Global Energy Issues

The framework MESSAGE from the IIASA fulfills the IPCC requirement RCP 2.6. To achieve this, it proposes the use of massive deployment of Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS), dealing with tens of billion tons of CO2. However, present knowledge of this process rests on a few experiments at the annual million tons level. MESSAGE includes three scenarios: 'Supply' with a high energy consumption; 'Efficiency' which implies the end of nuclear energy and the intermediary 'MIX'. We propose, as a variant of the MESSAGE framework, to initiate a sustained deployment of nuclear production in 2020, reaching a total nuclear power around 20,000 GWe by the year 2100. Our scenarios considerably reduce the interest or necessity for CCS. Renouncing nuclear power requires an energy consumption reduction of more than 40% compared to the 'Supply' scenario, without escaping the need to store more than 15 billion tons of CO2.

Some international climate change negotiations result in apparent
successes. Others seem to fail or simply flat line. The 2015 Paris Accord
reflects a formal global climate change management transition to solve a
collective issue by promoting and facilitating transformative Deep DE
carbonisation Pathways (DDP). The EU States cannot yet reach the 2050 DE
carbonisation plan, which requires cooperation. This paper sets out a structure
to help understand the failure and challenges for the EU to develop a deep
decarbonised pathway. Existing pieces of literature fail to explain this situation
entirely. This article develops a framework – economic interest groups – that
focuses on winning and losing players. A plausible answer lies in the process
of shaping a coalition against the EU’s proposed pathway by ‘losing states’.
I argue that the presence of losing states explains the failure of the current EU
deep DE carbonisation pathway in line with the Paris Agreement.

This study investigates the price linkages among the Asian LNG spot and East Asian LNG prices to examine the existence of a long run relationship among the spot, Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese LNG prices using co-integration analysis over the 2009-2014 period. The results show that the Asian LNG spot price did not have a price linkage with both monthly averages of Japanese and Taiwanese LNG prices. The analyses also indicated that the South Korean LNG market moved together with the Asian LNG spot market. Lastly, the study discovered that the Chinese LNG market was somewhat influenced by the dynamics of the Asian LNG spot market. The findings corroborate the International Energy Agency's views on the importance of creating a natural gas trading hub in Asia that reflects the dynamics of the gas market in the Asia Pacific Basin and making the Asian gas market to become more uniform.

A fast growth of installed wind power capacity has been experienced in several European countries. In Germany, notably high wind power capacities are planned in the North. If the existing transmission capacities between individual regions become insufficient, the electricity prices will differ considerably and the system operation can become unstable. It is supposed that the extension of transmission capacities and

The sector of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) is growing very
fast, with many innovations and applications becoming a reality. The
continuous reduction of natural resources has forced all policymakers to turn to
alternative energy sources. The total energy (oil and electricity consumption)
consumed in the prefecture of Lasithi during the years 1997–2002 in
correlation with the RES exploitation potential in the prefecture is the base of
an analysis where RES methodologies are exploited to satisfy part of the
prefecture’s energy needs. Solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy and
biomass are examined and a case study is performed for Lasithi that involves
an application of specific mathematical tools leading to a set of alternative
scenarios. The objective of this work is the integration of environmentally
friendly processes for the satisfaction of the energy needs of Lasithi Prefecture,
paying attention at the same time to the financial viability of these systems.

ABSTRACT Energy is essential to economic and social development and improved quality of life. The European Union (EU) constitutes one of the world's largest energy consumers. The EU members include â among others â Germany and Greece, two countries with large disparities/differences in their energy systems, yet with certain similarities. The role of indicators that can measure all the future changes is crucial for the assessment of a country's progress towards a sustainable energy future. The objective of this paper is to benefit from a set of indicators that can guide necessary modifications to energy planning in Greece, so as to make its energy system more responsive to sustainable energy development issues. Furthermore, more specific targets are the monitoring of Greece's progress towards the development of sustainable energy systems during the last decade, compared to that of Germany's. Finally, we aim to point out the applicability and utility of an environment-friendly energy system with the use of statistical analysis.

ABSTRACT The results are presented of a techno-economic analysis of systems integrating biomass gasification plant with phosphoric acid and molten carbonate fuel cells. The cases studied relate to the generation of electricity at a scale of 500 kWe. At this level, the plant would be suitable for small-scale commercial or industrial application and would allow for the export of surplus electricity. The performance of the plants is compared with appropriate conventional systems and conclusions are drawn concerning the competitiveness of fuel cells in biomass applications.

This research paper highlights the incidence of institutional factors on the efficiency of GDP and CO2 emission. We use a stochastic analysis frontier model of a sample of ten countries, during the period 1995-2013. Besides, we explain the CO2 emission and GDP inefficiency by the institutional factors. The contribution of this research appears in the examination of the interrelations within institutional factors, CO2 emissions' efficiency and GDP efficiency. Our results show that institution's quality in Maghreb's countries is deficient, especially after the uprising which leads to a high level of inflation, unemployment and unfavourable environment for investments. However, in the Gulf countries, a good institutional quality such as corruption reduction, regulatory quality, rule of law and so on would participate to improve economic and social outcomes and to create favourable institutional climate that helps pursuing sustainable development. Regarding CO2 emissions, the orientation towards more energy efficiency could improve their performance.

ABSTRACT In India, the electricity systems are chronically constrained by shortage of both capital and energy resources. These result in rationing and interruptions of supply with a severely disrupted electricity usage pattern. From this background, we try to analyse the demand patterns with and without resource constraints. Accordingly, it is necessary to model appropriately the dynamic nature of electricity demand, which cannot be captured by methods like annual load duration curves. Therefore, we use the concept - Representative Load Curves (RLCs) - to model the temporal and structural variations in demand. As a case study, the electricity system of the state of Karnataka in India is used. Four years demand data, two unconstrained and two constrained, are used and RLCs are developed using multiple discriminant analysis. It is found that these RLCs adequately model the variations in demand and bring out distinctions between unconstrained and constrained demand patterns. The demand analysis attempted here helped to study the differences in demand patterns with and without constraints, and the success of rationing measures in reducing demand levels as well as greatly disrupting the electricity usage patterns. Multifactor ANOVA analyses are performed to find out the statistical significance of the ability of logically obtained factors in explaining overall variations in demand. The results showed that the factors that are taken into consideration accounted for maximum variations in demand at very high significance levels.

Quality in the capital allocation process is of utmost relevance in securing and sustaining economic performance and corporate goals. The correct characterisation of uncertainties across the opportunity set is critical in achieving optimal capital allocation decisions. Real projects are characterised by distributional forms that are of a very different nature to those found in securities markets, demanding the utilisation of a more general measure of risk. This paper demonstrates the significant differences in portfolio optimisation outcomes as a result of using variance and semivariance as alternative measures of risk. It is shown that the use of semivariance leads to a more robust efficient frontier. The results have broad implications with regard to the choice of a suitable risk measure within the general context of real projects portfolio optimisation. The proper selection of a risk measure can lead to significant improvements in the quality of decisions with regard to capital allocation.