Energy system analysis with a focus on future energy demand projections: The case of Norway

Post Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian war are significantly impacting energy systems worldwide, faltering investments and threatening to throttle the expansion of primary clean energy technologies, even in the case of a well-structured and managed energy system, such as Norway. This unprecedented crisis requires deeper analyses and well-measured actions from the main actors in Norway's energy and climate sector. Hence, providing and highlighting needed interventions and improvements in the energy system is crucial. This study analyzes demand-side energy in Norway's households, industry, transport, and "other” sectors. LEAP model, a powerful energy system analysis tool, was used to conduct the analysis based on Baseline and Mitigation scenarios. The energy demand by sector and fuel type toward 2050 is forecasted, firstly by considering a set of parameters and key assumptions that impact the security of supply and secondly on the ambitious target of Norway's government in decreasing GHG emissions by 55% in 2030 and 90–95% by the year 2050 compared to 1990 levels. The mitigation scenario aims to diversify the overall national energy system and technological changes based on large-scale renewable energy sources (RES) integration. From the perspective of climate change issues, EV's include an attractive option for deep decarbonization, including other sustainable fuel sources such as H2, biofuel mixed with diesel, the use of excess heat deriving from industry to cover households' heating demand, and integration of large-scale heat pumps driven by RES during off-peak demand is applied. Energy demand projections are uncertain, and the main goal is to show how different scenario projections up to 2050 affect the whole of Norway's energy system, leading to a combined global warming potential (GWP) of around 7.30 MtCO2 in the mitigation scenario from 56.40 MtCO2 tones released in the baseline scenario, by reaching only 77.5% reduction referring to 1990 level. This study's findings show that the net-zero ambitions by the end of 2050 are impossible without the carbon tax application and carbon capture storage (CCS), especially in the oil and gas industry. © 2023 The Authors

Internationalism in climate action and China's role

The world is facing dual challenges of generating an economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, and transitioning to a low-carbon economy to tackle climate change. Strongly interrelated global challenges will require an integrated and coordinated response by all countries to manage the risk and lay the foundation for building back better. As the world's biggest emitter and the second-largest economy, China is a very important player in international collaboration and coordination in climate action. Against this backdrop, this paper looks into the increasingly crucial role that China is playing in global climate action, especially focusing on three aspects: China's domestic and foreign policymaking for the energy transition;its role in promoting multilateralism and international collaboration on building a sustainable world;and how it could accelerate climate action and diplomacy through research, development and innovation. In the critical decade of the 2020s, China has a great opportunity to further transform and upgrade its energy and industrial structures, promote research, development and the application of green and low-carbon technologies and intensify international climate cooperation on climate change. China should aim to be at the forefront of raising climate ambition and accelerating climate action for a sustainable and more equitable world. © 2023 IOP Publishing Ltd.

The role of renewable energy finance in achieving low-carbon growth: contextual evidence from leading renewable energy-investing countries

Although switching from non-renewable to renewable energy is believed to stimulate low-carbon economic growth, the means to establishing this energy transition have largely remained unexplored in the extant literature. Against this backdrop, this study focuses on evaluating how scaling public investment in renewable energy-related research and development projects impacts the carbon productivity levels in the top-10 renewable energy-investing countries. The estimation strategy comprised econometric methods that can handle cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity related concerns in the data. Regarding the key findings, higher public research and development-related investments in renewable energy are observed to boost carbon productivity levels in the concerned countries, while natural resource consumption and net exports are found to reduce carbon productivity. Besides, the results endorsed that public research and development investment for renewable energy development exhibits a moderating role by jointly boosting carbon productivity with higher natural resource consumption and net exports. Moreover, it is also seen to inflict a mediating effect by jointly boosting carbon productivity with urbanization. In line with these findings, the concerned governments are recommended to scale such investment in order to stimulate technological innovation so that renewable energy transition can take place to establish low carbon economic growth. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Energy Poverty and Low Carbon Energy Transition

In the recent two decades of recorded literature, energy poverty is increasingly understood as a multi-dimensional issue caused by the low-carbon energy transition. In this study, a literature review was performed, the outcome of which confirmed the contentious nature of energy poverty at the regional and international levels of analysis. Furthermore, the collected literature enabled the identification of those domains under which energy poverty is prevailing. The impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war on energy prices and energy poverty were also considered key issues of interest in recently published studies (published within the last five years). While all the collected studies in the literature review covered a wide geographical context worldwide, a comprehensive analysis of nurturing energy poverty sources and their consequences was primarily and foremost understood in the household sector, which was the research focus of this study, accordingly. Moreover, future research guidelines that should be drawn regarding energy poverty alleviation were also proposed. © 2023 by the authors.

