate Protection scenario (Scenario B) or the Pan-European scenario (Scenario C). The main novelties of the study are that stakeholders are included in every step of the decision-making process and that very comprehensive energy transition scenarios, comprising the electricity, transport, heat, and industry sectors, are considered.

High efficiency gas-turbine power generator GTU-2U

Introduction: the analysis of the main areas of energy transition (energie wende) from fossil fuels and nuclear power generation to renewable sources of energy has identified the following four key problems: electric power shortage; ageing of power generation facilities; insufficient infrastructure; growing demand for gas fuel. In Russia, distributed small-scale power generation facilities serve those consumers who have no access to centralized power supply or network channels of regular power generation. A combination of versatile approaches to electric power generation should be applied in the course of designing a specific energy generation facility in this context.Methods: the research project represents an analysis of the works written by the leading Russian and foreign researchers specializing on power engineering, namely, energy supply to consumers. The expert assessment method has identified the niches which are best fitted by gas turbine facilities. Computerized and simulation modeling techniques were used to perform the analytical and statistical processing of the project findings.Results and discussion: the trend for the structural improvement of small-scale liquefied natural gas facilities has been identified in the course of the research. The author has substantiated development of systems for power supply to smallcapacity liquefied natural gas production facilities. The proposed gas turbine GTU-2U is designated for generation of electric energy, if in operation as a standalone facility as part of a centralized heating and power plant in the standalone mode of operation, or in case of concurrent operation along with an energy generation system within the framework of distributed small capacity networks. The co-authors have substantiated the unit’s practical application and identified the GTU-2U distribution market both in Russia and abroad: small capacity distributed power generation industry and power supply to small-capacity liquefied natural gas production facilities. The latter is a relatively new market which is in the process of proactive development both in mature and developing economies. This power supply pattern will enable to monetize gas deposits, located far from pipelines and to supply gas to hard-to-access regions.Conclusion: the key trends in the development of the contemporary power generation industry are considered in the article. Gas turbine unit GTU-2U has been designed. This unit is capable of generating power both as a standalone facility, as a component of a centralized heating and power plant in the standalone mode of operation, or in case of concurrent operation along with an energy generation system. Its strengths substantiate its practical application both in the Russian and international power generation markets.

Moving towards socio-technical scenarios of the German energy transition—lessons learned from integrated energy scenario building

Energy scenarios describing transition pathways towards low-emission energy systems are commonly used to design mitigation strategies. There is a growing awareness in the research community that energy transitions should be understood as socio-technical transitions and that energy scenario construction should reflect this fact. This paper presents an application of a socio-technical scenario building method for improving long-term scenarios and strategies for the energy transition in Germany. Developing integrated scenarios on a national level starts with employing the cross impact balancing (CIB) approach for identifying consistent societal scenarios. As a first step, relevant context factors are selected and defined (39 descriptors and alternative future developments). Interviews with experts are used to develop a qualitative impact network for the CIB. The resulting context scenarios are then transferred to quantitative energy scenarios by using two different energy models that account for energy demand and supply structures for Germany. A final evaluation focuses on primary energy demand, renewable energy shares, and direct energy-related CO2 emissions. The approach integrates statements of societal and energy model experts and results in an interdisciplinary knowledge integration. This in turn provides insight into the method’s capacity to improve the consistency of energy scenarios and to identify potential societal risks related to the energy transition process.

The Energiewende as a Public Value Challenge for German DSOs

As the implementation of the Energiewende in Germany is making itself increasingly felt in the distribution networks, this article explores how the growing amount of distributed renewable energy impacts the Distribution System Operator (DSO) and its responsibility for public values, such as the availability, affordability, and environmental sustainability of the electricity infrastructure. Although the German government’s aim is twofold, promote the energy transition and at the same time maintain a balance between the energy-related public values, it turns out that current legislation limits the realization of environmental sustainability as a public value, particularly where the Energiewende is taking place: at the distribution level. This article studies the interaction between the law and its regulation of technology, the technological advances driving the energy transition, and the safeguarding of public values. More room for environmental sustainability as a public value would help German DSOs play their pivotal role in the Energiewende. Interviews and an online survey with energy sector representatives demonstrate that DSOs need more legal leeway, enabling them to give more consideration to environmental sustainability and make public value trade-offs that should be based on clear criteria laid down by law and decree-law and decided upon in a transparent process.

