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This study innovatively combines a set of methods to provide a new way to assess the economic potential of pumped hydro energy storage. It first provides a method based on geographic information systems to study the potential of pumped-hydro for different topologies. Second, using cost estimates for each identified site, cost-potential curves are derived. Finally, these curves are used for planning a fully renewable system to assess their impact on investment recommendations. Applications to Chile, Peru, and Bolivia show the usability of the methods. Over 450 pumped-hydro locations are identified, totaling around 20 TWh (1600 GW of installed capacity with 12 h of storage). These numbers exceed by 20-fold the projected daily energy demand of the corresponding countries. When taking into account investment costs, most locations are cheaper than current Li-ion batteries, but only some are expected to remain competitive. When using the resulting cost-potential curves to design a future energy system, the planning tool recommends about 1.6 and 5.0 times more pumped-hydro storage compared to using average values and literature values, respectively. These differences underline the significance of the found cost curves. These findings are relevant to the energy planning community, policymakers, and energy companies. Post-print / Final draft

Driven by climate mitigation goals countries around the world are prioritising low-cost renewables for economic growth and recovery from the aftermath of the global pandemic. It is quite clear that sustainable technology choices result in broader socioeconomic benefits, as is shown by countries that have been early movers in transitioning their energy sectors towards higher shares of renewables. There is growing interest in better understanding the direct impact on employment by energy transitions with concerns over jobs lost in the conventional energy sectors, which will be crucial in informing decision making around the world. This research focuses on the net employment impacts of an accelerated uptake of renewable energy that envisages the world deriving 100 % of its energy from renewable sources by 2050, compatible with the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement. Direct energy jobs associated with the power, heat, transport, and desalination sectors increase substantially from about 57 million in 2020 to nearly 134 million by 2050. Value chains in renewables and sustainable technologies are found to be more labour intensive than extractive fossil fuels. The results indicate that a global energy transition will have positive impacts on future stability and growth of economies around the world. Publishers version

Transition towards 100% renewable energy supply is a challenging aim for many regions in the world. Even in regions with excellent availability of wind and solar resources, such factors as limited availability of flexible renewable energy resources, low flexibility of demand, and high seasonality of energy supply and demand can impede the transition. All these factors can be found for the case of Kazakhstan, a mostly steppe country with harsh continental climate conditions and an energy intensive economy dominated by fossil fuels. Results of the simulation using the LUT Energy System Transition modelling tool show that even under these conditions, the power and heat supply system of Kazakhstan can transition towards 100% renewable energy by 2050. A renewable-based electricity only system will be lower in cost than the existing fossil-based system, with levelised cost of electricity of 54 €/MWh in 2050. The heat system transition requires installation of substantial storage capacities to compensate for seasonal heat demand variations. Electrical heating will become the main source of heat for both district and individual heating sectors with heat cost of about 45 €/MWh and electricity cost of around 56 €/MWh for integrated sectors in 2050. According to these results, transition towards a 100% renewable power and heat supply system is technically feasible and economically viable even in countries with harsh climatic conditions. Post-print / Final draft

A recent paper by Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) asserts that the ERoEI (also referred to as EROI) of photovoltaic (PV) systems is so low that they actually act as net energy sinks, rather than delivering energy to society. Such claim, if accurate, would call into question many energy investment decisions. In the same paper, a comparison is also drawn between PV and nuclear electricity. We have carefully analysed this paper, and found methodological inconsistencies and calculation errors that, in combination, render its conclusions not scientifically sound. Ferroni and Hopkirk adopt ‘extended’ boundaries for their analysis of PV without acknowledging that such choice of boundaries makes their results incompatible with those for all other technologies that have been analysed using more conventional boundaries, including nuclear energy with which the authors engage in multiple inconsistent comparisons. In addition, they use out-dated information, make invalid assumptions on PV specifications and other key parameters, and conduct calculation errors, including double counting. We herein provide revised EROI calculations for PV electricity in Switzerland, adopting both conventional and ‘extended’ system boundaries, to contrast with their results, which points to an order-of-magnitude underestimate of the EROI of PV in Switzerland by Ferroni and Hopkirk.