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Bias in energy system models with uniform cost of capital assumption

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Several studies have recently evaluated the feasibility of 100% renewable energy-based energy systems in different world regions. In a recent article, Bogdanov et al.1 contribute to this literature, by using an energy system model that takes into account the unique conditions of 145 global subregions, including factors such as renewable energy (RE) resource conditions, structure and age of existing capacities, demand patterns, etc. Based on their results, they discuss transition pathways and calculate the 2050 levelized cost of electricity generation (LCOE) of 100% RE-based energy systems in those 145 subregions. While the paper provides a new high-resolution analysis of 100% RE systems, we believe that it falls short of adequately considering large differences in the cost of capital (CoC) when comparing the LCOE between countries. As a result, Fig. 2 in Bogdanov et al. shows the lowest LCOEs for solar photovoltaic (PV)-based systems in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, which seems at odds with the high investment risks and very low installed capacity in both countries2. Accounting for CoC differences between countries changes the results dramatically, as we show in Fig. 1. We therefore argue that using uniform CoC can lead to distorted policy recommendations.

Written by Florian Egli, Bjarne Steffen and Tobias S. Schmidt

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Unheard voices across the lifecycle of digital technologies and low-carbon transitions

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Lived experiences of cobalt miners in the DRC and e-waste workers in Ghana

We are living in a society that relies heavily on digital technology, and these technologies have become so engrained in our everyday lives that we rarely question where they come from, whose labour contributes to their existence and what happens after we dispose of it. Some technologies, such as electric vehicles, solar panels, and heat pumps, also rely on both degrees of digitization and many of the same metals, minerals, and components as digital technologies.

How many of us have thought about purchasing an electric vehicle, or installing solar panels on our home? Or, perhaps more commonly, how many of us have found ourselves automatically agreeing to an “upgrade” with our phone network provider after our smartphone stopped working shortly after the end of a two-year contract?  

A transition to a more sustainable economy will require joint efforts from corporations and governments to work towards a circular economy, to decrease the impact of products on our planet across their lifecycle, starting from what raw materials we use to how waste is handled. But how will this impact people working at different stages of the product’s lifecycle—especially the front end (mining and extractive industries) and back end (recycling and waste management)— in parts of the world with weak governance structures and lack of policy enforcement and accountability?

A set of two recent twin studies have looked at cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and toxic electronic waste  (e-waste) processing in Ghana. These two studies set out to humanise the challenges of both these sectors by revealing the lived experiences of cobalt miners and e-waste workers.

Cobalt miners and scrapyard workers in the DRC and Ghana, 2019

The photo on the left shows an artisanal cobalt mining team near Kolwezi, mining on the Kasulu concession in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Note the young age of most of the miners, the use of manual tools as well as the lack of any women present. The photo on the right shows a scrapyard worker at Agbogbloshie, near Accra, Ghana, using fire to melt down electronic and digital appliances so that copper can be extracted. Note the lack of any protective equipment as well as the thick black smoke.

Giving a voice to people whose experiences are rarely considered in decision-making processes put the impact of our addiction to digital technologies into stark light.

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 60% of the global supply of cobalt, which is used in our phones and computers, as well as other technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. Despite having vast natural resources, 63% of Congolese citizens live below the national poverty line of less than $1 per day.

In the DRC, corporate firms and mining associations operate with perhaps as much power as government actors, with miners finding themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy of interests. Many of these miners work in conditions that harms their health and even endangers their life. In many cases they have no protective equipment or tools to work with, so they have to dig by hand. There are no trade unions to protect their interests or cooperatives that could fight for improved conditions.

The situation is similar with toxic e-waste workers in Ghana. Negative health impacts among scrapyard residents and workers, child labour and environmental pollution are ubiquitous.

Unheard voices can also help highlight the other side of the story. People trapped in poverty in areas with almost no opportunities for formal employment have lower expectations when it comes to working conditions. Cobalt mining in the DRG and work on the scrapyard in Agbogbloshie, Accra have provided a route out of poverty for the community. When you are offered two and a half times above the average income of informal economic workers in the country and you have a family to feed, you don’t think about the health impacts.

Many workers we spoke as part of our research showed pride in their work, which has become a key part of their cultural identity. One of our expert interviewees in Ghana explained

“We call it e-waste, but people on the ground do not call it that … Scrap dealers do not identify as waste managers, they instead see themselves as harvesting commodities as part of a lively value chain. They are community stewards”.

Discontinuing cobalt mining or e-waste processing in these countries without thinking about the people who will be impacted on the ground will have disastrous consequences. We don’t have to look too far to see, how, phasing out certain industries without thinking about providing alternative employment opportunities can destroy a community.  

