The Challenge of Climate Change—Complete Energy Systems Transformation: No Nuclear, No Net Zero

To achieve Net Zero, natural gas, gasoline, diesel, and fuel oils must be replaced with another source. However, most of the current low-carbon energy sources will also need to be replaced as almost none have more than about 25 years remaining of useful life. The pace and scale of the needed change is unprecedented: almost the whole of the world’s primary energy supply must be replaced. The (re)development of the entire energy system is inherently a sovereign risk and it can only be governments who set national energy policy. There is no doubt that markets will continue to play a part in future energy systems, but at the top level, the pace and scale of change to achieve Net Zero is simply far too fast for markets to adapt properly. This chapter is a call to action to the national policy makers and presents this challenge as an opportunity for creating higher-quality jobs and potentially highly attractive and long-dated investment options. The chapter also outlines some risks, including political indecisiveness and policy volatility as potential impediments to making the most of this opportunity and achieving the Net Zero.

Evaluation’s Role in Development Projects: Boosting Energy Efficiency in a Traditional Industry in Chad

This chapter illustrates the critical importance of evaluation in development projects. It explores the relevance, processes, and specifics of a project to introduce energy-efficient cook stoves in two traditional industries in Chad. Although Chad benefits from great solar potential given its location and being a Sahelian country, biomass accounted for 94% of the primary energy supply in 2008, and only 2.2% of Chadian households have access to electricity. The beer brewing and meat grilling sectors in particular use enormous quantities of limited and expensive firewood. Locally developed energy-efficient stoves for the two targeted sectors were available, but those technologies had not been commercialized and disseminated into the Chadian market. The project aimed to overcome issues of technology, financing, dissemination, resistance to change, and awareness to introduce and establish use of energy-efficient stoves in micro-scale food processing to achieve environmental and economic benefits, discussing the effectiveness of models introduced and adopted by project beneficiaries with related training. This chapter considers issues related to the project’s financing and sustainability and concludes with lessons provided by the evaluation, including engagement with targeted beneficiaries, awareness of local context, and consideration of size and scale for a demonstration project that can be scaled up in future programs.

GLOBAL PROSPECTS FOR BIOENERGY SECTOR

The aim of the work is to analyze some global scenarios for bioenergy development, including the development in certain sectors, as well as to identify priority areas for bioenergy in Ukraine. Today, bioenergy is a world leader in renewable energy, playing a significant role in replacing fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Over the last twenty years, the global primary energy supply from biomass and biofuels has tripled and reached more than 10% of the total primary energy supply, accounting for almost 70% of the contribution of all renewable sources. The International Renewable Energy Agency predicts that by 2050, renewable energy sources could account for 60% or more of the total final energy consumption of many countries. The share of biomass in the global final consumption of renewable energy might be almost half in 2030 and 40% in 2050. According to the International Energy Agency, starting from 2030, one can expect to use only modern bioenergy technologies with increasing consumption of modern biomass up to about 100 EJ in 2050. For Ukraine, the priority areas seem to be combined heat and power production from biomass, as well as production of biomethane for the direct replacement of natural gas and carbon-neutral balancing of the energy system with a high share of renewable sources. For the thermal energy sector, the introduction of modern boilers and CHP plants running mainly on agricultural biomass is recommended. For the transport sector, prospects are the production of first and second generation liquid biofuels, as well as biomethane from biomass obtained in compliance with sustainability criteria.

Contribution of Bioenergy to the Modern Energy Services in Ethiopia

Biomass based traditional energy has been the main energy supply in Ethiopia. Efforts are being made to shift to modern bioenergy utilization but the level of contribution of modern bioenergy to the total energy supply of the country’s supply is not computed. In this synthesis we described the contribution of bioenergy to modern energy utilization in the country. Data used here was retrieved from the country’s official reports and published literatures. Access to modern cooking services in the country was particularly focused on and both biogas feedstock productivities and biogas processing efficiencies were calculated. Herfindahl Index (HI) was calculated to observe the change in the diversity of the total primary energy supply due to bioenergy in the country. Results indicated that only a few households, 10%, had access to modern bioenergy services. Less than 0.10% of households have a biogas digester. The HI values showed the low diversity of the energy supply and the very limited contribution of modern bioenergy. This synthesis indicated that the contribution of modern bioenergy to the energy supply of the country is very low. Very low difference was observed between Herfindahl Indexes with and without considering modern bioenergy in the total primary energy supply (TPES) of the country is also found to be insignificant. Results found indicated lower diversity of the energy supply of Ethiopia and very limited contribution of modern bioenergy to the diversity and security of the energy supply.

Evaluation of decoupling of GDP and energy in Central Asia

Currently, economic growth remains the main criterion of development. However, it does come along with threats to the environment, due to its link to the increased energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Decoupling can be used to break this link and stop jeopardizing the environment in the favor of economic progress. This paper focuses on the decoupling between economic growth and energy consumption in each of five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – from 1990 to 2014. The Tapio decoupling model was implemented in order to determine the decoupling states for each country. Gross domestic product (GDP) was used to represent the economic growth, and the total primary energy supply (TPES) described the environmental pressure. These data were obtained from the IKE World Energy Balances. Both the GDP and the TPES of most of the Central Asian countries had a parabolic trend of initial drop and further increase during the timespan analyzed. This observation can be explained by the collapse of USSR and the transition to market economy. The results of the decoupling analysis can be divided into two stages for Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and into three stages for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, with several different decoupling states observed during each stage. According to the results, the main decoupling states in Central Asia were expansive negative decoupling, expansive coupling, weak decoupling, and strong decoupling. The analysis showed that there is a serious environmental pressure on the economic development in Central Asia.