The evolving energy landscapes of coal: Windows on the past and influences on the future

Coal energy landscapes have changed dramatically over the last decades, including geographic shifts in production and consumption, technological changes that have reduced labour demand and led to relatively new mining practices (e.g. invasive mountain-top approaches), changed economic footprints, a shutdown of capacities or a complete end of mining in many regions with massive impacts on regional and local economies, community well-being, social capital, et cetera. Then the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia´s invasion of Ukraine have fundamentally affected the global economy, disrupted energy markets, and shattered existing estimates about development trends, challenging the progress and speed of the low-carbon energy transition and coal phase-out. This article provides a brief reflection on the changing landscapes of coal and their possible futures, and serves as an introduction to the Special Issue of Moravian Geographical Reports on "The death of coal in the energy transition? Regional perspectives”.

Fossil Fuels to Hydrogen: Paradigm Shift in Capital Project Management? A Transitional Gas & Oil Eyeglass Review

Energy producers are under tremendous pressure to abate GHG emissions earlier than previously thought. The call for action is driven by multiple factors such as climate activism, policy regulations, a global pandemic and geopolitical conflict. Hydrogen is widely considered the most important energy carrier in a decarbonized future. As organizations are revisiting their business models to evaluate the impact of a shift from fossil fuels to Hydrogen, terms such as "Energy Transition", "Carbon Management" and "Hydrogen Economy" are now making frequent appearances in business and project management plans. The global pandemic and cataclysmic geopolitical conflicts may have expedited this shift in strategies, and to some extent exacerbated capital risks faced by mega projects. As a result, a fundamental realignment in Project Management strategies seem inevitable. While managing the Energy Transition, the traditional Oil & Gas PM knowledge areas will require a "reframing" of sorts. This paper investigates the Project Management challenges and opportunities in a large, Joint Venture capital project in the Energy Transition context. The Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate change, has intensified the discussions around low carbon energy sources. The transition to Hydrogen is sometimes envisaged to happen with cross-sectoral coupling (CO2 capture, Renewable Energy storage). Its long-term implications in terms of project complexity management, technological maturity and economic feasibility along with stakeholder influences will be reviewed. The high-level interface aspects from technology integration viewpoints and Project Human Resource Management challenges will also be addressed. Other important present-day change drivers include impacts of Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflict in Europe, which have led to watershed policy changes such as Joint European action for secure energy (REPowerEU). Rejigging Risk Management, Contract Management, Supply Chain and Stakeholder alignment strategies in the post pandemic world are key execution strategy elements for Hydrogen projects and these will be reviewed on the basis of learnings from Oil & Gas Project execution management. The fundamental changes in Gas and Oil based Capital Project Management and learnings to be harvested for Hydrogen projects will be elaborated utilizing identified critical change drivers. Project Configuration, Integration and Risk management perspectives will be analyzed from Owners' viewpoints. Additional Critical Success Factors, Project Definition Parameters or integrated Front End Loading (iFEL), Project assurance and leadership model will be identified and elaborated. An overall execution strategy focused on new project realities beyond the realm of triple project constraints will be outlined. The strategic redefinition of Project Management functions in the context of Energy Transition and their deployment will be administered via a competent Project Management Office (PMO) function. Authors identify the PMO's leading role in Change Management, harvesting learnings and synergies, stakeholder alignment and overall strategy definition. Copyright © 2022, Society of Petroleum Engineers.

The Rising Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine War: Energy Transition, Climate Justice, Global Inequality, and Supply Chain Disruption

This perspective paper explores the rising impacts of the COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war from different perspectives, with an emphasis on the role of climate financing in achieving equitable and just transition mechanisms and that of peace in expediting this pursuit and sustaining this drive. It is motivated by the realization that there is an urgent need for accelerating the decarbonisation agenda, as highlighted in pre-COP26 debates and in the resulting Glasgow Climate Pact, through the mitigation measures that can be unpacked at both cost and scale. This is further reiterated in the third instalment of Assessment Report 6 (AR6) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, dwelling on Mitigation of Climate Change, underlining the required policy shifts and technology developmental needs. Green technology, however, comes at a green premium, being more expensive to implement in geographies that cannot absorb its cost in the immediate short term. This engenders an inequitable and unjust landscape, as those that require green technology are unable to have access to it but are most often on the frontlines of the impacts of climate change. While it is urgent to review this issue and to encourage more cooperation for technology development and transfer, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war are posing mounting challenges for achieving these objectives. These two crises are causing an unprecedented rise in commodities and labour pricing, with further knock-on impacts on global supply chains for technology. This is in turn rendering green technology unattainable for developing and less developed countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Hydrogen Related Technologies and Application a Major Pathway for the Energy Transition

