ON THE GLOBAL AND REGIONAL POTENTIAL OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES Over het mondiale en regionale potentieel van hernieuwbare energiebronnen (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) PROEFSCHRIFT TER VERKRIJGING VAN DE GRAAD VAN DOCTOR AAN DE UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT OP GEZAG VAN DE RECTOR MAGNIFICUS, PROF. DR. W.H. GISPEN, INGEVOLGE HET BESLUIT VAN HET COLLEGE VOOR PROMOTIES IN HET OPENBAAR TE VERDEDIGEN OP VRIJDAG 12 MAART 2004 DES MIDDAGS OM 12.45 UUR door Monique Maria Hoogwijk geboren op 22 november 1974 te Enschede Promotor: Prof. Dr. W.C. Turkenburg Verbonden aan de Faculteit Scheikunde van de Universiteit Utrecht Promotor: Prof. Dr. H.J.M. de Vries Verbonden aan de Faculteit Scheikunde van de Universiteit Utrecht Dit proefschrift werd mede mogelijk gemaakt met financiële steun van het Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM). CIP GEGEVENS KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK, DEN HAAG Hoogwijk, Monique M. On the global and regional potential of renewable energy sources/ Monique Hoogwijk – Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, Faculteit Scheikunde Proefschrift Universiteit Utrecht. Met lit. opg. − Met samenvatting in het Nederlands ISBN: 90-393-3640-7 Omslagfoto: NASA Omslag ontwerp: Dirk-Jan Treffers en Monique Hoogwijk, met dank aan Jacco Farla ON THE GLOBAL AND REGIONAL POTENTIAL OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES Aan mijn ouders CONTENTS Chapter one: Introduction 9 1. Energy and sustainable development 9 2. Future energy scenarios 11 2.1 Scenarios on future energy system and energy models 11 2.2 The SRES scenarios 13 3. The potential of wind, solar and biomass energy 16 4. Renewable electricity in the IMAGE/TIMER 1.0 model 17 4.1 The IMAGE/TIMER 1.0 model 17 4.2 Restriction to wind, solar PV and biomass electricity 18 4.3 The electricity simulation in TIMER 1.0 19 5. Central research question 20 6. Outline of this thesis 22 Chapter two: Exploration of the ranges of the global potential of biomass for energy 25 1. Introduction 26 2. Methodology 27 2.1 Biomass categories 27 2.2 Approach 29 3. The potential for energy farming on agricultural land 29 3.1 Availability of surplus agricultural land (Category I) 29 3.2 Availability of marginal/degraded land for energy farming (Category II) 33 3.3 Productivity and primary energy potential of energy crops 34 3.4 Summary of the potential of energy crops 35 4. The potential supply of biomass residues 36 4.1 Agricultural residues (Category III) 36 4.2 Forest residues (Category IV) 36 4.3 Animal residues (Category V) 37 4.4 Organic waste (Category VI) 37 5. Bio-material production (Category VII) 37 6. Integration and discussion 39 6.1 Integration 39 6.2 Discussion 40 7. Conclusions 41 Chapter three: Potential of biomass energy under four land-use scenarios. Part A: the geographical and technical potential 43 1. Introduction 44 2. Definitions and system boundaries 46 2.1 Categories of potentials 46 2.2 Description of primary biomass categories 47 2.3 Restriction to woody energy crops 48 2.4 Restriction of conversion technologies. 49 3. Methodology, framework, scenarios and main assumptions 49 3.1 The IMAGE 2.2 model: the Terrestrial Environment System (TES) 51 3.2 The quantification of the SRES Scenarios of the IPCC 54 3.3 Land availability (Ai): different categories of land for energy plantations 56 3.4 The land-claim exclusion factor 57 3.5 The management factor for energy crops 60 4. Results for land availability and energy crop productivity 61 4.1 Land availability 61 4.2 The productivity of energy crops 65 5. Results for the theoretical and geographical potential 67 5.1 The theoretical potential of biomass energy 67 5.2 The global geographical potential of energy crops 67 5.3 Regional variation in geographical potential 68 6. The technical potential of biomass energy 72 7. Sensitivity analysis and discussion 73 7.1 Sensitivity of the available area from abandoned agricultural land 73 7.2 Comparison of the geographical potential with previous studies 77 7.3 Discussion of results 79 8. Summary and conclusion 80 Chapter four: Potential of biomass energy under four land-use scenarios. Part B: exploration of regional and global cost-supply curves 85 1. Introduction 86 2. Methodology 87 2.1 Crop choice and land-use scenarios 87 2.2 The cost-supply curve of primary biomass energy from energy crops 88 2.3 The cost-supply of secondary biomass: liquid fuel and bio-electricity 93 3. Inputs to assess the production cost of energy crops 95 3.1 Land productivity and geographical potential 95 3.2 Land rental cost 97 3.3 Capital, labour cost, substitution coefficient and learning 98 3.4 Transportation cost 99 3.5 Conversion to liquid fuel and bioelectricity 100 4. The cost-supply curves of primary biomass energy 102 5. The cost-supply