- Email: [email protected]
Transitions to sustainable energy systems—Introduction to the energy policy special issue
ARTICLE IN PRESS Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4009– 4011
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol
Editorial
Transitions to sustainable energy systems—Introduction to the energy policy special issue
1. Introduction Human well-being and social welfare depend heavily on affordable access to energy services. Yet, the availability of energy to provide these services can be limited by scarce resources, environmental constraints and political instability, which is enhanced by competition for resources. The current system of providing energy services is insufficient to cope with these system limitations and is not sustainable for the future. One of the main tasks in this century, and in particular during the next few decades, will be to manage transition processes towards a sustainable energy system.
2. Objectives This special issue of Energy Policy gives an overview of some key issues, debates and policy implications of current research on transitions to more sustainable energy systems. Papers within it are partly derived from a conference organised by the European Network for Energy Economics Research (ENER), which was funded by the European Commission. The special issue investigates the following core issues: 1. What are the basic relations between human needs, human activities, energy services and energy use? 2. What are the conditions for a system providing sustainable energy services? To what extent and how are different types of primary energy sources (e.g. coal, oil, nuclear, biofuels, wind, etc.) and secondary energy carriers (e.g. electricity, hydrogen, etc.) sustainable? 3. What is the role of conversion technologies in the whole energy chain? How can we optimise the delivery of energy services using inputs such as primary energy sources and technologies? How can we recognise and mitigate path dependencies and lock-ins during the transition process? 4. What are indicators that allow an appraisal of whether such a system is on a path towards sustainability or not? 5. What is the role of energy efficiency improvements, technological progress, demand reduction, increases in the share of renewable energy sources and behaviour change? 6. What are the opportunities for policy-makers, NGOs and other players to bring these indicators on the track towards sustainability? 7. What are the conceivable strategies and policies that help to change the track towards sustainability? What institutional 0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2008.06.015
changes are necessary to provide an adequate frame for the transition processes? 8. What are the necessary conditions for successful implementation? 9. What is the particular role of developing countries in the transition process? How can they integrate sustainable energy technologies into their developing process or even establish lead markets in this field? In addition to these questions, an important aspect of this special issue is the variable scope of the energy systems that are covered by different papers. It includes analyses conducted on a local or regional level, and investigations at national and global levels are also provided.
3. Content of this special issue The first two papers focus on the basic relations between human needs, human activities, energy services and energy use. The paper by Reinhard Haas, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Amela ¨ ller and Gustav Ajanovic, Thomas Faber, Lukas Kranzl, Andreas Mu Resch looks at the interrelation between energy services, economic parameters and technology. Virtually all goods and services that characterize modern societies’ welfare depend on the provision of commercial energy. The core objective of this paper is to identify necessary changes in historical and current trends for achieving a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and development paths. The major conclusions of this analysis are (i) a rigorous rethinking process has to take place to identify which level of energy services per capita lead to enhancing human welfare and quality of life; (ii) a significant increase in energy conversion efficiency (doing more with less) has to be triggered to finally provide energy services with far less input of energy than today; (iii) a continuous increase in the share of renewable energy sources and other low-emission supply options has to be brought about; (iv) however, as has been shown by history this process of technological learning has to be accompanied by proper energy pricing and regulatory policies. Otherwise, it will be very likely that energy conservation gains due to technical efficiency improvements will be outweighed again by increases in energy service demand and, straightforward, energy consumption. These issues are investigated for households in India and China in the paper by Shonali Pachauri and Leiwen Jiang. They look at key similarities and differences in household energy consumption across rural and urban regions in these countries through an
ARTICLE IN PRESS 4010
Editorial / Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4009–4011
analysis of large nationally representative household survey data and aggregate energy statistics. The two countries differ sharply in several respects. Residential energy consumption in China is twice that in India, in aggregate terms. In addition, Chinese households have almost universal access to electricity, while in India almost half of the rural households and 10% of urban households still lack access. At an aggregate level, urban households in China also derive a larger share of their total energy from liquid fuels and grids (77%) as compared to urban Indian households (65%). Yet, at every income level, Indians derive a slightly larger fraction of their total household energy needs from liquid and grid sources of energy than Chinese with comparable incomes. Despite these differences trends in energy use and the factors influencing a transition to modern energy in both nations are similar. Compared with rural households, urban households in both nations consume a disproportionately larger share of commercial energy and are much further along in the transition to modern energy. However, total energy consumption in rural households exceeds that in urban households, because of a continued dependence on inefficient solid fuels, which contribute to over 85% of rural household energy needs in both countries. In addition to urbanisation, key drivers of transition in both nations include income, energy prices, energy access and local fuel availability. A critical discussion of the sustainability of different primary energy sources and secondary energy carriers like electricity and hydrogen