Planning Renewable Energy Research Articles

Participation 3.0 in the implementation of the energy transition-Components and effectiveness of an interactive dialogue tool (Vision:En 2040).

The allocation of renewable energy plants, especially wind turbines, is stagnating in Germany. Although the citizens approve of the energy transition, they resist concrete local projects. In recent years, research has shown that interactive map applications support participatory planning through motivation, social interaction, and knowledge transfer. We aim to reduce biases against renewable energy (RE) and support informed decision making while accepting local responsibility. We hypothesized that finding a new gamified participation format, based on behavioral mechanisms, would strengthen the empowerment of people. To this end, we designed a dialogue tool and participation format, 'Vision:En 2040', which combines: (i) a precise target electricity yield, (ii) an interactive map showing results of people's actions, information about environmental impacts, and (iii) game rules which foster cooperation. In facilitated workshops, participants simulate the allocation of wind and photovoltaic power plants in their municipality to achieve a target electricity yield. The developed tool is based on methods of environmental planning and geoinformatics. 'Vision:En 2040' was systematically tested with a technical test and a pre-test. In addition, its impact on participants was assessed through surveys and qualitative content analysis. The evaluation results show that the tool can influence the acceptance of the energy transition in terms of attitude. Through 'Vision:En 2040', participants became aware of the community's responsibility in the energy transition and expanded their knowledge. In addition, decision makers used the workshop results to plan RE sites. Our results indicate that 'Vision:En 2040' is helpful for informal citizen participation in accelerating the energy transition.

Has the evolution of renewable energy policies facilitated the construction of a new power system for China? A system dynamics analysis

Renewable energy (RE) support policies play a significant role in promoting RE development. Both the feed-in-tariff (FIT) and renewable portfolio standards (RPS) policies have been implemented in China's power industry, but the market response is far from satisfactory. Additionally, a rush to promote electric power generation from RE sources poses operational hazards to the power system due to its intermittent nature. Therefore, this paper focuses on various forms of mainstream RE policies and develops system dynamics (SD)-based simulation models to examine their different incentive effects and evaluate the impacts on constructing a new power system for China. The simulation results show that the demand-side RPS (DRPS) outperforms the supply-side RPS (SRPS) policy at minimizing the costs of market participants, promoting RE consumption, constraining the damage for thermal power generation, and providing long-term incentives for RE industry investment, but lacks incentives for promoting the liquidity of Tradable green certificates (TGC) market. The combined FIT&RPS policy provides a transitional instrument to neutralize large volatility. When promoting energy transition, different RE policy forms should be enacted in stages and it is necessary to consider the construction of power grid systems and appropriately plan RE development to achieve balanced development.