curve of secondary biomass energy 107 6. Sensitivity analysis 108 7. Discussion 111 7.1 Comparison with other studies 111 7.2 Limitations of this study 112 8. Summary and conclusion 113 Chapter five: Assessment of the global and regional technical and economic potential of onshore wind-energy 117 1. Introduction 118 2. Approach and definitions 120 3. Theoretical potential 121 4. The geographical potential 122 5. The technical potential 127 5.1 Wind regime 127 5.2 Wind turbine output; amount of full-load hours 129 5.3 Wind power density per km2 130 5.4 Results 132 6. The cost of wind electricity: the economic potential using regional cost supply curves 134 6.1 Approach 134 6.2 Results 135 7. Discussion of the results 137 7.1 Sensitivity analysis 137 7.2 Comparison with previous studies 141 7.3 Discussion of main assumptions 143 8. Conclusions 145 List of variables 146 Chapter six: Assessment of the global and regional technical and economic potential of photovoltaic energy 149 1. Introduction 150 2. Approach 152 2.1 System definitions and boundaries 152 2.2 Definition of potential 154 3. Theoretical potential: the solar radiation 155 4. The geographical potential 158 4.1 Suitable area 158 4.2 Results on the geographical potential 163 5. The technical potential 164 5.1 How to estimate the technical potential 164 5.2 Results of the technical potential assessment 165 6. The economic potential of PV electricity 166 6.1 The cost of PV electricity 166 6.2 The cost of PV electricity and the PV cost-supply curve 167 7. Future perspective of PV electricity 170 8. Sensitivity analysis 172 9. Discussion 176 10. Summary and conclusions 178 List of variables 181 Chapter seven: Exploring the impact on cost and electricity production of high penetration levels of intermittent electricity in OECD Europe and the USA 185 1. Introduction 186 2. Regional static cost-supply curves of wind and solar PV 188 3. Factors determining the overall production cost of wind and solar PV in the electricity system 192 3.1 Additional cost factors with increasing penetration levels 193 3.2 Related aspects for the overall cost development of intermittent electricity 195 3.3 Technological learning: declining capital costs 197 4. Simulation of wind/solar PV penetration: the use of the TIMER-EPG model 197 4.1 General description of TIMER-EPG 197 4.2 Investment strategy 198 4.3 Electricity demand 199 4.4 Spinning reserve and back-up capacity 200 4.5 Supply and cost of conventional electricity 200 4.6 Supply of wind and solar PV electricity 201 4.7 Discarded wind and solar PV electricity 202 4.8 Operational strategy 202 4.9 Technological learning: declining capital costs 203 5. Results 203 5.1 Intermittent electricity production and load factor (Experiment A) 203 5.2 Discarded electricity from intermittent sources (Experiment A) 205 5.3 Costs of wind electricity (Experiment A) 207 5.4 Fuel savings (Experiment B) 209 5.5 Potential CO2 abatement costs (Experiment B) 210 6. Sensitivity analysis (Experiment B) 212 7. Discussion 214 8. Summary and conclusions 217 Chapter eight: Summary and conclusions 221 Chapter eight: Samenvatting en conclusies 231 References 242 Dankwoord 254 Curriculum Vitae 256 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1. Energy and sustainable development Energy plays a crucial role in the development of economies and their people. The energy system, considered as the whole of the energy supply sector, which converts the primary energy to energy carriers, and the end-use technologies needed to convert these energy carriers to deliver the demanded energy services (see Figure 1), has developed significantly over time. Two main transitions can be distinguished in the history of the energy system (Grübler et al., 1995; Grübler, 1998). The first was the transition from wood to coal in the industrialising countries, initiated by the steam engine in the late 18th century. The use of coal, which could more easily be transported and stored, allowed higher power densities and related services to be site independent. By the turn of the 20th century nearly all primary energy in industrialised countries was supplied by coal. The second transition was related to the proliferation of electricity, resulting in a diversification of both energy end- use technologies and energy supply sources. Electricity was the first energy carrier that could easily be converted to light, heat or work at the point of end use. Furthermore, the introduction of the internal combustion engine increased mobility, as cars, buses and aircraft were built, and stimulated the use of oil for transportation. These innovations together lead to a shift in the mix of commercial energy sources from mainly coal towards domination of coal, oil and later natural gas and increased the global commercial primary energy use from 1850 to 1990 by a factor of about 40 (Grübler, 1998).