A thoughtful response to a challenging situation is needed. Our research explores what policy makers can do at a global as well as national level to tackle the challenges arising. One thing is key: when thinking about a sustainable future, we need to remember the unheard voices, lives sacrificed at the altar of consumerism. Solutions need to consider their future and how we can shift away from harmful practices while also offering alternative pathways out of poverty in a way that preserves the community’s pride and identity.

Finally, you might ask, what we can do as consumers. We can remember that our phones and EVs don’t come from nowhere and don’t just go away. The “away” is a very real, living, breathing, suffering “place”). But also, it is a place with pride.

The research summarized here is published in the following two studies, both peer-reviewed academic journals, and both a part of the INNOPATHS project:

Sovacool, BK. “The precarious political economy of cobalt: Balancing prosperity, poverty, and brutality in artisanal and industrial mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Extractive Industries & Society 6(3) (July, 2019), pp. 915-939.  Available at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZjZH_,52Irqxfa. 

Sovacool, BK. “Toxic transitions in the lifecycle externalities of a digital society: The complex afterlives of electronic waste in Ghana,” Resources Policy 64 (December, 2019), 101459, pp-1-21.  Available at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZrGM14YFwvkMb. 

Political acceptability of climate policies: do we need a “just transition” or simply less unequal societies?

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This blog post is partly based on the policy paper “Job Losses and the Political Acceptability of Climate Policies: why the job killing argument is so persistent and how to overturn it.”

Concerns for a “just transition” towards a low-carbon economy are now part of mainstream political debates as well as of international negotiations on climate change. Key political concerns centre on the distributional impacts of climate policies. On the one hand, the “job killing” argument has been repeatedly used to undermine the political acceptability of climate policy and to ensure generous exemptions to polluting industries in most countries. On the other hand, the rising populist parties point to carbon taxes as another enhancer of socio-economic inequalities. For instance, the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow vest) movement in France is a classic example of the perceived tension between social justice and environmental sustainability. 

Demand for a fairer distribution of carbon-related fuel taxes and of subsidies for electric vehicles mirrors the political demand for income compensation to ‘brown sector’ workers displaced by climate policies. Such increased demand for redistribution depends on the fact that main winners of climate policies (e.g. those with the right set of skills to perform emerging green jobs or with enough income to consider buying a subsidized electric car) are fundamentally different from the main losers (e.g. those who work in polluting industries and drive long distances with diesel cars). Importantly, the identity of the winners and losers coincides with that of the winners and losers of other, more pervasive, structural transformations, such as automation and globalization. Indeed, the winners are wealthier, more educated and living in nicer neighbourhoods than the losers. The spatial sorting of winners and losers polarizes not only the perception of the costs and benefits of climate policies, but leads also to the emergence of apparently irrational behaviour. In several cases such as Taranto in Italy or Dunkirk in France, employees in polluting activities, whose families are the first to be exposed to such pollution, are willing to accept health risks to preserve their jobs.

Absurd as it may appear, such opposition against ambitious climate policies from the left-behind is the tip of the iceberg of more fundamental problems of our societies, namely, the enormous increase in income inequality. For both the left-behind and an increasingly fragile middle class, it may be more important to satisfy basic needs such as “work”, “food”, “shelter”, “communicating” than eating organic food or supporting climate policies. For a given level of income per capita, citizens’ support for green policies is likely to be significantly lower the more unequal the society because the median voter’s income may be just enough to satisfy the basic needs mentioned above. Likewise, a lower level support for climate policies is concentrated in regions that depend more on carbon-intensive industries.

Fortunately, there are well-known solutions to restore the right support to an ambitious plan to fight climate change. Politicians can easily identify the right amount of subsidies to neutralize the distributional effects of climate policies either on displaced workers, or on most affected consumers. Several solutions have been discussed and implemented ranging from direct transfers of the revenues of a carbon tax to recycling schemes to reduce taxes on labour and capital. In its operational definition, the just transition is thus a policy package whose aim is to mitigate the negative distributional effects of climate policies for those at the bottom of the income distribution.

There is, however, a powerful ethical argument that undermines the viability of these well-known solutions. Why should a worker displaced by a carbon tax have more rights than a worker displaced by a robot? The ethical bases to justify the special status of any policies inspired by the just transition are at best weak, and special policy solutions for brown sector workers may fuel the resentment of those left behind by automation and globalization. An alternative and far more radical solution appears to be to think at the high level of inequality of our societies as a main constraint to fight climate change. The threat posed by growing tension between inequality and environmental sustainability should thus push reforms of our welfare and fiscal systems that protect the workers left behind by trade, globalization and climate policies, thus weakening one of the main constraints to ensure a broad political support to the low-carbon transition.