The capabilities of hydrogen as a key role in the upcoming transition to a more sustainable green energy future have increased rapidly in recent years and gained interest globally. COVID-19 Outbreak drew attention to how important it is for us as societies to have Clean Air, Water, Food And re-established consumers behavior regarding the consumption of energy which pointed the attention at hydrogen Starting from the first meeting to fight climate change until today, the biggest steps and strategies taken against global warming focusing on hydrogen cost-reduction technologies and Carbon-based industries where hydrogen is a promising solution to transform them into Emission-free industries. This chapter reviews the most recent publications and papers on green hydrogen, its applications, and the challenges that faces us as societies to empower green hydrogen utilization in a transition to a carbon-free future, and how it can play a vital role in the energy transition with Europe latest hydrogen-based strategies to become a climate-neutral continent. And how hydrogen and its application will lead the energy transition to renewables in Turkey. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Geopolitics of Renewable Energy Transition in Eastern Africa

This paper focuses on the nexus between geopolitics and renewable energy in Eastern Africa. It sets out to explore the potential geopolitical implications of the transition to renewable energy in the region. The authors observe that there is increasing attention to renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, etc.) in the region with potential social, political and economic impacts. Existing literature on the region has focused on the relationship between energy and conflict as well as challenges in accessing energy. However, there is a gap in the literature, theory, and systematic framework with regard to the implications of renewable energy transition for the geopolitics in the region. The authors analyze existing academic publications, government reports, and other relevant publications to draw the relationship between geopolitics and renewable energy transition in the region. The study concludes that the geopolitical benefits of renewable energy in the region far outweigh the risks, and recommends increased adoption of renewable energy given the region’s vast resources, which can support the increased renewable energy transition and contribute to the fight against climate change.

Women in Kazakhstan’s Energy Industries: Implications for Energy Transition

Kazakhstan has a relatively high level of overall gender development, as well as of female employment in its energy industries. Diverse views and backgrounds are necessary to address the challenges of curbing emissions in Kazakhstan, a major fossil fuel producer and exporter. However, our analysis of the Labor Force Survey indicates that female representation among energy sector managers and overall workforce has been falling over time. Moreover, we find that women in Ka-zakhstan’s coal mining, petroleum extraction, and power industries are concentrated in low‐skilled and non‐core occupations. Next, by analyzing data on labor compensation within energy occupa-tions, we discover signs of persistent vertical discrimination, which may reduce incentives for women to upgrade their skills. Finally, we find that major shocks, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, may stall or reverse prior progress in increasing the energy sector’s gender diversity. Our findings contribute to raising gender awareness among the stakeholders in Kazakhstan’s energy sector in order to facilitate evidence‐based gender mainstreaming. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Stay or Go? A Transition Roadmap for Oil and Gas Professionals

Oil and Gas workers have been facing increasing levels of redundancy since the oil price crash of 2014. The layoffs have been accelerated by digitalisation, the energy transition and COVID 19. This has led to heightened uncertainty especially amongst subsurface professionals with highly specialised skills. The ReNew You Community project was set up to connect and empower industry professionals seeking to manage their career during this period of accelerated change. Through a series of interviews, a framework for an effective transition was designed. The foundation of this framework is the four factors to be considered during a transition. Three of these factors are within the individual's locus of influence (practicalities, interest, skills) whilst the fourth factor (demand) is dependent on the external environment. Skills are the interface through which the professional interacts with the employment market. A skills assessment using the framework of perishable, semi-durable and durable skills provides a useful lens for creating effective transition roadmaps that are tailored to the individual's needs. Copyright © 2021 the European Network for Research in Geo-Energy. All Rights Reserved.

Unconventional Oil Prospects and Challenges in the Covid-19 Era

Fossil fuels will continue to play an important role for the forthcoming decades, including in key hard-to-abate transport and industrial sectors. Unconventional oil (UO) has emerged as a sizeable contributor to meeting the global energy demand in the energy transition period. However, unfavorable circumstances compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic have intensified uncertainties and speculation regarding the future prospects of these resources. This mini-review explores prospects and challenges faced by UO development in the Covid-19 era, focusing on technical, economic, energy security, and environmental sustainability aspects. While UOs have been significantly affected by the pandemic in the short term, limited medium to long-term UO projections exist, with contrasted findings. The review reveals the multiplicity and complexity of interactions between the Covid-19 pandemic and the discussed UO aspects, the diversity of views, and conflicting short- and long-term goals of the energy industry. Copyright © 2022 Eveloy and Elsheikh.

