Policy pathways for the energy transition in Europe and selected European countries Deliverable 7.2 (MUSTEC) Deliverable 1 (SCCER JA IDEA) Johan Lilliestam, Richard Thonig (ETH Zürich, Renewable Energy Policy Group) Pablo del Río, Christoph Kiefer (CSIC) Natalia Caldés, Yolanda Lechón (CIEMAT) Gonzalo Escribano, Lara Lázaro Touza (Royal Institute Elcano) (all funded by MUSTEC) Leonhard Späth (ETH Zürich, Climate Policy Group) (funded by SCCER JA IDEA) 2 This deliverable is a joint report of the Horizon 2020 project MUSTEC and the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) – Joint Activity IDEA (joint project between SCCER CREST and SCCER SoE). The cases European Commission and German (ETH REP), Spain (CIEMAT) and France (CSIC) come from MUSTEC partners, whereas the Italian and Swiss cases were done by the SCCER JA IDEA partner (ETH CP). Leonhard Späth (ETH CP) declares to have no financial or other demands towards the MUSTEC project, CIEMAT (MUSTEC coordinator) or the European Commission for his contribution, and all other authors declare to have no financial or other demands towards the SCCER JA IDEA project or the Federal Swiss Institute for Technology (ETH Zürich). The deliverable is to be seen both as a stand-alone report and, especially, as dedicated input for subsequent modelling tasks in both the MUSTEC and SCCER JA IDEA projects. The report will be updated within the MUSTEC project (only the MUSTEC-funded pathways) in September 2019, considering recent policy developments affecting the dominant pathways – in particular the Member States’ National Energy and Climate Plans, to be made published in winter 2018/19 – and the feedback from the MUSTEC and SCCER JA IDEA modelling teams. This report should be cited as: Lilliestam, J., Thonig, R., Späth, L., Caldés, N., Lechón, Y., del Río, P., Kiefer, C., Escribano, G., Lázaro Touza, L. (2019): Policy pathways for the energy transition in Europe and selected European countries. Deliverable 7.2 MUSTEC project, Deliverable 1 SCCER JA IDEA, ETH Zürich, Zürich. 3 4 The MUSTEC project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 764626 LEGAL NOTICE The sole responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the authors. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union. Neither the INEA nor the European Commission is responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be translated, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, re-cording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. The quotation of those designations in whatever way does not imply the conclusion that the use of those designations is legal without the content of the owner of the trademark. 5 6 Abstract In a decarbonised future electricity system, Europe will rely on fluctuating renewable sources, such as solar PV and wind power, to a much larger extent than today. This means that Europe as a whole and each individual country on the continent must increase the availability and use of flexibility options in order to balance the grid. Such flexibility options include dispatchable renewable sources (e.g. concentrating solar power (CSP) with thermal storage, or dam hydropower), electricity storage, and demand-response. We start from the notion that the future does not happen, but it is made by a series of policy decisions between now and then. If this is true, then the electricity system of 2050 is determined by the sum of all policy decisions affecting the power system – the policy pathway – in all legislations in Europe until 2050. In this report, we take the first steps towards identifying the potential future role for dispatchable renewables – specifically CSP (MUSTEC project) and dam hydropower (SCCER JA IDEA project) – as a function of policy decisions that either increase the need for flexibility (e.g. fluctuating renewables) or provide flexibility (e.g. storage, dispatchable renewables, flexible demand). We draw on the energy transition logics framework developed by Foxon and colleagues. This framework poses that the space of possible energy transition pathways is a triangle with three distinct policy logics in its corners: a state-centred logic, in which the central government leads or carries out the transition; a market-centred logic, in which the government sets the framework but leaves all other decisions to market actors; and a grassroots-centred logic, in which the transition is carried out locally with the resources available to each community. Any transition strategy will consist, in some constellation, of policies from these corner. We investigate policy strategies in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and of the European Union as a whole. For each case, we define one dominant pathway, consisting of currently valid, implemented policies of the current (or newly resigned) government. In addition, we identify up to three minority pathways for each case, describing the energy policy visions of parties that are currently in opposition but could form a government in the future. For each case, we identify pathways representing each of the three logics. Every pathway is described in narrative form, and as a set of 41 quantitative variables affecting the need for and provision of power system flexibility. This report is a primary data source for the power system modelling in the two projects it is part of (MUSTEC, Horizon 2020; SCCER JA IDEA, Swiss Competence Centre for Energy Research). This modelling will happen in 2019 and 2020, and will bring detailed, quantitiave insights of how the potential role for dispatchable renewables is affected by energy policy decisions. However, from the data we have derived here, we can draw a number of conclusions. We show that all countries and the EU as a whole seek to strongly decarbonise their power systems, but also that no dominant pathway foresees decarbonisation to the extent that would be needed to fulfil the European (Union and national) commitments under the Paris Agreement. We also show that all countries seek to vastly expand intermittent renewables, which will trigger a greatly increased need for flexibility. However, this is not reflected in the policies we analysed: no pathway, dominant or minority, is specific on how they want to provide flexibility, especially not at the scale and pace needed. This problem will be exacerbated as the climate targets are tightened and fossil fuels – first coal and lignite (mainly in the 2020s) and later gas power (especially in the 2040s) – are phased out: once this happens, the European power system(s) will lose much of its current flexibility, and unless other, carbon-free flexibility options are expanded, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain power system stability. 7 8 ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 7 1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................... 13 2 ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK .................................................................................. 15 2.1 The use of models in energy policy analysis ........................................................................................15 2.2 Pathways: the sum of all decisions between now and then ................................................................15 2.3 Electricity policy rationales ..................................................................................................................18 2.3.1 Cultural theory ....................................................................................................................................18 2.3.2 Energy transition logics framework ....................................................................................................20 3 METHOD ....................................................................................................................... 24 3.1 Representative organisations for each logic ........................................................................................24 3.2 Variables that affect system flexibility .................................................................................................25 3.2.1 Overall targets .....................................................................................................................................26 3.2.2 Intermittent renewables .......................................................................................................................26 3.2.3 Dispatchable renewables .....................................................................................................................27 3.2.4 Physical and statistical renewables imports ........................................................................................28 3.2.5 Conventional generation .....................................................................................................................28 3.2.6 Storage ................................................................................................................................................29 3.2.7 Grid expansion: interconnections .......................................................................................................30