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Renewable energy is an efficient tool to support China's endeavors to keep energy independence and mitigate climate change. This paper applies a Divisia index approach to investigate the factors governing renewable energy development in China, including the supply mix, energy security, carbon emission, and to forecast these requirements for the year 2020 and 2030. Grey relational model is employed to verify the relationships between renewable energy and its drivers. The results of the forecasts reveal the challenges of long-term deployment for renewable energy technologies. Other results show that during the research period, energy security makes a major contribution to renewable energy development. Energy security and substitution rate have relatively closer relationships with new and total renewable energy consumption respectively than that of other factors. Scenario analyses suggest that strong and continuing renewable energy policies will be helpful to achieve sustainable energy development in China and a strong synergy between renewable energy and energy security would emerge in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigating climate change is driving the need to decarbonize the electricity sector, for which various possible technological options exist, alongside uncertainty over which options are preferable in terms of cost, emissions reductions, and energy security. To reduce this uncertainty, we here quantify two questions for the power system of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland): First, when compared within the same high-resolution modeling framework, how much do different combinations of technologies differ in these three respects? Second, how strongly does the cost and availability of grid-scale storage affect overall system cost, and would it favor some technology combinations above others? We compare three main possible generation technologies: (1) renewables, (2) nuclear, and (3) fossil fuels (with/without carbon capture and storage). Our results show that across a wide range of these combinations, the overall costs remain similar, implying that different configurations are equally feasible both technically and economically. However, the most economically favorable scenarios are not necessarily favorable in terms of emissions or energy security. The availability of grid-scale storage in scenarios with little dispatchable generation can reduce overall levelized electricity cost by up to 50%, depending on storage capacity costs. The UK can rely on its domestic wind and solar PV generation at lower renewable shares, with levelized costs only rising more than 10% above the mean of 0.084 GBP/kWh for shares of 50% and below at a 70% share, which is 35% higher. However, for more than an 80% renewable generation share to be economically feasible, large-scale storage, significantly more power imports, or domestic dispatchable renewables like tidal range must be available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merging climate change mitigation and sustainable development in developing countries is pivotal for the transition towards low carbon growth pathways. This paper combines the field of technology transfer and technology-specific aspects with sustainable development objectives. The general climate change mitigation paradigm has shifted from project oriented mitigation action to more strategic, country-wide, cross-sectoral mitigation plans, in order to explicitly take into account also economic development goals. Local technology needs and socio-technical circumstances are important towards economic development induced by technology transfer. Yet, this approach is not sufficient for the success of technology transfer, which shall also deliver on economic development. A strategy for the adoption of technologies, as well as the broadening of the domestic technology manufacturing base, needs to consider also the technology properties itself in greater detail. The technology transfer process should emphasize the economic developmental purpose as well as the properties of technologies. Thus, I propose a detailed assessment of the technology and its potential of being adopted by suggesting that technology complexity assessments should be integrated into technology transfer mechanisms. By using CSP, PV and wind technology as examples, I describe how the evaluation of technology complexity and of potential economic development, determined by demand for manufactured goods and services within domestic economies, which could lead to job creation and value added, could be used to inform policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents an assessment of global economic energy potentials for all major natural energy resources. This work is based on both an extensive literature review and calculations using natural resource assessment data. Economic potentials are presented in the form of cost-supply curves, in terms of energy flows for renewable energy sources, or fixed amounts for fossil and nuclear resources, with strong emphasis on uncertainty, using a consistent methodology that allow direct comparisons to be made. In order to interpolate through available resource assessment data and associated uncertainty, a theoretical framework and a computational methodology are given based on statistical properties of different types of resources, justified empirically by the data, and used throughout. This work aims to provide a global database for natural energy resources ready to integrate into models of energy systems, enabling to introduce at the same time uncertainty over natural resource assessments. The supplementary material provides theoretical details and tables of data and parameters that enable this extensive database to be adapted to a variety of energy systems modelling frameworks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]