Coversheet for Thesis in Sussex Research Online
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Assessing energy security in a low-carbon context The case of electricity in the UK Emily M. Cox DPhil Thesis University of Sussex May 2016 3 Acknowledgments Undertaking this PhD has given me some of the most enjoyable years of my life, all thanks to the following people; there’s no way I would have come this far without you. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors Jim Watson, Florian Kern and Matt Copeland. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I honestly couldn’t have wished for a better set of supervisors: you’ve given me support, encouragement and constructive criticism in exactly the right measures and at all the right times. I dearly hope that your hard work on this thesis pays off; it’s your thesis as much as mine. Further thanks go to Andy Boston for continuing to advise me despite moving to a new job. Also thanks to little Adam Kern, for arriving right on time and making Florian visibly very happy! I would also like to thank the funders of this project for their generous support. This thesis was funded under a CASE award (grant number EP/J502236/1) jointly by E.ON Technologies (Ratcliffe) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Also big thanks to everyone who has given me opportunities along the way: Steve Sorrell, Alan Walker, Phil Johnstone, Andy Stirling, Gordon MacKerron, Karoline Rogge, Austin Brown, Tom Allerton, Greenpeace, UKERC and Teach First. A huge amount of thanks go to my amazing ladies: Amy & Amy, Hana, Laura, Becky, Lily and Rosie. Your love, strength and sense of humour is a constant source of inspiration; it’s doubtful that this thesis would have been completed without you, and even if it had, the last four years would have been boring as hell (we’re gonna need more wine…!). Massive thanks also go to the Bristol crew: Jamie, Weve, Rob, Rich. You’re my oldest friends, thank you for giving me a home-from-home at times when I really needed it. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to James and Helena – your kindness and generosity has given me the creative, emotional and financial freedom needed to complete this thesis and pursue a whole bunch of other dreams as well. Furthermore, I wish to thank everyone that I’ve played or written music with over the past few years, for giving me a creative outlet and thereby keeping me (approximately) sane; thanks in particular go to Sam, who helped me to write several songs and also some of this thesis. And of course, I owe so much to my mum for being constantly supportive, kind, funny and generally wonderful. 4 Last but not least, I wish to give boundless thanks to everyone I’ve worked with at SPRU and elsewhere. SPRU is an incredible place to work, and I am so lucky to have been blessed with such lovely, friendly and funny colleagues. Those who have helped with particular questions and helped me to write sections of this thesis are too numerous to mention without accidentally missing someone off; so thank you to all of you for having your office doors open and for investing your time and energy every time I needed assistance. Special thanks go to the Sussex Energy Group, the other PhD students, and everyone in room 301 and in IDS bar – thank you all for your gentle encouragement, for the geeky conversations, the laughs, the drinks and for reminding me not to take life too seriously. 5 Abstract This thesis assesses the future security of the UK electricity system in a low-carbon context. Electricity provision is a crucial and ubiquitous component of industrialised societies, and over the past couple of decades a number of fundamental changes to electricity systems have meant that the security of this provision has taken a central place on the policy agendas of the UK and many other industrialised nations. Alongside this, emerging normative, legal and political imperatives to mitigate climate change mean that energy systems will need to undergo a fundamental transition. The overarching aim of this thesis is to assess the future security of the UK electricity system in a low-carbon context, in order to identify the main risks, trade-offs and synergies which may emerge between different objectives in a transition to a low- carbon electricity system. To do this, this thesis develops a set of indicators for assessing the electricity security of low-carbon transition pathways, building on assessment frameworks from the existing literature and utilising a range of both quantitative and qualitative indicators. The indicator set is used to assess the security of three pathways for the UK electricity system, each of which aims to meet the UK’s 2050 greenhouse gas reduction target. The indicators are then used as the basis for interview discussions with 25 experts from the UK energy sector, in order to explore the diversity of perspectives in the UK energy community. Finally, the experts’ perspectives are used as multiple ‘lenses’ through which to view the results of the security assessment of the three pathways. This thesis makes a contribution to knowledge and understanding in three ways. Firstly, it makes a methodological contribution by proposing and testing a set of indicators to measure the security of electricity systems in long-term scenarios of national energy transitions. The thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach and utilises both quantitative and qualitative indicators without aggregation in order to identify synergies and trade-offs. Secondly, this thesis makes an empirical contribution by applying this set of indicators in a novel way to assess the security of a set of low- carbon transition pathways for the UK electricity system: this is the first time that such a comprehensive security dashboard has been used to assess a set of future electricity system scenarios. By including reliability and cost parameters alongside a range of other important aspects of energy security such as diversity, trade and acceptability, this thesis extends the empirical work of existing frameworks to explore the potential 6 implications of a low-carbon transition on electricity system reliability and costs, and the potential trade-offs between various objectives. Thirdly, this thesis makes a further empirical contribution by identifying the diversity of perspectives amongst UK energy experts; this is a novel contribution to the energy security literature, which contains few empirical studies on experts’ perspectives on energy security, and no previously- existing work of this kind in the UK context. Finally, this thesis analyses the impacts of these perspectives on the results of the security assessment, thus providing the first study of this kind to actively incorporate multiple perspectives on energy security into an indicator assessment. The thesis finds that the three low-carbon pathways tested against the indicator framework all demonstrate a reduction in flexible, responsive supply capacity compared to the 2010 baseline, which could reduce the ability of the system to respond to unexpected perturbations in the supply/demand balance. The results show that demand reduction may be highly beneficial and results in co-benefits across multiple security dimensions (although this thesis has not conducted detailed investigation of the costs and risks of demand reduction, and therefore this issue needs to be analysed further in future research). Increasing the penetration of renewable electricity generation is shown to increase the diversity of the generation mix, and to have a positive impact on greenhouse gas emission reduction and resource depletion; however, it could lead to a reduction in system balancing capability, and does not necessarily minimise dependence on fuel imports. The decentralised transition pathway is shown to have the fewest ‘red flags’ of security risk in the longer-term; this finding is an interesting addition to the academic and policy literature which has debated the potential security benefits of a decentralised electricity system for the UK. However, this thesis also highlights that there are many areas of uncertainty and potential security risk in a transition to a decentralised electricity system, which may experience some aspects of heightened security risk in the medium-term. 7 Contents Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ....................................................................................................................... 5 Contents ...................................................................................................................... 7 List of figures ............................................................................................................ 14 List of tables .............................................................................................................. 16 Acronyms and abbreviations .................................................................................