Table 11. Typical PV system prices in 2013 in selected countries [USD]. (IEA, Technology Roadmap: Sola Photovoltaic Energy, 2014))
Table 11 shows typical photovoltaic system prices in selected countries in the year 2013.
China has the lowest prices and the United States has the highest prices. (IEA, 2014)
Figure 42. Investment cost of a 50 MW trough plant with 7-hour storage. (IEA, Technology Roadmap:
Concentrating Solar Power, 2020)
Figure 42 presents investment components of a 50 MW plant with 7-hour storage. (IEA, 2020)
In Spain, the government is planning to collect taxes from people who produce solar power electricity and are selling it to main grid. Spain has very big national debt, and many people are unemployed, so they consider different kind of ways to collect money/taxes.
This can lead in other countries that people are afraid to install solar panels on their houses.
In the world there is no other country that is taxing on solar power production; Spain would then be the first one. (BBC, 2013)
5.3 Future Outlooks
The efficiency of commercial solar power cells may continue to improve relatively fast compared to the evolution from the year 2000 to the year 2015. The technology solutions from laboratory discoveries will be commercially available in the future. The development in China will affect quite much the commercial markets development and the prices of solar panels.
Figure 44 shows IEA’s roadmap vision for solar heating and cooling. (IEA, 2020)
Figure 43. Growth of CSP production under four scenarios [TWh/a]. (IEA, Technology Roadmap:
Concentrating Solar Power, 2020)
Table 12 presents top Europeans solar PV market’s prospects. (SolarPower, 2018) Figure 44 shows IEA’s roadmap vision for solar heating and cooling. (IEA, 2020)
Table 12. Top European solar pv market’s prospects. (SolarPower Europe, Global Market Outlook, 2018)
Figure 44. IEA’s Roadmap vision for solar heating and cooling [EJ/a]. (IEA, Technology Roadmap: Solar Heating and Cooling, 2020)
6 FUTURE PROSPECTS AND FORESIGHT
Every EU country has different kind of plans and annual time frames to achieve carbon neutral energy productions. The EU facilitates these plans thorough the Green Deal Invest Program.
Figure 45. Centralized generation systems waste more than two thirds of their original energy input.
(Greenpeace, Energy Revolution, 2016)
Figure 45 presents the energy units flow from power plant to household use. On the way some amount of the primary energy is always lost. (Greenpeace, 2016)
Figure 46. Future city. (Greenpeace, 2016)
Figure 46 shows one example of what a future city would look like. Figure 47 presents the smart-grid vision for the energy revolution. (Greenpeace, 2016)
Figure 47. The smart-grid vision for the energy revolution. (Greenpeace, 2016)
In the future EU's energy policy will assert financial punishment when using fossil fuels, so gradually renewable sources and low carbon technologies will compete for shares of energy production with fossil fuels.
7 CONCLUSIONS
Using biomass as source of energy has a big role in some countries in EU. Policy makers are taking some actions on the sustainable criteria because not all of biomass used is so sustainable in the long term. Some of the wood pellets are shipped from North America, Africa and Asia already and if politics are favoring biomass in energy production the amount of overseas shipping will expand. There is currently research regarding many different potential technological solutions on how to increase the heat value of a large variety of biomass feedstocks and capturing CO2 and other greenhouse gases from combusting processes.
Most of the obstacles for the use of new technologies are that the economics of the whole process is not competitive enough compared to other sources of energy production. Policy makers usually want to promote technologies which creates employment. The biomass production chain will employ people, especially on the countryside.
In the future there would be more sustainability certifications in the EU and in the world for using biomass in energy production. Some countries have different kind of specific rules for using biomass feedstocks for energy production. When processing wood in pulp industry, liquid materials can be collected. Chemicals from liquids can be reused in the pulp process and the rest can be used to produce energy. These chemicals cannot so easily be used elsewhere, other possibilities are under research.
Regarding solar power in the last 20 years in the Europe, installed capacity has developed and increased quite a bit. Especially a lot of installations have been assembled in Germany, Italy and Spain. During 2016 and 2017 installation speed has been a little bit slower than during the years before, so it almost on the S-curve. The next few next years may also be somewhat slow but there may be some speeding up in the future.
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