After the so-called ‘golden age’ of refining between the years 2005 and 2008, total or partial closures of 13 EU oil refineries from 2009 to 2013 reduced the EU’s total refining capacity by about 10%. This paper analyses the drivers behind this crisis, using industry data on performance and cost structure collected at the refinery…
Volume 9
Energy Outlooks Compared: Global and Regional Insights
We compare prominent global energy scenarios of organizations and companies. We supplement the analysis with four own scenarios, which were derived from structured analytic techniques in combination with a numerical global energy and resource market model (Multimod). Our paper provides three central contributions: (i) a compact survey of selected outlooks with meta characteristics (conceptual nature,…
Use and Abuse of Energy and Climate Scenarios—A Week of Controversy on Scenarios
Energy and climate scenarios, and all other scenarios, are controversial, because they touch strategic issues, and also affect very basic operational discussion, such as the choice of the fuel mix, or the degree of trading between companies and nations. This article documents a controversial exchange of ideas via email between the two opponents, about energy…
Long-term Energy and Climate Scenarios – An Introduction
This EEEP-symposium on “Long-term energy and climate scenarios” provides comprehensive coverage of the theory and practice of scenarios on energy and climate futures. The objective of this symposium is to contribute to the debate with a discussion of both, political economy aspects of scenario making, either positive and/or normative, but also on concrete scenarios on…
Lessons from Modeling 100% Renewable Scenarios Using GENeSYS-MOD
The main aim of models has never been to provide numbers, but insights. Still, challenges prevail for modelers to use the best configuration of their models to provide helpful insights. In the case of energy system modelling, this becomes even more complicated due to increasing complexity of the energy system transition through the potential and…
How Incumbent Cultural and Cognitive Path Dependencies Constrain the ‘Scenario Cone’: Reliance on Carbon Dioxide Removal due to Techno-bias
Scenario analysis is widely used to assess long-term development necessary to reach climate targets. Mitigation measures in these scenarios concentrate on supply-side technology solutions, while little attention has been paid to demand side solutions. One suite of included technologies are carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDR). Most scenarios rely heavily on CDR to limit global warming…
Levelized Cost of Consumed Electricity
Current calculations to evaluate the profitability of the various energy generating units ignore intermittency as well as complementary technologies, such as battery storage and smart meters. Therefore, we propose a new assessment of the cost of solar energy that takes into account smart grids. In doing this, we use data from a low energy dwelling…
The Environmental Footprint of Natural Gas Transportation: LNG vs. Pipeline
Emissions to air from the production and transportation of natural gas is an important aspect of the decision making regarding the new infrastructure development in the offshore natural gas sector. In this study, we estimate the emissions of CO2, NOx, nmVOC and CH4 from extraction, processing and transportation of a unit of dry natural gas…
Geopolitics and the Oil Price Cycle – An Introduction
Oil prices experienced record volatility in the spring of 2020 amid two separate, but simultaneous shocks—the largest singular, sudden drop in oil demand in history amid lockdowns across the world to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and a brief oil price war among the world’s largest oil producers. The gyration was the latest…
The Ephemeral Brent Geopolitical Risk Premium
We study the changing relationship between Brent oil prices and geopolitical risk, conditional on physical oil market conditions. We conduct the analysis at three frequencies, medium (1-3 years), high (2-3 months), and very high (daily), using three complementary techniques at the different levels (respectively, continuous wavelet partial coherence, VAR and GARCH-MIDAS) over the period April…