Enhancing drought resilience and energy security through complementing hydro by offshore wind power—The case of Brazil

During atypical droughts, power systems with a heavy reliance on hydropower risk increased greenhouse gas emissions if they are balanced with fossil-fired generation. This work investigates the role of offshore wind energy in reducing the vulnerability of power systems dependent on such hydrological patterns, thereby eliminating this emission...

Strategic uses for ancillary bioenergy in a carbon-neutral and fossil-free 2050 European energy system

Biomass is a growing renewable energy source in Europe and is envisioned to play a role for realising carbon neutrality, predominantly using dedicated energy crops. However, dedicated biomass is controversial for reasons including its competition with food production or its land-use and emissions impacts. Here we examine the potential role of a...

Challenges and opportunities for bioenergy in Europe: National deployment, policy support, and possible future roles

Bioenergy is currently a major renewable energy source in Europe but faces an unclear future because of conflicting modelling results and the lack of long-term policy. This paper identifies three challenges and potential opportunities by analysing bioenergy's historical national deployment, current policy support, and possible future roles in...

What is redundant and what is not? Computational trade-offs in modelling to generate alternatives for energy infrastructure deployment

Given the urgent need to devise credible, deep strategies for carbon neutrality, approaches for ‘modelling to generate alternatives’ (MGA) are gaining popularity in the energy sector. Yet, MGA faces limitations when applied to state-of-the-art energy system models: the number of alternatives that can be generated is virtually infinite; no...

Diversity of options to eliminate fossil fuels and reach carbon neutrality across the entire European energy system

Disagreements persist on how to design a self-sufficient, carbon-neutral European energy system. To explore the diversity of design options, we develop a high-resolution model of the entire European energy system and produce 441 technically feasible system designs that are within 10% of the optimal economic cost. We show that a wide range of...

Open energy system modelling to support the European Green Deal

Energy models are used to explore decarbonisation pathways and potential future energy systems. In this editorial, we comment on the importance of energy system modelling and open tools to inform policymaking in the context of the European Green Deal. We also summarise the seven contributions to the special collection on Energy Systems...

Meteorologically-Informed Spatial Planning of European PV Deployment to Reduce Multiday Generation Variability

Renewable generation variability over multiple days is a key challenge in decarbonizing the European power system. Weather regimes are one way to quantify this variability, but so far, their applications to energy research have focused on wind power generation in winter. However, the projected growth of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity implies...

Enhanced spatio-temporal electric load forecasts using less data with active deep learning

An effective way to mitigate climate change is to electrify most of our energy demand and supply the necessary electricity from renewable wind and solar power plants. Spatio-temporal predictions of electric load become increasingly important for planning this transition, while deep learning prediction models provide increasingly accurate...

How offshore wind could become economically attractive in low-resource regions like Indonesia

The current focus of offshore wind industry and academia lies on regions with strong winds, neglecting areas with mild resources. Photovoltaics' cost reductions have shown that even mild resources can be harnessed economically, especially where electricity prices are high. Here, we study the technical and economic potential of offshore wind...

Mitigating a century of European renewable variability with transmission and informed siting

To reach its goal of net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050, the European Union seeks to massively expand wind and solar power. Relying on weather-dependent power generation, however, poses substantial risks if climate variability is not adequately understood and accounted for in energy system design. Here we quantify European wind and solar...

Trends in tools and approaches for modelling the energy transition

Energy system models are crucial to plan energy transition pathways and understand their impacts. A vast range of energy system modelling tools is available, providing modelling practitioners, planners, and decision-makers with multiple alternatives to represent the energy system according to different technical and methodological considerations...