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WP 3 Technology assessments I

Objectives

The goal of this workpackage is to assess the possible impact of new energy technologies on competitiveness and export opportunities in the EU-27 in the short term, and on sustainability in the longer run, that is, up to 2050. Job creation opportunities will be also dealt with under this workpackage. Among the energy technologies to be analyzed are notably renewables, hydrogen, energy storage, new nuclear, carbon dioxide capture and storage and the sustainable use of coal, as well as the extent to which these technologies can be deployed in Europe through an investigation of their physical, technical and economic potentials. The sustainability, competitiveness and macro- and micro-economic impact assessment of these energy technologies is necessary to support energy policy discussions and decision making at all levels. Along with workpackage 4, this workpackage is therefore essential input for workpackages 5 and 6.


Description of work

Task 3.1: EU policy assessment

Partner: LEI

This task aims at reviewing the results of a range of recent studies on future energy technologies in order to allow selecting those technologies that are fit for deployment in Europe up to 2050. The future development and deployment of alternative energy technologies is subject to a large number of uncertainties including especially future energy and environmental policies and their established targets. These targets may apply to security of supply, renewables quota, energy efficiency and pollution reduction including that of GHG emissions. Most of the policies focusing on these respective issues are strongly interrelated. Therefore, it is a necessary goal of this task to review EU and world energy and environmental policies and corresponding energy and environmental targets. These are necessary input for the energy scenarios construction under workpackages 5 and 6, and also directly relevant for the work as planned under workpackage 7.


Task 3.2: Technology assessment


Partners: LEI and CHALMERS

This task aims at a broad energy technology assessment and will develop a framework for comparative analysis of energy technologies and scenarios in the electricity, transport and buildings sector in a dynamic way. A methodological framework is developed for the assessment of the chosen set of energy technologies in terms of sustainability and competitiveness. Existing energy technology assessment methods and evaluation studies, especially those supported by associated databases, for the electricity, transport and buildings sectors, are critically reviewed. Quantitative and qualitative technology-specific as well as sector-specific economic, environmental and social indicators are selected, in order to assess energy technologies in a comprehensive and systematic way. Especially for this task strong interaction will be required with the efforts under workpackage 4, as the latter is focused on such short-term technology deployment options.


Task 3.3: Uncertainty assessment

Partners: LEI and CHALMERS

As energy policy targets to 2050 are still uncertain, it is necessary to develop probability distributions about key inputs to the energy models. Based on the assessments under tasks 1 and 2 of this workpackage, this task aims at developing an integrated probability study concerning the major physical and economic characteristics of the energy technologies under consideration. This allows the probabilistic policy scenarios to be developed under workpackage 6, to which the work under this workpackage serves as input, and to represent a wide stochastic range of future states of the world. This workpackage will also enable to compute impact values for the new technologies across a wide range of possible technological and socio-economic futures.


Workpackage 3 is carried out under the co-ordination of LEI

Seventh Framework Programme

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