Adverse effects of rising interest rates on sustainable energy transitions

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Increasing the use of renewable energy (RE) is a key enabler of sustainable energy transitions. While the costs of RE have substantially declined in the past, here we show that rising interest rates (IRs) can reverse the trend of decreasing RE costs, particularly in Europe with its historically low IRs. In Germany, IRs recovering to pre-financial crisis levels in 5 years could add 11% and 25% to the levelized cost of electricity for solar photovoltaics and onshore wind, respectively, with financing costs accounting for about one-third of total levelized cost of electricity. As fossil-fuel-based electricity costs are much less and potentially even negatively affected by rising IRs, the viability of RE investments would be markedly deteriorated. On the basis of these findings, we argue that rising IRs could jeopardize the sustainable energy transition and we propose a self-adjusting thermostatic policy strategy to safeguard against rising IRs.

Written by Tobias S. Schmidt, Bjarne Steffen, Florian Egli, Michael Pahle, Oliver Tietjen & Ottmar Edenhofer

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Climate policies and skill-biased employment dynamics: Evidence from EU countries

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The political acceptability of climate policies is undermined by job-killing arguments, especially for the least-skilled workers. However, evidence of the distributional impacts for different workers remains scant. We examine the associations between climate policies, proxied by energy prices, and workforce skills for 14 European countries and 15 industrial sectors over the period 1995–2011. Using a shift-share instrumental variable estimator and controlling for the influence of automation and globalization, we find that climate policies have been skill biased against manual workers and have favoured technicians. The long-term change in energy prices accounted for between 9.2% and 17.5% (resp. 4.2% and 8.0%) of the increase (resp. decrease) in the share of technicians (resp. manual workers).

Written by Giovanni Marin and Francesco Vona

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INNOPATHS holds a workshop for European policymakers

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How might Europe achieve deep decarbonisation? The INNOPATHS project is using a process of stakeholder engagement and co-design to develop decarbonisation pathways for Europe to 2050 – each of which explores a different route to deep decarbonisation. On Tuesday 9th July the project brought together policymakers from across Europe to think through how decarbonisation

Will incumbent industries and infrastructures (like gas networks) play a big role in shaping technology choices, or will upstart newcomers disrupt and reshape the business landscape for energy? Will populist movements cause some countries to fall behind, while others press ahead towards net-zero, leading to a Europe with “two speeds” of decarbonisation? How might a “circular” or “sharing” economy change patterns of energy demand?  These are important issues for long-term energy strategy, and are explored through the narrative scenarios being developed within the INNOPATHS project. Each narrative highlights knowledge gaps, where more research might help, and each one highlights challenges for policymakers.

The workshop discussions helped the INNOPATHS team to further develop the narrative scenarios. The key aspects of these narratives will then be quantified using the project’s suite of integrated assessment and energy modelling tools, and then made available to explore via an interactive decarbonisation simulator. The final narratives—and associated modelling—will be completed in March 2020. Watch this space!

Low-carbon transition in European carbon-intensive regions: mission impossible or indispensability?

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The role of carbon-intensive regions in the EU

Coal production has been in decline in the EU in recent years; production decreased by over 30% between 2000 and 2015. However, unlike renewables, solid fossil fuel production is not evenly distributed on the continent. Coal is mined in more than 40 EU regions across 12 Member States and it is burnt in over 200 power plants. Approximately a quarter of a million Europeans are directly employed in the coal mining and coal power sector. In terms of employment, Silesia – located in southern Poland – is the largest coal-based region in the EU.

