Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 3 Renewable technologies
Lcoe
Capital costs
2012
2020
2012
2020
Wind
Onshore
0.06
0.14
0.04
0.13
1,750
1,350
1,450
-
-
-
Offshore
0.15
-
0.23
0.15
-
0.19
PV
Utility scale/grid
0.13
0.31
0.09
0.36
0.4
0.5 (modules)
-
-
-
CSP
(Solar tower)
28 %
a
0.17
-
0.29
0.12
-
0.16
Parabolic troughs
17
40 %
-
No storage
0.18
0.38
0.16
0.28
-
-
Storage (6
-
15 h.)
0.17
-
0.26
0.11
-
0.14
a
Percentage reduction
LCOE in USD/kWh; Capital costs in USD/kW
view of strongly increasing demand for energy in emerging economies: indeed,
only if this increased demand is met to a large extent by renewables might fossil
fuel prices stop increasing. And fossil fuels are also increasingly risky and costlier
to discover and exploit, prone to accidents and requiring costly insurance policies.
The next logical question is how these cost reductions are going to modify the
energy outlook, if at all, since the scope of economically viable applications for
renewables will increase even further. Note
rst that solar PV, biomass, hydro
power and wind are highly modular, scalable energy sources which can be com-
bined into mini-networks to electrify isolated communities and to expand the
existing network. The complementarity of the different renewable energy sources,
combined with small hydro plants with reservoirs for water storage or other energy
storage options can help eliminate the
nal variability in the electricity supply and
offer complete low-cost electri
cation alternatives. Thus, renewable energy seems
set to become a game-changer, and within it solar PV is set to be a further game-
changer. In view of this, policy-makers will soon have to shift from speci
c support
packages for each technology to packages designed to minimise the total costs of
the electricity system with higher levels of intermittent renewable energy. In fact
this is already the trend in the market, which is set to reduce its dependency on
political support sooner rather than later.
One interesting way of trying to
gure out how all this may impact the energy
outlook is to look at the survey conducted by a consultancy company [
34
] on the
CEO
'
s of several energy companies around the world. The following general
conclusions can be drawn, although with different levels of agreement: (1) there is
almost complete agreement that the power utility business model is set to be
completely transformed or undergo important changes; (2) more than half the
respondents say that distributed generation will force utilities to change their
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