Trade-Offs between Geographic Scale, Cost, and Infrastructure Requirements for Fully Renewable Electricity in Europe

Tim Tröndle*, Johan Lilliestam, Stefano Marelli, Stefan Pfenninger

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

124 Citations (Scopus)

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.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1929-1948
Number of pages20
JournalJoule
Volume4
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • acceptance
  • cooperation
  • decarbonization
  • energy
  • flexibility
  • land use
  • regional equity
  • self-sufficiency
  • trade
  • transmission

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