Acceptance of biogas plants taking into account space and place

As part of Germany's energy transition, enormous efforts are being made to transform the German energy supply to renewable energies. While much of the energy supply from renewables is wind and solar power, biogas contributes on third position a considerable share due to substantial state subsidies. The transformation to renewable energies leads to notable landscape changes that should be taken into consideration when studying the acceptance of renewable energy plants. We do this by adding spatial information to data from an online survey (N = 942) questioning the acceptance of biogas plants. The density of and proximity to existing biogas plants as well as the intensity of maize cultivation in the vicinity of respondents is integrated into the analysis together with more conventional influencing factors such as place attachment and attitudes. Results show that attitudes have the strongest explanatory power but spatial variables, particularly maize intensity, contribute significantly, too. Place attachment does not show reliable effects. The results demonstrate that spatial data can be useful in the analysis of survey data, for instance, in an environmental context. They also show that diversification of the raw materials used for fermentation in biogas plants might be an important factor in improving their acceptance.

The Energiewende in Germany. Results, prospects, forecast

The Energiewende in Germany. Results, prospects, forecast

The Transition to Renewable Energy Technologies—Impact on Economic Performance of North Rhine-Westphalia

The economic impacts of the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) are of considerable importance for the discussion of the energy transition in Germany (Energiewende). The Energiewende implies structural changes of the energy system by deploying Renewable Energy (and energy efficiency) Technologies (RET), but it also may induce structural changes for the overall economy, with uneven effects on a sub-national level. North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) is an ideal case to study such regional disparities, since this federal state has scarce per-capita renewable energy sources, whereas it stands out for its energy intensive industry and fossil-fuel based power plants. In order to support renewable energy policies, mostly gross impact assessments of RET deployment have been carried out both on national and regional levels. By definition, such analyses result in positive assessments, since only expansionary effects resulting from additional demand for RET are accounted for. This paper, in contrast, presents a net impact assessment of the EEG on the NRW economy of both expansionary and contractionary effects. The latter consist of negative income effects, increased production costs and, the crowding-out of conventional energy due to the renewable energy financing mechanism (i.e., electricity surcharge), as well as its preferential status for feed-in. Our findings show how North-Rhine Westphalia, with regard to the operation of RET, suffers disproportionally from negative effects in relation to the value addition of its economy in comparison to the rest the country, whereas it benefits marginally from the production of such facilities.

Impact of dynamic CO2 emission factors for the public electricity supply on the life-cycle assessment of energy efficient residential buildings

Climate change and its effects are the reasons for the energy transition in Germany and lead to an increasing exploitation of renewable energy sources. At the same time, energy efficient buildings reduce the heat demand significantly and allow for the operation of electricity based heating systems. With the aid of dynamic CO2 emission factors, the life-cycle assessment (LCA) for buildings can be adapted to reflect the fluctuating nature of renewable energy sources and the dynamics of heating power demand during the use phase more precisely. A case study using dynamic building simulation and static as well as dynamic emission factors for the year 2017 shows deviations of 3.4 % in the building’s GHG emissions. Furthermore, two emission factors for 2030 and 2050, which reflect the national 80 % carbon dioxide reduction target, are developed and applied to the case study. For these emission factors, the overall building’s GHG emissions decline drastically, whereas the deviation between the LCA using static or dynamic emission factors increases significantly. It can be seen that the application of a more dynamic approach for LCA adds substantial value to the investigation. However, further investigation on a broader set of dynamic input parameters for the LCA of energy efficient buildings seems to be reasonable.

A Pathway to Green Growth? Macroeconomic Impacts of Power Grid Infrastructure Investments in Germany

As part of the sustainable energy transition in Germany, substantial investments into power grid infrastructure are planned. They are intended to provide flexibility to an electricity system increasingly relying on variable renewable energy sources, and on European interconnection. The investments’ economic impacts remain widely unclear. Therefore, this paper contains a macroeconomic assessment of planned investments in power grid infrastructure in Germany, performing an input-output analysis, addressing the question, how multiplier effects of the investments impact macroeconomic outcomes, i.e. output, value added, employment and fiscal income. Net multiplier effects on outputs are found to be positive, between €47.3 bn and €55.8 bn, while other effects are found to be negative. A net decrease in value added of between €10.1 bn and €12.7 bn, in fiscal income between €962 million and €1,354 million and reductions in employment between 130,170 and 158,940 job positions are found to be caused by the investments. Hence, the planned power grid investments, at least from a national perspective, are found to have mixed macroeconomic effects. Flexibility investments for the energy transition provided by power grids should therefore be realized at least cost, if negative effects on national value added, tax revenues and employment are to be minimized.

In the transition of energy systems: What lessons can be learnt from the German achievement?

This paper assesses the energy transition in Germany from 1990 to 2017 with a focus on the politics and energy policies of the three German Chancellors. Its aim is to investigate the factors underlying the outcomes from a socio-political perspective and through this offer insight as to energy policy reforms that may be transferrable to other governments. We reveal the incremental and politically pivotal role of grassroots movements against nuclear power forming the catalyst and ongoing driver for Germany's energy transition - the Energiewende. Energiewende harbors a compelling socio-technical experiment based on government-led policy-driven structural changes to the energy system that has concurrently supported a heavily industrialized economy. Despite higher energy costs, borne disproportionally by residents, the energy vision and social experiment shared decadal and multi government cross-partisan political and community support. This socio-political policy stability provides a notable point of difference when comparing the energy transitions of lagging nations such as Australia that reveals the criticality of policy certainty to support investment towards new models of clean energy generation and distribution.

