RES Scenarios and Biofuels Import EU: Characterization of Alternative Renewable Energy Scenarios for the EU - Biofuels Import to the EU
Client: European Commission
Background: Recently the importance of RES was again emphasised with the agreement of the Council of the European Union on a binding 2020 target of 20% of renewable energy sources as set on 9th of March 2007. With this decision the EC's view on insisting on the importance to assure the long term perspective for renewable energies with a view to forming a more sustainable future. In this context, also an agreement on a minimum target in size of 10% for 2020 regarding the share of biofuels in diesel & gasoline demand was taken.
For electricity, heat and biofuel production a broad set of different renewable energy technologies and resources exist today. Most likely, the target sharing between MS will not be based on RE potential, but on a flat rate increase per MS, adapted to GDP factors - of course, building on the current national RES deployment of renewables greatly determines the feasibility of a given target.
In order to contribute to find efficient and effective pathways of achieving future European RES targets, a careful estimation of the potentials, cost, availability and tradability of the different policy scenarios has to be undertaken. Within this proposal we will apply an energy model to assess the development of various renewable energies in the EU under different policy instruments and various targets for individual Member States. With the proposed scenario work we aim to address the cost-efficiency/equity trade-off of alternative ways of complying with the EU renewable energy target.
In contrast to many other RES, biofuels are easily tradable at global scale, and, indeed, already at present a global biofuel market exists, with the USA, Brazil and the EU being the major producers and consumers. Consequently, within this proposal also the likely share of imported biofuels for reaching the EU-27 20% renewables and 10% biofuel target by 2020 will be assessed as well.
Objective and Approach: The core objective of this proposed work is to produce an independent in-depth model based assessment of the development of renewable energies within all Member States of the European Union (EU27) up to 2020 and 2030. The analysis from IREES will focus on biofuels which are produced and traded already at present at the global market rather than at the European level. This involves an assessment of the status quo with regard to the global market players (e.g. US, Brazil, Indonesia), the impact arising from imports on the domestic cost of fulfilling EU's renewables target, and what share of imports would appear in the case of no restrictions to them.
Client: European Commission
Partners: TU Vienna- EEG, Fraunhofer ISI
Duration: January 2008 until February 2009
Contact person:
MBA- Dipl. Ing. Felipe Toro
f.toro@irees.de
23.09.2008