The coal path of Silesia – widening the road or striving for a cul-de-sac

Poland is the largest European coal-based economy with hard coal being the main energy resource, although its share has been decreasing. The latest governmental draft on “Energy Policy for Poland till 2040” assumes a 60% share of coal in the energy mix in 2040 as well as an increase in energy generation from offshore wind farms and the replacement of lignite by nuclear energy after 2030. It is crystal clear that in the next two decades, coal will still be a major source of energy although its consumption by the power sector is to decline by nearly 20%. For years, Silesia has been the region with the second highest contribution to the national GDP, exceeded only by the Masovia Voivodeship with Warsaw – the capital city of Poland. Nevertheless, the importance of Silesia for the Polish economy has been gradually decreasing. Similar to other carbon-intensive regions, a low-carbon transition entails more risks than opportunities according to regional stakeholders. Limited technical potential to deploy renewable power plants, poor air quality, regional dependence on traditional industries as well as limited financial resources pose significant challenges to the low-carbon transition in this Polish region. Let us not forget big politics behind the screen and politicians who have always played a key role in favouring or depreciating Polish mining and to whom coal is alternatively ‘black gold’, or ‘not everything that glitters is gold’. At present, Polish authorities seem to be a guardian angel of Polish coal as they perceive it as a natural and strategic resource and a guarantor of the Polish national interest. Perhaps, it is only a political gambit to hush down Polish miners’ discontent and their worrying about losing employment or benefits (after all promises to keep Polish mining safe and sound were made in 2015 during the election campaign). Yet, isn’t it a bit symptomatic that the Polish President stated adamantly that he will not allow the decline (actually, he used the verb “murder”) of Polish mining, and this statement is being made at the very same time COP24 in Katowice is being held?

So is a low-carbon transition of carbon-intensive regions feasible?

At first glance, the answer to the above question is affirmative, but it will take time to make it happen. From the very beginning reforms in the energy sector should be an essential part of a sustainable transition of coal-dependent regions where the costs may be high, especially in the short-term perspective. The reforms must be wide-ranging, based on a left-to-right political consensus and not biased against the coal sector. To have success in this bold and long-awaited endeavour, the future energy mix and corresponding technologies should be carefully designed, matched and should remain stable in the long-term. At the same time, the right incentives for the energy transition should be clear and acceptable for all stakeholders.

Looking at the future (because there must be one…)

The multi-stakeholder approach is widely promoted by the Paris Agreement and the European Union. The implementation of this policy line is supported by numerous international measures aimed at helping the countries to meet their obligations. These include mainly financing instruments targeted at the activities streamlining the low-carbon transition and the ones to relieve financial barriers of the process and to bring benefits to the society. According to the European Commission, the transition to clean energy in the European Union will require €177 billion in additional investment per year from 2021 onwards. If the right investments are not stimulated now, there is a risk of locked-in high-carbon infrastructure and stranded assets. Moreover, the cost of delaying this transition may be much higher that the costs of the transition itself.

How to step this path to success?

The path to success in the field of decarbonizing European regions deeply laced with coal seems to be bumpy with all its uncertainties and question marks, with dos and don’ts, with negotiations and settlements. The experience and mistakes made by many countries have proved that the energy mix and the technological transition should be designed and implemented on the basis of transparent and well-thought-out schemes and it should remain stable for long time. It is crucial to gain the willingness of the whole coal-based industry to actively participate in the transition with a prerequisite for success being a full political and social consensus over a coal-based regional transition. However, no matter how painful or backbreaking the process turns out to be, we owe this to young and future generations, to people like 16-year old Greta Thunberg, a worldwide known Swedish activist, who in one of her thought-provoking speeches on climate change and the detrimental influence of coal to the environment states that we (“we” read as adults, policy-makers, lobbyists, governments) are stealing our children’s future in front of these children’s eyes and it is a crisis which, if unsolvable on the basis of the existing system, should be managed and overcome by new rules embedded in a new system. Don’t we see that Greta has just thrown down a gauntlet? Should we feel chided or embarrassed by this young and climate-conscious person? The former may not be Greta’s intention but the latter for us to feel is definitely right. Once our cheeks lose the redness of embarrassment, we should stand up, pick up the gauntlet and act. Perhaps, no one will feel like a thief any more.

Halving energy demand from buildings: The impact of low consumption practices

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Limiting global warming below 1.5 °C requires rapid decarbonization of energy systems. Reductions of energy demand have an important role to play in a sustainable energy transition. Here we explore the extent to which the emergence of low energy consuming practices, encompassing new behaviors and the adoption of more efficient technologies, could contribute to lowering energy demand and thereby to reducing CO2 emissions.

To this end, we design three detailed energy consumption profiles which could be adopted by individuals in current and future wealthy regions. To what extent does the setting of air conditioners to higher temperatures or the widespread use of efficient showerheads reduce the aggregate energy demand? We investigate the potential of new practices at the global level for 2050 and 2100.

The adoption of new, energy saving practices could reduce global energy demand from buildings by up to 47% in 2050 and 61% in 2100 compared to a scenario following current trends. This strong reduction is primarily accounted for by changes in hot water usage, insulation of buildings and consumer choices in air conditioners and heat pumps. New behaviors and efficient technologies could make a significant long-term contribution to reducing buildings’ energy demand, and thus facilitate the achieval of stringent climate change mitigation targets while limiting the adverse sustainability impacts from the energy supply system.

