The Potential of Renewable Energies is Underestimated

“Role and potential of renewable energies and energy efficiency in global energy supply” is the title of a study conducted by a German research consortium led by the Centre for Aerospace (DLR) on behalf of the Federal Environmental Agency (UBA). In it, the experts are highly critical of the existing assessments of the potential of renewable energies and energy savings by means of more efficient technologies.

For the authors of the study, there exist significant, untapped potentials in the use of renewable energies, energy efficiency technologies, and changes in human behaviour when using energy. These advantages, however, can only be tapped if technologies for renewable energies and energy efficiency are further developed. But above all, the will and the means to overcome economic, infrastructural and political problems must be forthcoming.

The technical potential for the use of renewable energies alone is twenty times higher than the current energy demand of the entire world. The world’s largest potential to generate electricity is contained in solar technologies such as solar thermal power plants and photovoltaic technology. The researchers also expect the production cost of almost all renewable energy technologies (excluding hydropower) to decrease significantly over the next twenty years. Assuming constantly increasing costs of fossil fuels and of CO2 emissions they expect most technologies for generating renewable electricity to be cost competitive by 2030.

There is significant potential to increase energy efficiency, too. A program to improve energy efficiency can reduce primary energy demand by 2050 by more than half compared to a development in a “business as usual” scenario. In the study, more than 50 percent of these measures have been identified as cost efficient.

The researchers from the Institute for Technical Thermodynamics (being a part of the Centre for Aerospace) and its partners also analyzed currently used and published global energy scenarios. In most scenarios, the potential of renewable energies is rated too low. All current scenarios share the crippling deficiency of not disclosing the reasons that still limit the development of renewable energies and hinder the instalment of measures for higher energy efficiency.

The researchers demand therefore that in future any scenario analysis must contain a comprehensive and transparent documentation of its basic assumptions and limitations. In an ongoing follow-up to improve the relevance of future global energy scenarios, the researchers now build a worldwide regionally differentiated, consistent inventory of renewable energy resources to be published by the end of 2010.

The demand for disclosure of relevant data behind studies used to be the rule in scientific research up to the publications of the results ‘proving’ climate change and green-house effect. It is reassuring that a government funded study reminds the scientists of their own basic tenets, and we may expect that all studies unable to disclose the basics of their scenarios will be shunned by governments and media alike and relegated to the bin where they belong.