Document of bibliographic reference 328276

BibliographicReference record

Type

Bibliographic resource

Type of document

Journal article

BibLvlCode

AS

Title

Trade-offs between geographic scale, cost, and infrastructure requirements for fully renewable electricity in Europe

Abstract

The European potential for renewable electricity is sufficient to enable fully renewable supply on different scales, from self-sufficient, subnational regions to an interconnected continent. We not only show that a continental-scale system is the cheapest, but also that systems on the national scale and below are possible at cost penalties of 20% or less. Transmission is key to low cost, but it is not necessary to vastly expand the transmission system. When electricity is transmitted only to balance fluctuations, the transmission grid size is comparable to today’s, albeit with expanded cross-border capacities. The largest differences across scales concern land use and thus social acceptance: in the continental system, generation capacity is concentrated on the European periphery, where the best resources are. Regional systems, in contrast, have more dispersed generation. The key trade-off is therefore not between geographic scale and cost, but between scale and the spatial distribution of required generation and transmission infrastructure.

WebOfScience code

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000571389400013

Bibliographic citation

Tröndle, T.; Lilliestam, J.; Marelli, S.; Pfenninger, S. (2020). Trade-offs between geographic scale, cost, and infrastructure requirements for fully renewable electricity in Europe. Joule 4(9): 1929-1948. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2020.07.018

Is peer reviewed

true

Access rights

open access

Is accessible for free

true