Written by Antoine Levesque, Robert C. Pietzcker and Gunnar Luderer

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Assessing the impacts of setting CO2 emission targets on truck manufacturers: A model implementation and application for the EU

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The European Commission introduced in 2018, for the first time, CO2emission standards for truck manufacturers, to incite additional reduction in the road transport CO2 emissions; trucks represent the second major contributor to CO2 emissions in the EU road transport. This paper presents a model based analysis which simulates the implementation of such targets in an energy economic framework and assesses the impacts of such standards using the PRIMES-TREMOVE model. We implement the CO2 emission standards on truck manufacturers as CO2 emission constraints on the new vehicle choice module. The proposed method is formulated as a mixed complementarity problem. The analysis reveals a reduction in road transport CO2 emissions and diesel consumption as a result of an uptake of more efficient truck technologies. In particular, LNG trucks are favored because of the lower emission factor of natural gas relative to that of diesel. Implementing progressively ambitious CO2 standards renders diesel trucks more expensive as their energy efficiency potential reaches its technical limit.

Written by Pelopidas and Yannis Moysoglou

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INNOPATHS holds Stakeholder Event: “Towards carbon neutrality, the perspective of investors”

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On the 15th of May 2019, INNOPATHS held a large stakeholder event hosted by E3-Modelling in Athens, designed to examine the investment opportunities emerging from the transition towards a low- or zero-carbon economy.

The INNOPATHS project aims to understand the challenges of decarbonisation and the innovation needed to address them and present a detailed assessment of low-carbon technologies, their uncertainties, future prospects and system characteristics. The project also aims at creating new, co-designed deep decarbonisation pathways with novel policy and innovation processes and it puts emphasis on the societal, economic and environmental dimensions of the low-carbon transition and how they can be managed.

The project was presented by Professor Laura Diaz Anadon (University of Cambridge), Elena Verdolini (Senior Scientist, CMCC) and Professor Paul Ekins (UCL, INNOPATHS coordinator). The INNOPATHS online tools were presented in the conference; in particular the “Technology Matrix” tool which includes historic and projected characteristics, and associated uncertainty, of key low-carbon technologies and can be utilized to calculate the future costs of low carbon transition, and the “Policy Evaluation Tool” which presents key evidence-based characteristics of policy instruments and mixes to encourage the low-carbon transition. Professor Ekins presented the key findings of the High Level Panel on Decarbonisation pathways that proposes priority research to achieve deep decarbonisation in all economic sectors. He also pointed out the major innovative approaches of the INNOPATHS project. Professor Pantelis Capros (NTUA) presented the model-based analysis on EU low-emission pathways that fed into the European Commission strategy “A Clean Planet for all”. He showed that deep decarbonisation of the EU energy and economic system can be achieved through the upscaling of “no-regret” options (including renewable energy, energy efficiency, advanced biofuels, electrification of mobility) but it will also require the introduction of disruptive technologies, energy carriers and business models (including hydrogen, power-to-gas, power-to-liquids, use and storage of CO2, circular economy).

Professor Laura Diaz Anadon and Dr Elena Verdolini

In the second session of the conference, chaired by IENE’s head of Energy Efficiency committee, Costas Theofylaktos, a number of Greek energy market experts and company executives participated in a round table discussion on the current and future challenges of the energy sector. There, Mr. Polymenopoulos representing HELESCO highlighted the role of ESCOs in the improvement of energy efficiency of buildings. Mr. Polychroniou representing “DEPA, gas industry and renewable gas” analyzed the prospects of decarbonised and renewable gas in the deep decarbonisation context. Mr. Papastamatiou representing “ENTEKA wind energy”, one of Greece’s pioneering wind companies, addressed the licensing boundaries in RES projects noting the low success rate of wind projects, which affects indirectly electricity prices for consumers. He referred to the key market requirements for the acceleration of the energy transition, notably the development of coherent policies, the implementation of large-scale RES projects, the capacity increase of local and international interconnections and development of large-scale storage systems. Dr. Sotiris Kapellos, representing HELPE Renewables, and HELAPCO, the Hellenic Association of Photovoltaic Companies, addressed the issue of PV investments in Greece and called for the simplification of licensing procedures and a full implementation of EU guidelines for electricity market liberalization (Target model, Balancing of RES etc.). Dr. George Ayeridis (CRES, Electromobility) presented the prospects of electrification in the transport sector with high EV deployment combined with RES-based electricity. He also stated that EVs should be seen both as a market product and as a key part of the energy transition.