As to every research, there are some limitations to this research. The first limitation is the temporal limitation. The main database from which the base analysis and methods were developed was collected during 2014 and compiled during early 2015. Data curation and data conditioning followed. Therefore, data entries from 2015 and onwards are missing.
Hence, the data will become outdated with the pass of time.
There are also limitations to the accuracy and precision. Despite the monumental effort to get the data to the highest quality level at the collection and curation stage, it was still required to make amendments and approximations with aggregated capacities. The aggregated capacities remain up to 11.7% of the global reported capacities of the
database, despite being only 1.6% of the entries. However, this limitation is inherited from the source, and overcoming such a limitation would require better data reporting at the national level globally. With the constant digitalisation of services and stronger penetration of internet and computers, this limitation is likely to be reduced over time for future iterations of the kind, while it is still unclear if it will ever be fully eliminated.
To this day, there is still no commercial database offering the detail, quality, quantity and adequate detail. After several years of updates, commercial databases still offer datasets with fewer entries and details, despite having a better temporal coverage. As to other quality factors, studies of the kind have not been conducted after, thus making it unclear if the quality offered today is good enough to perform analysis directly, or if it still requires a large exercise of curation and conditioning.
For projections, ratios were developed based on projections of factors such as GDP, population, and consumption per capita, particularly for Publication V and VI. While mathematical approximations are commonly used in science, they are not necessarily prophetic. Reality is likely to develop in different ways than those projected; however, a good approximation may come close to what the real world may reflect.
7 Conclusions
Several clear tendencies can be recognised when analysing the historical capacity installations of the power sector. Nuclear and coal capacities have experienced a significant decrease in installations after peaking in the 1980s and the 2000s for nuclear and coal respectively. However, despite the global campaign to decrease coal usage, commissioning of coal-fired continues to have significant presence, around 60 GW by the end of 2014, mainly driven by India and China.
Gas-fired capacities have maintained a leading role in the global power plant installations since the early 2000s, with a peak in 2002 of around 100 GW and steadily commissioning around 60 GW of new capacities annually. The rise in popularity of gas-fired capacities represents the multiple advantages of the generation technology. Gas-fired capacities operate with a higher flexibility compared with coal-fired and nuclear capacities, while having a higher efficiency and significantly less emissions compared with coal. Gas-fired capacities can also shift from fossil natural gas to synthetic fuels, potentially bridging the transition from the current generation system towards renewables.
Similarly, hydropower will continue to play an essential role in the global energy system.
Hydropower has been part of the origin of the global electricity sector, and because of its longevity, will continue to do so, even if no new hydropower plants are commissioned but the operating capacities are maintained. In fact, hydropower, though continuously being deployed, is not expected to grow significantly. However, the high flexibility of the technology, particularly in the reservoir-based configuration, has significant potential to allow higher penetration of fluctuating renewables, such as PV and wind. Nevertheless, the environmental impacts of hydropower reservoirs on hydrologic systems are hard to measure, and thus, environmental impact assessment methods should be further developed to accurately characterise the impact of hydropower. Until then, development of new hydropower reservoirs may not be a wise strategy.
Oil-fired capacities show an interesting behaviour also. Historically, oil-fired capacities have been of great importance to the global energy sector. However, the presence and relevance of oil-fired capacities has been reduced to only 6.3% of the global installed capacities, and they produce only 3.3% of the electricity. In a similar manner to gas-fired capacities, oil could eventually be turned renewable if the fuel consumed is shifted to synthetic fuels, such as biodiesel, and thus, it could potentially support further penetration of fluctuating renewables.
Wind and solar PV are setting themselves to dominate the global energy system by the middle of the century. The exponential increase in solar and wind commissioning globally paired with a constant decrease in cost is turning these two technologies into the top competitors globally. While insufficient by themselves to provide reliable energy, they can be matched with other renewables, energy storage, PtX and flexible generation technologies to dramatically reduce the emissions from the power sector.
Other generation technologies, such as biomass, biogas and geothermal remain relevant.
As localised resources, these generation technologies play a relatively minor role globally, but a major role locally in some cases. Good examples of this are Iceland and Finland. The presence of these technologies in the future energy system will depend on how the cost of storage, resource availability, price of fuels and the decrease in capital investment required for wind and PV will develop.
Furthermore, other than in the power sector, alternatives can also be recognised from other industries striving to lower their emissions, which may influence the evolution of the power sector. One example of this is the transport sector, which has an increasing interest in electric vehicles. Although electric vehicles are more efficient, a large shift from conventional internal combustion vehicles towards electric ones will have an impact on the global power sector. However, this impact will be both positive and negative. The downside is of course the sudden increase in demand for electricity at a local level. On the upside, the batteries of the vehicles can be used as storage while the vehicles are not in use (parked at work, overnight) potentially reducing the need for large-scale storage otherwise.
Cement production can also shift from fossil fuels to electricity in order to reduce its carbon emissions. However, limestone-based cement cannot be decarbonised because the processing of limestone itself is responsible for the majority of the emissions from cement production. Nevertheless, this disadvantage can be turned into positive in the future energy system by providing a single point source for carbon capture in order to be used for PtX processes. In this manner, carbon from limestone can potentially become a source for synthetic fuels, replacing the fossil fuels in the future. The potential for fuel production from the global cement sector range, depending on the evolutionary path followed, from 3600 TWhth to 7350 TWhth of liquid fuels by 2040. Over the same period, the potential for gaseous fuels ranges from 6300 TWhth to 12700 TWhth as shown in Publication V.
Contrary to cement production, steel production can be fully decarbonised. Steel can be reduced by replacing the coal used nowadays with hydrogen, which could be obtained from carbon neutral electricity used to power water electrolyses. There are already steel plants using hydrogen for steelmaking, and a pilot plant producing its hydrogen from electrolysis for steelmaking, proving the concept. However, and just as in the case of transport and cement production, this new strategy for steel production would add a significant load to the global power sector, which has to be considered.
In addition, agriculture can also benefit from a larger investment in electricity. For the world’s population to get reliable access to food without cutting the remaining rainforests to be converted into agricultural land, new strategies for agriculture need to be adopted.
Enclosed agriculture is an example of vegetable food production that can be carried out in urban settings, it is significantly more land, water and fertiliser efficient and may even eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides. Along with these benefits, this strategy for agriculture is resilient to all kinds of weather and also reduces the need for transport, as enclosed agriculture can potentially produce some vegetables at the point of
consumption. Nevertheless, this strategy for agricultural production would add another load to the power sector and may have to be considered within the future power sector.
Globally, if the evolutionary path of transition towards renewables is followed, by dedicating only 5% of the global electricity produced by renewables, up to 24% of the global population can have covered their vegetable intake by 2050, as shown in Publication VI.
Finally, there is a second great benefit from a transition towards renewables. One of the many ways in which the climate change impacts the global ecosystem is by affecting rain precipitation patterns. This, in addition to the currently growing water crisis, calls for solutions to the global potable water access problem. One of the several ways in which this issue can be addressed is by replacing thermal generation with renewables, such as wind and solar PV, which use significantly less water. Globally, once the currently serving coal and nuclear capacities are retired according to their operational lifetime, they can potentially be replaced with renewables and gas turbines. This evolutionary path can potentially save around 18 km3 of fresh water from power sector consumption, as seen in Publication VII.
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