Extra - Newsletters

March 2010

ECN Policy Studies carries out energy studies in the field of energy and climate change. The objective is to enhance insights in energy consumption, energy markets, objectives of energy policy and policy instruments and to contribute in a significant and independent manner to better policy decisions in the field of energy.

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Selected projects

IDEAL EPBD: Improving Dwellings by Enhancing Actions on Labelling for the EPBD

When an existing dwelling changes owner or tenant in the EU, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) requires an energy performance certificate to be issued. Since experiences with prior labelling/auditing programmes show that not all cost-effective saving measures are carried out, there is a risk that a large part of the energy saving potential in existing dwellings will not be realised under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The ECN coordinated project IDEAL EPBD analyses consumer behaviour, barriers and policy instruments in ten different countries. It will provide empirical evidence and monitoring by applying in-depth interviews and electronic questionnaires and it will develop policy action plans to change consumer behaviour. These will be disseminated in the entire EU-27, in order to optimise the effect of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The first results show that the most commonly reported public policy measures in use are those relating to information dissemination and partial public funding of energy efficiency retrofits. Results of the literature review show that households do not always act rationally and that financial savings are not the main driver of be-havioural change. The first 50 in-depth interviews with home-owners in ten countries also show that, in most cases, the energy efficiency credentials of a building are considered less important in comparison to location, space, convenience and affordability.

Net benefits of a new Dutch congestion management system

This study analyses the new connection policy in the Dutch power market, which seeks to lift restrictions on grid connection. The new policy is expected to result in an increase of investments in generation capacity and increasing levels of congestion in the national transmission system. A congestion management system should resolve this congestion. In this study, the COMPETES model (developed by ECN to simulate the competition between national electricity markets in Europe, taking into account the transmission constraints) is used. In the first part of the study, a scenario-based, quantitative analysis of the net benefits of the new connection policy in the Neth-erlands is presented.  Net benefits are calculated as the increase of consumer surplus and producer gross margins minus the cost of congestion. For all the scenarios considered, the benefits are shown to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than the congestion costs; hence this conclu-sion is expected to be robust. In the second part of the study, four alternative designs for a con-gestion management system are evaluated: i.e. system redispatch with cost pass-through to gen-erators, market redispatch, hybrid redispatch and the market agent approach. In this assessment a series of advantages and disadvantages of each of these systems is identified and presented under perfect competition assumption and under market power assumption.

IEA Retrans

Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector and its dependence on imported oil requires a true transition – or co-evolution – of the transport system and the energy system. Vehicles running on renewable energy are an important ingredient of a future sustainable transport system. Important candidate technologies for applying renewable energy in the transport sector are vehicles with advanced combustion engines (including charge-sustaining hybrids) running on biofuels, battery-electric vehicles using renewable electricity, plug-in hybrid vehicles fuelled by conventional or biofuels in combination with renewable electricity, and fuel cell vehicles using hydrogen produced from renewable sources. However, the complex system of interaction between technology, grid infrastructure and political context requires a well-coordinated approach to make it a success. The IEA Retrans project analyses the impacts of a large-scale introduction of electric vehicles and its potential benefits in balancing intermittent renewable energy sources. As a result, a policy framework is developed that addresses the co-evolution of both electric vehicles and the electricity grid in order to maximise the use of renewable energy. As the electricity grid status differs heavily across world regions, analysis is also dedicated to establishing to what extend electric vehicles can be incorporated into the exemplary grid contexts and what needs to be done to allow integration of RES-E sources to cover demand originating from these vehicles.

CCS – Industrial Sector Roadmap

ECN has been invited to work on a prestigious project coordinated by the United Nations Indus-trial Development Organization (UNIDO). The goal of the project is to develop a global technol-ogy roadmap for the deployment of CCS in industrial processes. The project will draw from the methodologies and experience of the partners in technology foresight and road-mapping, and provide relevant stakeholders with a vision of industrial carbon capture and storage up to 2050. It will have a focus on developing countries with energy intensive industries, and help inform poli-cymakers and investors about the potential of such technologies. The project is jointly funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI).

Improgres

IMPROGRES (Improvement of the Social Optimal Outcome of Market Integration of DG/RES in European Electricity Markets) is an EU-funded project in the Intelligent Energy Europe programme. It analyses the impact of large-scale deployment of distributed generation and demand response (DG/RES) for the whole electricity supply system, i.e. considering the in-teractions and trade-offs between the physical and economic system: power generation (incl. DG/RES), transport (transmission and distribution networks), energy wholesale trading and retail supply, system services (balancing, power reserves, ancillary services) and energy consumption (incl. demand response).The main boundary conditions are policy (support schemes) and regulation (e.g. network regulation). External effects are also considered (e.g. environmental impacts). To avoid a too generic and only qualitative-oriented approach, the analysis of the total supply system is based on three concrete cases for which quantitative data are available. These analyses are used as the basis for identifying regulatory and policy improvements.