Pathways to Sustainable European Energy Systems

 

Pathways is part of the Alliance for Global sustainablility

 

"This project will show what pathways to a sustainable energy future means in practice.”

Karin Markides, President,
Chalmers University of Technology

 

 

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This part aims at revealing and following in detail the emissions from those European facilities which belong to the EU trade system for carbon dioxide, and comparing the results with the measures available within the immediate future (the second trading period, 2008–2012). The research group has a unique opportunity to do so by combining Chalmers' databases with the EU's official emission database. The results of the project can form a basis for assessment of different states' future possibilities of fulfilling climate commitments, a basis which in part will be used in the analytical work on development courses in the Pathways project (modelling) and in part should be able to provide important grounds for future Swedish climate negotiations.

 

Problem formulation and research tasks

The goal of this part is to analyze CO₂ emissions with regard to climate commitments, primarily from the power and heating sector. The information from the analysis will be useful both as input data to future climate negotiations and for identification of "early opportunities" to invest in new techniques and systems. This work offers the possibility to:

• Follow the emissions down to a technical level and connect with trends on the fuel market.

• Give a picture of where the trend is heading, based on comparison between the EU's emission database and the new power-plant projects which are an important part of Chalmers' database.

• Compare expected emissions with allocations for the second period (2008–2012), taking account of the second round of national allocation plans (NAP2).

• Estimate an approximate CO₂ price (or at least a trend in its changes) through comparison between historical emissions, the emissions during the NAP1 period, the NAP2 proposals and expected future emissions based on the database and the modelling in the project.

• Calibrate the energy system models that are used in the Pathways project.

 

Net capacity (turbine power) of existing and planned thermal facilities in EU25. Divided by fuel and age category. From Kjärstad and Johnsson (2006). Biomass is not included (due to varying quality of data between the member states) but it constitutes a very small proportion.

 

Method and implementation

The Pathways work is based on a detailed analysis with databases and modelling, and can be divided into the following activities:

• Inventory and documentation (in Chalmers' databases) of the national allocation plans for both the current test period (NAP1) and the second trading period (NAP2, 2008–2012), as well as of national climate goals.

• Comparison between NAP1, NAP2, national goals, trends in emissions and the EU's burden distribution.

• Identification of regions where climate goals will be especially hard to meet (in which the trends are wrong and there are few possibilities of fuel substitution) as well as where "early opportunities" may exist. • Estimation of the price trend for CO₂ emission rights.

• Model analyses of consequences for the infrastructure's development, given different allocation scenarios such as the occurrence or risk of lock-in effects etc.

 

PARTICIPATING RESEARCHERS:

Filip Johnsson, Johan Rootzén, Jan Kjärstad and Mikael Odenberger
Energy Technology, Chalmers University of Technology