Modeling Residential Electricity Consumption from Public Demographic Data for Sustainable Cities

Demographic factors, statistical information, and technological innovation are prominent factors shaping energy transitions in the residential sector. Explaining these energy transitions requires combining insights from the disciplines investigating these factors. The existing literature is not consistent in identifying these factors, nor in proposing how they can be combined. In this paper, three contributions are made by combining the key demographic factors of households to estimate household energy consumption. Firstly, a mathematical formula is developed by considering the demographic determinants that influence energy consumption, such as the number of persons per household, median age, occupancy rate, households with children, and number of bedrooms per household. Secondly, a geographical position algorithm is proposed to identify the geographical locations of households. Thirdly, the derived formula is validated by collecting demographic factors of five statistical regions from local government databases, and then compared with the electricity consumption benchmarks provided by the energy regulators. The practical feasibility of the method is demonstrated by comparing the estimated energy consumption values with the electricity consumption benchmarks provided by energy regulators. The comparison results indicate that the error between the benchmark and estimated values for the five different regions is less than 8% (7.37%), proving the efficacy of this method in energy consumption estimation processes.

The Energy of crisis. Towards renewable energy community

The pandemic event resulting from the spread of the SARS Cov 2 virus has had a deep impact on social system, establishing the conditions for the greatest economic and social crisis of the last century. This crisis necessarily and forcibly led to a radical change in lifestyles and consumption, including energy consumption, which, while having dramatic consequences from an economic point of view, clearly showed potential paths to achieving the desired ecological transition. The following work, through the analysis of data on the impact that the various lockdowns - particularly the first one- have had on the Italian energy system, aims to define possible prospects for recovery through the redefinition of the energy system from a collective and local perspective. Starting from a secondary data analysis and from the ComESto project, we aim to set up a critical analysis of the process of building Renewable Energy Communities and of the socio technical complexity to be addressed in the definition of it. © 2021 IEEE

Scenarios for Solar Electricity at the TeraWatt Scale

The energy transition is accelerating the deployment of new renewable energy capacity. In particular, photovoltaic installed cumulative capacity reached 760.4 GWDC at the end of 2020, with 139.4 GWDC installed in a single year despite the economic shock produced by the COVID19 pandemia. On the contrary, part of the public economic expenditure approved to boost the economic recovery is being invested in building new renewable energy capacity. The different scenarios envisaged by the International Energy Agency indicate a strong increase in the share of solar electricity in future energy production worldwide;in particular, the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 scenario points to reaching almost 5 TW of photovoltaic cumulative capacity in 2030 and surpassing 10 TW in 2040. This colossal growth will require the annual manufacture of millions of solar photovoltaic modules and a diversification of photovoltaic technologies in a market dominated by crystalline silicon technology. Although solar radiation is a inexhaustible renewable energy source, the future demand of raw materials and the energy required to manufacture the photovoltaic cells and the environmental impacts of production and operation of photovoltaic systems demands a detailed sustainability analysis of solar electricity. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

ENERGY TRANSITION AND GLOBALIZATION - UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

As the world grapples with COVID-19 pandemic and, with increasing acceptance that climate change poses existential threat, globalization is once again coming to the fore of socioeconomic dialogue. A major lesson from the pandemic incident is that global communities are more entwined, and globalization has come to stay, though pace may be slowed but it cannot be reversed. As global energy sources transits from fossil-fuel dominated system to energy system that accommodates renewables in the mix, both local and global dimensions will become significant in policy formulation and decision making (especially in areas such as energy security, inequality, climate change, economic growth among others). Global trade in energy is increasing, and with advent of renewable resources, the trend is expected to continue. To manage this trend during energy transition, energy producing, and consuming countries must forge enhance cooperation especially in policy formulation and implementation - to ensure energy security for all stakeholders. Increasing disparity in wages and inequality gap will compel national governments to pursue policies that promotes energy transition with economic empowerment through deregulation, decentralization, and digitization. Engineering managers will play pivotal role in the effective implementation of such policies - ensuring seamless interactions of processes (including infrastructure developments that facilitate environmental and economic benefits for all stakeholders). This paper will examine energy transition from the perspective of local content and globalization. In addition, interacting variables, and conflicting dimensions (energy security, climate change, inequality among others) will be discussed. Opportunities (global and regional) for engineering management within the context of energy transition will be highlighted. Overall, the objective of this paper will have been achieved with appropriate awareness created for the engineering management community about opportunities within energy transition. © American Society for Engineering Management, 2021

IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON RENEWABLE ENERGY DEMAND AND CONSUMPTION

The current coronavirus pandemic has had an enormous impact on the demands and consumption of and thereby the trends associated with renewable energy industries. The increasing serious environmental problems caused by consumption of fossil fuels make a strong case for transitioning to clean energy sources, which are less harmful to the environment. In this paper, the authors will conduct an overview of the literature related to changes in renewable energy (RE) demands and risk factors such as market, policy, technology and public acceptance as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging opportunities for clean energy transitions under the new policies being implemented, which support RE improvements. This study, by virtue of creating an overview of opportunities for renewable energy in a post-COVID world, could help build confidence and establish a knowledge base among decision makers for deployment of low-carbon technologies and fuels (renewable energy), as part of the recovery plans for a post COVID economy. © American Society for Engineering Management, 2021

Energy Consumption in Commercial Buildings in a Post-COVID-19 World

The ripple effects of the pandemic have resulted in an unprecedented shift in sectoral energy consumption as the workforce predominantly stays and works from home. Quantifying the impact of these restrictions on energy consumption offers a new direction towards intelligent energy services in a post coronavirus (post-COVID-19) world, especially for commercial buildings. Thus, utilising actual power consumption data, the study evaluates how energy usage in commercial buildings can change in a post-COVID-19 world, whilst examining the impact of digitalisation to identifying potential new opportunities. The paper analyses the changes in energy demand with occupancy rate based on data from 126 commercial businesses with varied classes across Manchester, United Kingdom. The results show that the reduction in energy demand is not proportionate to the occupancy level, resulting in high energy costs. For instance, an average footfall for February 2021 is 10% of 2020, while the costs of electricity only fall to 80% of 2020. Although most of the energy demand is from appliances, the absence of energy efficiency increases energy consumption, highlighting the urgent need for optimised energy efficiency measures to include the time of use and scheduled use of energy across people and processes. IEEE

How US Suppliers Alter Their Extraction Rates and What This Means for Peak Oil Theory

Hubbert suggests that oil extraction rates will have an exponentially increasing course until they reach their highest level and then they will suddenly decline. This best describes the well-acclaimed Peak Oil Theory or Peak Oil. We research whether the theory is validated in seven US plays after the shale revolution. We do so by applying two well-established methodologies for asset bubble detection in capital markets on productivity rates per day (bbl/d). Our hypothesis is that if there is a past or an ongoing oil extraction rate peak then Hubbert’s model is verified. If there are multiple episodes of productivity peaks, then it is rejected. We find that the Peak Theory is not confirmed and that shale production mainly responds to demand signals. Therefore, the oil production curve is flattened prolonging oil dependency and energy transition. Since the US production is free of geological constraints, then maximum productivity may not ever be reached due to lower demand levels. Past market failures make the US producers more cautious with productivity increases. Our period is between January 2008 and December 2021. © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Profitability of Prosumers According to Various Business Models-An Analysis in the Light of the COVID-19 Effect

The European Union has set itself ambitious emission-reduction targets-becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The member states' energy systems are increasingly switching to renewable and decentralized configurations, in line with the EU guidelines. This is accompanied by the support for "prosumers"-entities that both consume and generate renewable energy. In parallel, a number of prosumer support schemes are emerging as a result of the search for optimal development paths. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the power market, causing huge anomalies mainly in demand and billing. The objective of the study was to assess the impact of the proposed changes in the prosumer schemes on the level of benefits prosumers obtained, including the performance of sensitivity analyses reflected in different levels and stability of electricity consumption resulting from extreme situations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerical computer simulations for five predefined prosumer support schemes were carried out in the R-project environment. The basic conclusion is that the prosumer benefits most from participating in the applicable discount mechanism, in which the unused energy is fed into a network storage, from which the prosumer can take 70% or 80% of the stored volume. The research also allows us to conclude that in Poland the COVID-19 pandemic has had a very significant impact on the level and profile of energy demand due to the introduction of restrictions on selected areas and economic sectors. The reduced demand is particularly visible in services (-58%), tourism and sport (-39%), and education (-19%). The analysis is an important contribution to the search for an optimal model of prosumer market development in Europe.