can be found in the following five papers. Aviel Verbruggen discusses the prospects for a common future for renewables and nuclear power. Nuclear power and renewable energy are two of the main options (or groups of options in the case of renewables) to bring the carbon intensity of commercial energy supply down. The extent to which one or more of these technologies can be relied upon for large-scale deployment depends on their performance against sustainability criteria. The paper focuses on some of these including the extent to which options are ‘democtratic’, globally accessible, environmentally benign, low risk, affordable. The author contends that risks and externalities and the nature of nuclear technology limit its development perspectives, while efficiency and renewable technologies are said to be still in their infancy. The major conclusion of this paper is that there is no common future for nuclear and renewable technologies, mainly due to various risks. The relevance of renewable energy sources for a sustainable energy system, and the potentials and the prospects for renewable energies at a global scale are analysed in the contribution by Gustav Resch, Anne Held, Thomas Faber, Christian Panzer, Felipe Toro and Reinhard Haas. Generating electricity, heat or biofuels from renewable energy sources has become a high priority in national energy policy strategies as well as at a global scale. Challenging goals for these ‘new’ supply options to meet our energy demands have been set, e.g. at European level by the commitment of meeting 20% of the overall energy demand from renewable energy sources by 2020. Obviously, for a comprehensive investigation of the future renewable energy development, it is of crucial importance to provide a detailed investigation of the country- or region-specific situation. The core objective of this paper is to fulfil the aforementioned constraints, aiming to present an overview of renewable energy potentials and prospects globally—but largely based on region- and/or country-specific assessments. Thereby, a topical focus is put on both the near to midfuture as well as the long-term perspective, indicating besides theoretical and technical potentials also the realisable mid-term potentials and prospects for various renewable energy options. Beside this, emphasis is given on the illustration of the possible contribution of renewable energies to power supply. ´rez-Arriaga depict Pedro Linares, F Santos and Ignacio Pe scenarios for the evolution of the Spanish electricity sector and
discuss the question whether it is on the right path or not. They argue that the Spanish energy and electricity systems are currently unsustainable: the large increase in electricity demand, a huge dependency on energy imports and significant environmental impacts are clear reasons for concern. Recent measures have been adopted that may start to drive these systems towards a more sustainable path. In this paper, the authors look at the possible evolution of the Spanish electricity sector under different policy scenarios, and try to identify which are the policies that may help to achieve the desired goal, as well as the role that different technologies may play. The authors reach an optimistic conclusion in that, under the appropriate policy measures, carbon emissions may be reduced in 2020 by up to 37% compared to 1990 levels. Energy imports may be also much reduced, at reasonable costs. However, they also note that this may only be achieved by strongly pursuing energy efficiency, which should be central for all energy plans in Spain, together with renewable energy promotion and stronger focus on other carbon reduction policies. The paper by Claus Doll and Martin Wietschel analyses the current externalities of the transport sector and the role of hydrogen in visions for sustainable transport systems. The importance of the external effects of transport is highlighted by recent estimates for Germany, which indicate that the full external costs of road transport are roughly four times the costs of providing and maintaining the roadway infrastructure. The analysis shows that the possible CO2 effects of hydrogen as a fuel can significantly reduce CO2 emissions of the transport sector compared to other scenarios without hydrogen, even if taking into account tailpipe and upstream emissions as well as alternative technology developments (e.g. biomass as a transport fuel, efficiency improvements of the propulsion system). The authors note that this is an important result because CO2 emissions reduction in the transport sector is a very challenging task. With respect to climate change it could be shown that the introduction of hydrogen would lead to a more sustainable transport system compared to an oil-based transport system. These papers are followed by four contributions that focus more on concrete policies for sustainable energy systems. The challenges and tools with respect to transition towards a ¨rte Fouquet sustainable energy supply system are analysed by Do and Thomas Johannsson. The paper starts from an overview of the basic elements for regulatory, executive and financing incentives for the change towards sustainable energy use and supply. It evaluates existing ways of support and regulations in the light of sustainability challenges. It investigates whether there is a common approach for all systems which would follow similar rules, or whether the approach depends on specific factors such as the existing supply structure, its validity and its necessity, which have to be remodelled or reformed. The paper focuses on the European situation in a global context. It evaluates the experience of a decade of liberalisation of energy markets, often with strong policies to increase the uptake of renewables and efficiency in the face of significant obstacles. The authors contend that good and proven policy instruments have to be rapidly acknowledged, secured and multiplied wherever applicable. They argue that wishful thinking about the effectiveness of emissions trading systems and a reluctance to acknowledge failure do not help to move things forward. Instead, the authors conclude that these factors may only cement a polarised energy world between incumbent industry interests and independent sustainable power production approaches, thus avoiding rapid transition to energy for sustainability. Florian Kern and Adrian Smith analyse energy systems for sustainability by investigating the example of energy transition policy in the Netherlands. Increasingly, researchers and policymakers are looking for ways to restructure these energy systems
ARTICLE IN PRESS Editorial / Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4009–4011
