Evaluating the Potential Contribution of District Heating to the Flexibility of the Future Italian Power System

Flexibility is crucial to enable the penetration of high shares of renewables in the power system while ensuring the security and affordability of the electricity dispatch. In this regard, heat–electricity sector coupling technologies are considered a promising solution for the integration of flexible devices such as thermal storage units and heat pumps. The deployment of these devices would also enable the decarbonization of the heating sector, responsible for around half of the energy consumption in the EU, of which 75% is currently supplied by fossil fuels. This paper investigates in which measure the diffusion of district heating (DH) coupled with thermal energy storage (TES) units can contribute to the overall system flexibility and to the provision of operating reserves for energy systems with high renewable penetration. The deployment of two different DH supply technologies, namely combined heat and power units (CHP) and large-scale heat pumps (P2HT), is modeled and compared in terms of performance. The case study analyzed is the future Italian energy system, which is simulated through the unit commitment and optimal dispatch model Dispa-SET. Results show that DH coupled with heat pumps and CHP units could enable both costs and emissions related to the heat–electricity sector to be reduced by up to 50%. DH systems also proved to be a promising solution to grant the flexibility and resilience of power systems with high shares of renewables by significantly reducing the curtailment of renewables and cost-optimally providing up to 15% of the total upward reserve requirements.

Environmental Performance Assessment of Energy-Consuming Sectors Through Novel Data Envelopment Analysis

This study evaluates the role of information in the environmental performance index (EPI) in different energy-consuming sectors in Pakistan through a novel slack-based data envelopment analysis (DEA). The index combines energy consumption as the primary input and gross domestic product (GDP) as the desirable output and CO2 emissions as the undesirable output. Yale’s EPI measures the efficiency of the sectoral level environmental performance of primary energy consumption in the country. Performance analysis was conducted from 2009 to 2018. The sectors were assigned scores between one and zero, with zero indicating maximum decision-making unit (DMU) inefficiency and one indicating maximum DMU efficiency. Despite being in the top-performing sector, agriculture scored only 0.51 in 2018, and the electricity sector obtained 0.412. Results also show that even the best-performing sector operates below the efficiency level. The mining and quarrying sector ranked second by obtaining 0.623 EPI and 0.035 SBEPI. Results also show that much of the energy supply of Pakistan (60.17%) is focused on fossil fuels, supplemented by hydropower (33%), while nuclear, wind, biogas, and solar power account for 5.15%, 0.47%, 0.32%, and 0.03%, respectively. Nonetheless, the overall results for both measures remained reasonably consistent. According to the literature and the energy crisis and climate instability dilemma, the authors conclude that changes to a diverse green power network are a possibility and an imminent need. Similarly, the government should penalize companies with poor performance. Furthermore, to ensure the capacity development and stability of environmental management and associated actions in the country, providing access to knowledge and training to groom human resources and achieve the highest performance is crucial.

Is ESG Relevant to Electricity Companies during Pandemics? A Case Study on European Firms during COVID-19

The electricity sector was negatively impacted by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), with considerable declines in consumption in the initial phase. Investors were in turmoil, and stock prices for these companies plummeted. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significant negative influence of the pandemic on abnormal returns for the electricity sector, specifically for traditional and renewable companies and the influence of ESG scores, using the event study approach and multi-variate regressions. Our results show that the pandemic indeed had a negative impact on the electricity sector, with renewable electricity companies suffering a sharper decline than traditional ones. Moreover, we find that ESG pillar scores affected electricity companies differently and are sector-specific. For renewable electricity companies, the returns were positively influenced by the environmental ESG scores and negatively by governance ESG scores.

Renewables, Reliability and Efficiency in Electricity Markets

The choice to use electricity markets to transition to an ultra-high renewable electricity sector depends on whether a high level of reliability and efficiency can be achieved. This study presents a reliability, resiliency and adaptability policy framework for a liberalized power system with a high share of renewables. This framework provides policy insights regarding electricity market reliability and the implications of remuneration mechanisms for renewables. Our analysis shows that it is necessary to reconsider adequacy assessments of liberalized power systems, to enhance the definition of the loss of load probability, and to explicitly consider the probability that the market clears. Under these conditions, electricity markets can theoretically achieve reliability and efficiency with large percentages of variable and intermittent renewable resources with zero or near-zero marginal costs, and market and technical challenges can be addressed.