A Participatory Stakeholder Process for Evaluating Sustainable Energy Transition Scenarios

This paper presents an evaluation of four energy transition scenarios under consideration of multiple stakeholder opinions. We construct a multi-criteria group decision model that applies Value-Focused Thinking to construct a holistic objective system and Multi-Attribute Utility Theory to evaluate the energy transition scenarios. Although the individual scenario evaluations show that the opinions of the stakeholders towards a sustainable energy transition differ largely, we are able to derive three main strands of opinions among the considered stakeholders. For this, we apply a clustering technique to identify and bundle the stakeholders into three groups. This bundling of stakeholder interests enables the identification of the most important policy recommendations for a sustainable energy transition. For the case of Germany, these are to reduce GHG and pollutant emissions and at the same time enable citizens’ participation, limit the visual impact on landscapes, and ensuring internationally comparable energy-related political frameworks for the economy. For the case of a sustainable energy transition in Germany, we find that the stakeholders considered prefer either the highly ambitious climate protection scenario (Scenario B) or the Pan-European scenario (Scenario C). The reference scenario, which was developed by the German Transmission System Operators (TSOs), turns out to be relatively unpopular.

Are battery electric vehicles the future? An uncertainty comparison with hydrogen and combustion engines

Road transport remains to be one of Germany's main obstacles to effective greenhouse gas emissions reduction. Even though the climate ambition is clear, disagreement about the preference of alternative low-carbon drive technologies for road transport persist to this day. While uncertainty is a main reason for this disagreement it has been largely ignored in the comparison of the three main options: battery electric vehicles, vehicles with hydrogen-based fuel cell, and vehicles with internal combustion engine based on decarbonized fuels. By combining argument mapping with uncertainty analysis we identify, characterize and compare the uncertainties on Germany's energy transition of road transport. We find that all drive technologies are affected by a similar number and quality of uncertainties. Our results emphasize why any final drive technology preference is still unjustified and why all options should be advanced alongside each other to avoid lock-in decisions.

Macroeconomic impact of the German energy transition and its distribution by sectors and regions

Macroeconomic impacts such as changes in economic structures and employment are very important when evaluating the energy transition in societal terms. We employ a macroeconomic model that accounts for regional, economic and sectoral features. The model results show how the overall positive net impacts of the energy transition in Germany – energy efficiency and renewable energies - on economic growth and employment up to 2030 are distributed across sectors and regions. The biggest relative increases in value added occur in construction, real estate and electricity generation; the biggest decrease is in mining of lignite. Significant effects mainly result from changes in the heat and transport sectors, while the transition in the electricity sector entails smaller impacts. The latter are, however, relevant to the regional distribution: The model results suggest that especially northern and eastern German federal states will benefit economically from the energy transition because they offer attractive locations for investments. At the same time, these states are less affected by decreasing conventional energy generation. Moreover, the impact of rising electricity prices is less negative here than in the other federal states because of their lower electricity intensity in production. In summary, the energy transition represents an opportunity for these regions to strengthen their economies.

Very short-term load forecasting on factory level – A machine learning approach

In the context of energy transition in Germany, precise load forecasting enables reducing the impact of increased volatility in power generation induced by renewable energies. This paper presents a machine learning approach to generate a 15 minutes forecasting model of the electric load for the ETA research factory at TU Darmstadt on a factory level. In the first iteration, a feature selection process was conducted to select significant features for machine learning datasets. The raw data contained 1,554 features from machine tools, technical building equipment, the building itself and external factors like the weather. The second iteration examined the forecasting capabilities of six hyperparameter tuned algorithms on the feature selected datasets. In the third iteration, feature engineering and hyperparameter tuning led to an optimized Gradient Boosting Regression Trees (GBRT) algorithm. The results indicate that the utilized machine learning approach is feasible and creates a precise very short term load forecasting model, depending on the use case of the load forecast.

Comparing energy transitions in Germany and Spain using a political economy perspective

During the 2000s, Germany and Spain were forerunners in Europe’s energy transition. However, after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007 a growing divergence in the two countries’ energy policy paths can be observed. This article applies a political economy perspective to explore the reasons for this divergence. In investigating this empirical puzzle, the work identifies two main causes of the differing developments in the two countries. The first cause being that Spain was hit much harder by the financial and economic crisis and the second, that the Spanish energy transition was an elite-driven process whereas the German Energiewende was driven by large sectors of civil society. Regarding the theoretical question of how to understand the divergent developments of the countries’ energy politics, a perspective based on regulation theory and Antonio Gramsci’s political theory can help offer an understanding of the social character of energy transitions.