To reduce contributors to climate change and grow worldwide renewable electricity use, having the proper infrastructure in place is critical ingredient.
Due to increasing environmental concerns, numerous studies report on the best ways to reduce GHG emissions. One of the most effective actions that can be taken is to reduce emissions by increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the electric sector and by increasing the share of electrification in some highly energy intensive sectors, such as transport and heating.
And to accomplish this requires infrastructure.
To this end, a timely study from Leonardo Energy explores infrastructure requirements necessary for supporting possible pathways to a 100% or near-100% renewables energy sources electric power sector in Europe.
The study points to transport and heating as energy intensive sectors that must increase their share of renewable energy sources in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But this is no simple process, states Leonardo Energy:
“This will certainly require an extreme transformation of those sectors, and it will require very significant infrastructure expansions. The magnitude of those expansions will probably be enough to have a strong impact in the economy, probably requiring an effort to develop suitable technical solutions and an increase in production capacity in some industrial sectors, all of which require time and careful planning.”
Most of us may understand that change is inevitable; making changes, however, to an existing delivery infrastructure is a daunting undertaking. Such an infrastructure includes businesses and employees, banks, new technology and governments.
Fifteen scenarios are analyzed in this study, “according to a set of indicators in order to assess both the objective quality of the analysis performed in each one of them, and the usefulness of the data provided for the objectives of this report: to provide some insight on the consequences of reaching 100% RES regarding infrastructure investments.”
For renewable energy officials in both Europe and elsewhere, this is a study worth knowing.
For more, see: ESTIMATING INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS FOR A NEAR 100% RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY SCENARIO IN 2050.
Image: Pylons at sunset, via Shutterstock
