Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4 Summary and Perspectives
However detailed and up-to-date a cost analysis may be, as presented in this
chapter, it is at best nothing more than a snapshot of the current situation, with some
hints as to the future. Nevertheless, an effort has been made to provide data and
analysis that can provide insights into the future. This is very important in this
eld,
since the accelerated deployment of renewable sources is bringing down their costs,
and a host of new problems and possibilities are emerging (see, e.g., [ 35 ]). For
instance, at world level half the new capacity additions to power generation are
from renewable sources (in 2011: 41 GW wind, 30 GW PV, 25 Hydro and 6 GW
biomass; [ 18 ]). The outlook for energy is shaped by three basic aspects: the huge,
ever-increasing demand for energy, mainly from emerging economies; increasing
dif
nd accessible traditional fossil fuels; and the deployment of
renewable sources. This last development has brought with it substantial cost
reductions in energy sources of all types: hydro power, biomass and geothermal
power are all competitive at market prices today in most situations. In fact, from a
purely economic standpoint, renewables are already the default option for off-grid
electri
culties to
cation and for virtually all electricity systems based mainly on diesel gen-
eration (for example, systems on islands and in remote locations).
The next question is whether further cost reductions can be expected, and if so
which technologies look to be most promising. Some conclusions can be drawn
straightforwardly from the presentation above: no signi
cant cost reductions can be
expected for hydro power, biomass or geothermal technologies; for onshore wind
power cost reductions will depend strongly on future trends in commodity prices
(steel, copper, cement), but the technology is near market competitiveness at good
sites. Off-shore wind power is still too expensive, although cost reductions may be
expected as its deployment continues. The outlook for cost decreases may be better
in the case of mini-wind turbines, associated with in-house consumption and dis-
tributed generation, since they can exploit advances already available in onshore
wind power generation. As for solar power, CSP solar tower technologies with
thermal storage look promising for large plants from 100 MG to 1 GW and possibly
more. They are not competitive yet, but further deployments could bring down
installation BoS costs, even though no signi
cant technical improvements are
expected. Since this is a technology that is especially able to store energy in the form
of heat, which can be quickly directed to generate steam and power, it may play an
essential role in a complete renewables strategy. The last and most decisive analysis
concerns PV solar technology: the costs of PV cells and modules have come down at
an astonishing rate of 20
22 % per annum since records began in 1979, and the trend
seems to have accelerated to 30 or 35 % in 2011
-
2012 [ 17 , 25 , 31 ].
This brought the cost of PV modules down to around USD 0.7/W by the end of
2012, and the share accounted for by the modules in the total
-
nal cost of a small to
medium PV system to less than 50 %. Thus, even if module prices continue this
trend, other installation costs will come to account for most of the total system cost,
which means that the total
nal cost cannot be expected to decrease at such a high
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