TY - JOUR

T1 - Pathways for Germany’s low-carbon energy transformation towards 2050

AU - Bartholdsen, Hans Karl

AU - Eidens, Anna

AU - Löffler, Konstantin

AU - Seehaus, Frederik

AU - Wejda, Felix

AU - Burandt, Thorsten

AU - Oei, Pao Yu

AU - Kemfert, Claudia

AU - von Hirschhausen, Christian

N1 - This work was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under grant number 01LN1704A for the research group CoalExit and under grant number 01LA1810A for the research project “Future of Fossil Fuels in the wake of greenhouse gas neutrality”.

PY - 2019/8/2

Y1 - 2019/8/2

N2 - Like many other countries, Germany has defined goals to reduce its CO2-emissions following the Paris Agreement of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP). The first successes in decarbonizing the electricity sector were already achieved under the German Energiewende. However, further steps in this direction, also concerning the heat and transport sectors, have stalled. This paper describes three possible pathways for the transformation of the German energy system until 2050. The scenarios take into account current climate politics on a global, European, and German level and also include different demand projections, technological trends and resource prices. The model includes the sectors power, heat, and transportation and works on a Federal State level. For the analysis, the linear cost-optimizing Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) is used to calculate the cost-efficient paths and technology mixes. We find that a reduction of CO2 of more than 80% in the less ambitious scenario can be welfare enhancing compared to a scenario without any climate mitigating policies. Even higher decarbonization rates of 95% are feasible and needed to comply with international climate targets, yet related to high effort in transforming the subsector of process heat. The different pathways depicted in this paper render chances and risks of transforming the German energy system under various external influences.

AB - Like many other countries, Germany has defined goals to reduce its CO2-emissions following the Paris Agreement of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP). The first successes in decarbonizing the electricity sector were already achieved under the German Energiewende. However, further steps in this direction, also concerning the heat and transport sectors, have stalled. This paper describes three possible pathways for the transformation of the German energy system until 2050. The scenarios take into account current climate politics on a global, European, and German level and also include different demand projections, technological trends and resource prices. The model includes the sectors power, heat, and transportation and works on a Federal State level. For the analysis, the linear cost-optimizing Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) is used to calculate the cost-efficient paths and technology mixes. We find that a reduction of CO2 of more than 80% in the less ambitious scenario can be welfare enhancing compared to a scenario without any climate mitigating policies. Even higher decarbonization rates of 95% are feasible and needed to comply with international climate targets, yet related to high effort in transforming the subsector of process heat. The different pathways depicted in this paper render chances and risks of transforming the German energy system under various external influences.

KW - Economics

KW - Decarbonization

KW - Energiewende

KW - Energy policy

KW - Energy system modeling

KW - Energy transformation

KW - GENeSYS-MOD

KW - Renewables

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85070270542&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/3473b139-fa9f-30f1-a99f-9d718280e876/

U2 - 10.3390/en12152988

DO - 10.3390/en12152988

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85070270542

VL - 12

JO - Energies

JF - Energies

SN - 1996-1073

IS - 15

M1 - 2988

ER -