Renewable energy in the European Union

Renewable energy plays an important and growing role in the energy system of the European Union. The Europe 2020 strategy included a target of reaching 20% of gross final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020, and at least 32% by 2030. The EU27 reached 22.1% in 2020, up from 9.6% in 2004, but declined to 21.8% in 2021. These figures are based on energy use in all its forms across all three main sectors, the heating and cooling sector, the electricity sector, and the transport sector. The main source of renewable energy in 2019 was biomass (57.4% of gross energy consumption). In particular, wood is the leading source of renewable energy in Europe, far ahead of solar and wind. In 2020, renewables provided 23.1% of gross energy consumption in heating and cooling. In electricity, renewables accounted for 37.5% of gross energy consumption, led by wind (36%) and hydro-power (33%), followed by solar (14%), solid biofuels (8%) and other renewable sources (8%). In transport, the

The Power of Bioenergy-Related Standards to Protect Biodiversity

Sébastien Haye

The sustainable production of bioenergy is vital to avoiding negative impacts on environmental goods such as climate, soil, water, and especially biodiversity. We propose three key issues that should be addressed in any biodiversity risk-mitigation strategy: conservation of areas of significant biodiversity value; mitigation of negative effects related to indirect land-use change; and promotion of agricultural practices with few negative impacts on biodiversity. Focusing on biodiversity concerns, we compared principles and criteria set to address biodiversity and other environmental and social issues in seven standards (defined here as commodity-based standards or roundtables, or relevant European legislation): five voluntary initiatives related to bioenergy feedstocks, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (United Kingdom), and the European Renewable Energy Source Directive. Conservation of areas of significant biodiversity value was fairly well covered by these standards. Nevertheless, mitigation of negative impacts related to indirect land-use change was underrepresented. Although the EU directive, with its bonus system for the use of degraded land and a subquota system for noncrop biofuels, offered the most robust standards to mitigate potential negative effects, all of the standards fell short in promoting agricultural practices with low negative impacts on biodiversity. We strongly recommend that each standard be benchmarked against related standards, as we have done here, and that efforts should be made to strengthen the elements that are weak or missing. This would be a significant step toward achieving a bioenergy industry that safeguards Earth's living heritage.

2010

Climate impact and energy sustainability of future European neighborhoods

Silvia Coccolo, Louis Marc Bruno Delannoy, Dasaraden Mauree, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun Perera, Salil Puri, Jean-Louis Scartezzini

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of typical European city centers energy demand and supply for present time and 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) climatic scenario A1B. Two multi-family houses are modeled, adapted and simulated considering local thermal characteristics and climate conditions of twenty-two European countries. An energy hub system is optimized in order to investigate how the micro-grid responds to the renewable energy integration for ten countries. The European heating demand is evaluated to be reduced by half by 2050 (49%) due to the climate change (6%) and refurbishment (43%) effects. Integration of renewable energy sources in most European countries is set to surpass the EU renewable energy targets given proper implementation of appropriate governmental polices coupled with emerging technological advancements in the renewable energy sector.

2019

White paper on DC technologies for Switzerland’s electricity transmission and distribution

Alexandre François Christe, Drazen Dujic, Stefan Milovanovic, Mario Paolone, Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Reza Razzaghi, Milan Utvic, Zhaoyang Wang

Existing AC power systems, established more than a century ago, are increasingly challenged by DC technologies, enabled by significant advancements in the power electronics and related scientific fields. Three major application areas for DC transmission are established: transferring bulk power over long distances, interconnecting grids and connecting offshore wind. Medium and low voltage DC application become more appealing based on the improved controllability, more effective integration of renewable energy sources, higher power density and better compatibility with underground cables. Such technologies will be attractive for the Swiss energy transition as they might provide more effective solutions for the densification of power systems, the integration of converter-based renewable energy sources and pumped-storage plants. In order to achieve this, several research challenges, however, need to be overcome and standardization must further advance. Several academic partners from Switzerland contribute to these research problems in WP3: “Multi-Terminal AC-DC Grids and Power Electronics” within the SCCER FURIES. In this paper six major topics are presented: -“General overview of DC options” where present and future applications of DC technologies as wells as MVDC grids development issues are discussed. -“MMC-based MVDC converters” where a selection of modular multilevel converter as a platform in order to provide flexibility in addressing a multitude of applications and conversion needs is shown. Several topological adaptations are proposed, leading to novel converter topologies. -“AC/DC resonance analysis” where analysis allowing to find the resonance location and to analyzeres-onance nodes contribution to critical mode. These frequency analysis methods permit to foresee net-work frequency behavior that is becoming an important issue due to the growing number of power electronics converters in the network. -“Overview of HVDC breaker technologies” where basic requirements for fast and reliable HVDC circuit breakers as well as the differences to HVAC technology are introduced. -“HVDC circuit breakers: testing methods and challenges” where the limits of HVDC circuit breakers are explored. In this section, a flexible, modular high current source is presented. The source is intended to act as a hardware-in-the-loop test benchfor future HVDC circuit breakers, by driving highly dynamic and arbitrary current waveforms through dynamic loads (e.g. DC arc). -“Fault location principles” where the significant influence of fault location on the network security of supply and quality is drawn. A newly-developed technique which is based on the electromagnetic time reversal (EMTR) theory that can be applied to radial/meshed AC/DC power transmission or distribution networks is presented and compared to other Travelling Wave –based methods. The outputs and outlooks are drawn in order to conclude the paper.

Work Package 3 of the SCCER-FURIES2019

White paper on DC technologies for Switzerland’s electricity transmission and distribution

Alexandre François Christe, Drazen Dujic, Stefan Milovanovic, Mario Paolone, Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Reza Razzaghi, Milan Utvic, Zhaoyang Wang

Work Package 3 of the SCCER-FURIES2019