IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v95y2016icp127-139.html

What cost for more renewables? The incremental cost of renewable generation – An Australian National Electricity Market case study

Author

Listed:
  • Elliston, Ben
  • Riesz, Jenny
  • MacGill, Iain

Abstract

This study evaluates the incremental costs of higher levels of renewable energy (RE) supply using an optimisation tool to find least cost electricity generation portfolios. The Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) in 2030 is used as a case study for exploring various generation portfolios from low to high shares of RE, low to high greenhouse gas emissions caps, and low to high carbon prices. Incremental costs are found to increase approximately linearly as the RE share grows from zero to 80%, and then demonstrate a small degree of non-linear escalation, related to the inclusion of more costly renewable technologies such as solar thermal electricity. Similarly, costs increase approximately linearly as a greenhouse gas emissions cap is lowered from 150 megatonnes (Mt) to 30 Mt, and then demonstrate a small degree of non-linear escalation for caps below 30 Mt. However, in both cases this escalation is moderate, and does not appear to provide a strong argument for long-term policies that aim for RE shares lower than 100%, or electricity sector emissions caps higher than zero as one option for rapid decarbonisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Elliston, Ben & Riesz, Jenny & MacGill, Iain, 2016. "What cost for more renewables? The incremental cost of renewable generation – An Australian National Electricity Market case study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 127-139.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:95:y:2016:i:c:p:127-139
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2016.03.080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116302646
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2016.03.080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elliston, Ben & Diesendorf, Mark & MacGill, Iain, 2012. "Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 606-613.
    2. Sinden, Graham, 2007. "Characteristics of the UK wind resource: Long-term patterns and relationship to electricity demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 112-127, January.
    3. Elliston, Ben & MacGill, Iain & Diesendorf, Mark, 2013. "Least cost 100% renewable electricity scenarios in the Australian National Electricity Market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 270-282.
    4. Fernandes, Liliana & Ferreira, Paula, 2014. "Renewable energy scenarios in the Portuguese electricity system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 51-57.
    5. Elliston, Ben & MacGill, Iain & Diesendorf, Mark, 2014. "Comparing least cost scenarios for 100% renewable electricity with low emission fossil fuel scenarios in the Australian National Electricity Market," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 196-204.
    6. Cochran, Jaquelin & Mai, Trieu & Bazilian, Morgan, 2014. "Meta-analysis of high penetration renewable energy scenarios," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 246-253.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Diesendorf, Mark & Elliston, Ben, 2018. "The feasibility of 100% renewable electricity systems: A response to critics," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 318-330.
    2. de Jong, Pieter & Kiperstok, Asher & Sánchez, Antonio Santos & Dargaville, Roger & Torres, Ednildo Andrade, 2016. "Integrating large scale wind power into the electricity grid in the Northeast of Brazil," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 401-415.
    3. Kiwan, Suhil & Al-Gharibeh, Elyasa, 2020. "Jordan toward a 100% renewable electricity system," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(P1), pages 423-436.
    4. Heard, B.P. & Brook, B.W. & Wigley, T.M.L. & Bradshaw, C.J.A., 2017. "Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1122-1133.
    5. Hansen, Kenneth & Breyer, Christian & Lund, Henrik, 2019. "Status and perspectives on 100% renewable energy systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 471-480.
    6. Ma, Weiwu & Xue, Xinpei & Liu, Gang, 2018. "Techno-economic evaluation for hybrid renewable energy system: Application and merits," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 385-409.
    7. Wu, Yunyang & Reedman, Luke J. & Barrett, Mark A. & Spataru, Catalina, 2018. "Comparison of CST with different hours of storage in the Australian National Electricity Market," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 487-496.
    8. Becker, Sarah & Frew, Bethany A. & Andresen, Gorm B. & Zeyer, Timo & Schramm, Stefan & Greiner, Martin & Jacobson, Mark Z., 2014. "Features of a fully renewable US electricity system: Optimized mixes of wind and solar PV and transmission grid extensions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 443-458.
    9. van Kooten, G. Cornelis & Withey, Patrick & Duan, Jon, 2020. "How big a battery?," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 196-204.
    10. Nadolny, Anna & Cheng, Cheng & Lu, Bin & Blakers, Andrew & Stocks, Matthew, 2022. "Fully electrified land transport in 100% renewable electricity networks dominated by variable generation," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 562-577.
    11. Henning Meschede & Paul Bertheau & Siavash Khalili & Christian Breyer, 2022. "A review of 100% renewable energy scenarios on islands," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(6), November.
    12. Riesz, Jenny & Sotiriadis, Claire & Ambach, Daisy & Donovan, Stuart, 2016. "Quantifying the costs of a rapid transition to electric vehicles," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 287-300.
    13. Østergaard, P.A. & Lund, H. & Thellufsen, J.Z. & Sorknæs, P. & Mathiesen, B.V., 2022. "Review and validation of EnergyPLAN," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    14. Lu, Bin & Blakers, Andrew & Stocks, Matthew, 2017. "90–100% renewable electricity for the South West Interconnected System of Western Australia," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 663-674.
    15. Howard, Bahareh Sara & Hamilton, Nicholas E. & Diesendorf, Mark & Wiedmann, Thomas, 2018. "Modeling the carbon budget of the Australian electricity sector's transition to renewable energy," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 712-728.
    16. Jacobson, Mark Z. & Delucchi, Mark A. & Cameron, Mary A. & Mathiesen, Brian V., 2018. "Matching demand with supply at low cost in 139 countries among 20 world regions with 100% intermittent wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 236-248.
    17. Riesz, Jenny & Elliston, Ben, 2016. "Research and deployment priorities for renewable technologies: Quantifying the importance of various renewable technologies for low cost, high renewable electricity systems in an Australian case study," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 298-308.
    18. Cheung, Grace & Davies, Peter J., 2017. "In the transformation of energy systems: what is holding Australia back?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 96-108.
    19. Laslett, Dean & Carter, Craig & Creagh, Chris & Jennings, Philip, 2017. "A large-scale renewable electricity supply system by 2030: Solar, wind, energy efficiency, storage and inertia for the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) in Western Australia," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 713-731.
    20. Keck, Felix & Jütte, Silke & Lenzen, Manfred & Li, Mengyu, 2022. "Assessment of two optimisation methods for renewable energy capacity expansion planning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:95:y:2016:i:c:p:127-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.