What Drives Energy Efficiency in Africa? Insights from 12 Selected Countries Using Incremental Decomposition Analysis

This paper examines why Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in particular, has some of the worse energy efficiency indicators in the world. It examines the relationship between total primary energy supply (TPES), final energy consumption, and transmission and distribution (T&D) losses on the continent. We apply the Sun-Shaley incremental decomposition method of logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI to twelve (12) African countries using data from 2000 to 2016 to decompose TPES into the effects of changes in final energy consumption (FEC), population change (POP), carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and economic activity measured by gross domestic product (GDP), and their impact on energy efficiency. The method provides a precise decomposition analysis and incremental results that can be added to study the long-run impacts without any information missing in between. The findings show that the study countries have worsening energy efficiency indicators with energy intensity (EI) as high as 55%, coupled with an inefficient transformation of primary energy supply to final consumption, culminating in significant systems losses. It was further discovered that countries that have more significant proportions of renewables sources in their energy mix have lower transmission and distribution losses. This study serves as a guide to the policy discourse regarding the energy efficiency situation in Africa.

Socio-Economic Productive Capacities and Energy Efficiency: Global Evidence by Income Level and Resource Dependence

This study tests the effects of productive capacities in socio-economic factors (human capital, transport, information-communication technology, institutions, private sector, and structural change) on energy efficiency in a sample of 125 countries. Energy efficiency is assessed by energy productivity (gross domestic product per unit of total primary energy supply) and energy intensity (total primary energy supply per capita). The world sample is divided into four income groups and an income-heterogeneous control group of non-renewable resource-dependent economies. The study utilizes cross-sectionally dependent and stationary panel data over the period 2000-2018. The analysis of variance shows that higher income groups monotonically have higher productive capacities and energy intensity. The regression results from appropriate fixed-effects and random-effects modeling reveal varied driver and barrier influences of the socio-economic factors on energy efficiency improvements (higher energy productivity and lower energy intensity). In some cases, predictors scale up both energy productivity and energy intensity indicating the issue of the rebound effect. Higher human capital capacity stimulates energy efficiency except for middle-income groups. Higher transport capacity reduces energy productivity, except for upper-middle-income economies, and tends to increase energy intensity for low-income and middle-income groups. The deployment of information-communication technologies is positively associated with energy productivity, except for low-income economies. Energy productivity performance of resource-dependent economies is improved by higher productive capacities in institutions and private sectors but impaired by structural change, whereas structural change drives energy efficiency in low-income economies. Additionally, the growth of gross national income per capita worsens energy efficiency for resource-dependent economies. Bidirectional feedback causalities are established between energy efficiency and its predictors in most cases. The heterogeneous findings are discussed for providing research and policy implications.

Achieving a Sustainable Development Process by Deployment of Solar PV Power in ASEAN: A SWOT Analysis

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has experienced rapid social and economic development in the past decades, while energy shortage, environmental pollution, and climate change are the factors that prevent a sustainable development process. Deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) power is one of the effective alternatives to overcome the above barriers and assist ASEAN to achieve the aspirational target of 23% renewable energy (RE) in the total primary energy supply (TPES). In this study, SWOT analysis is adopted to analyze the internal strengths and weaknesses and the external threats and opportunities tightly related to the development of solar PV power in ASEAN countries. Through the SWOT analysis, great potential for the development of solar PV power in ASEAN is found. As long as appropriate policies are implemented and proper actions are taken, huge space for deployment of solar PV power can be expected. Based on the SWOT analysis, countermeasures that emphasize further deployment of solar PV power in ASEAN countries are put forward. The tactics include arousing people’s awareness of a sustainable development process, government issue coherence and stable incentive policies, fostering a solar PV industry chain and master key technology, and seek opportunities via an international cooperation.

Visualizing the Energy Production, Imports and Exports for Countries

<p>There are extensive conceptual difficulties in understanding a country’s energy story. Every country in the world uses some combination of energy production, imports, and exports energy to meet their society’s needs. Thermal inefficiencies converting primary energy into electricity further confuse the issues. A visualization using large, publicly available data can help illustrate these different energy perspectives. This data visualization helps clarify the following perspectives: Production, Imports, Exports, Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES), Total Final Consumption (TFC), and the conversion losses from turning TPES into TFC. TPES refers to the total amount of energy a country obtains directly from natural resources such as fossil fuels or wind. TFC refers to the addition of the all energy directly consumed by a user for an energy service such as electricity for lighting in a house. This paper discusses the interactive simulation that was built to allow users to explore the composition of a country’s energy production, imports and exports through the conversion into energy people consume. The simulation allows users to explore the energy stories for different countries, and how these change over the decades.</p>

Quantitative Assessment of Energy Supply Security: Korea Case Study

Ensuring energy supply security has become one of the most important purposes for many countries. To make the strategies for ensuring the energy supply security of a country, it is essential to quantitatively assess the security. This paper aims to present a methodology to evaluate the energy supply security of a country by using different indices of energy dependence and energy diversity, which have been raised as two main paradigms of energy supply security. This study also proposes two indices reflecting the correlation between a country’s energy diversity and energy import dependence to evaluate its energy supply security based on easily accessible data. The presented methodology and indices were applied to the evaluation of the primary energy supply security of Korea from 1991 to 2018. The results show that a country highly dependent on energy imports is not evaluated as secure enough in terms of energy supply even if it obtains higher energy diversity. This finding supports the importance of the correlation of energy dependence and energy diversity of a country to ensure its energy supply security. This approach could be further adapted to other countries and help them to make their energy policy and strategies.