into more sustainable forms. A ‘transition management’ model, and its adoption in the Netherlands, is attracting attention. Starting from the socio-technical multi-level theory that informs ‘transition management’, the paper analyses the ‘energy transition’ project carried out by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The paper argues that despite considerable achievements, this approach risks capture by the incumbent energy regime, thereby undermining original policy ambitions for structural innovation of the energy system. The authors conclude that this experience presents generic dilemmas for transitions approaches. David Ockwell, Jim Watson, Gordon MacKerron, Prosanto Pal and Farhana Yamin investigate the key policy considerations for facilitating low-carbon technology transfer to developing countries. Based on collaborative study between UK and India, they analyse two case studies of low-carbon technologies—hybrid vehicles and coal-fired power generation via integrated gasification combined cycle. The paper highlights the following six key considerations. First, technology transfer needs to be seen as part of a broader process of sustained, low-carbon technological capacity development in recipient countries. Second, the fact that low-carbon technologies are at different stages of development means that low-carbon technology transfer involves both vertical transfer (of technologies from the R&D stage through to commercialisation) and horizontal transfer (from one geographical location to another). Third, less integrated technology transfer arrangements, involving, for example, acquisition of different items of plant from a range of host country equipment manufacturers, are more likely to involve knowledge exchange and diffusion through recipient country economies. Fourth, recipient firms that strategically aim to obtain technological know-how and knowledge necessary for innovation during the transfer process are more likely to be able to develop their capacity as a result. Fifth, whilst access to Intellectual Property Rights may sometimes be a necessary part of facilitating technology transfer, it is not likely to be sufficient in itself. Sixth, there is a central role for both national and international policy interventions in achieving low-carbon technology transfer. The paper by Michael Jefferson discusses the barriers to accelerating the transition to sustainability energy systems. He argues that the most important barriers are that targets are usually too short term and unrealistic, especially where fossil fuel use is rising very rapidly and renewable energy use expands modestly. He notes that government subsidies for traditional energy forms continue. Furthermore, the paper contends that insufficient attention is paid to what individuals might achieve in energy efficiency and renewable energy terms if permitted to have, or retain (in industrialized countries where the burden of taxation is often inhibiting), the wherewithal to make the necessary investments. The paper concludes that without departing from the sense of urgency required to address the pressing needs for sustainable energy systems, it is imperative that the involvement of people at the grassroots level is harnessed and appropriate commercial and technical criteria are applied to potential strategies for action.
4011
The final group of two papers focuses on one of the most important issues with respect to a broader market penetration of renewables: the public acceptance of their deployment. Petra Schweizer-Ries analyses the relevance of environmental–psychological investigations for the development of energy sustainable communities (ESC). She notes that energy sustainability is becoming an increasing issue in our society. Often it is reduced to a purely technical problem. Renewable energies and energy-efficient technologies are developed to solve the problem, but finally the end-users will ‘‘decide’’ how much and what kind of energy they are going to consume. This article aims to show the environmental–psychological aspects of changes in energy demand and supply. It builds upon a transactional model of human technology interchange and is summarising work done during the last 5 years. It refers to the idea of ESC, shows the development of one example community and concentrates on one aspect of the social dimension of ESC, the ‘‘acceptance of renewable energy technology’’, its definition and measurement in Germany. Jan Zoellner, Petra Schweizer-Ries and Christin Wemheuer address the issue of public acceptance of renewable energies for large gridconnected ground-installed PV systems, biomass plants and wind turbines from a socio-scientific perspective. Using an environmental–psychological approach to investigate the social factors relevant for the formation of public acceptance towards renewable energies in four different regions, recommendations for the further implementation of renewable energy systems are derived. The paper argues that the economic consideration of a renewable energy system, which means a positive cost–benefit calculation made by the individual, is the strongest predictor for reported acceptance. Furthermore, the importance of landscape evaluation and a strong connection between the criteria such as transparency, early and accurate information as well as possibilities to participate, and reported public acceptance became evident. Our thanks go to all authors and peer reviewers for their contributions, but especially to the Editor-in-chief of Energy Policy, Nicky France, for her prompt readiness to produce such a special section and finally her patience. We hope that the set of articles compiled in this special issue will trigger debate and further research in this vital area to assist the transition to more sustainable energy futures.
Reinhard Haas Energy Economics Group (EEG), Vienna University of Technology, Austria E-mail address: [email protected]
Jim Watson Sussex Energy Group, Science and Technology Policy Research (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK
Wolfgang Eichhammer Fraunhofer-Institute Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), Karlsruhe, Germany
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Energy Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol
Editorial
Transitions to sustainable energy systems—Introduction to the energy policy special issue
1. Introduction Human well-being and social welfare depend heavily on affordable access to energy services. Yet, the availability of energy to provide these services can be limited by scarce resources, environmental constraints and political instability, which is enhanced by competition for resources. The current system of providing energy services is insufficient to cope with these system limitations and is not sustainable for the future. One of the main tasks in this century, and in particular during the next few decades, will be to manage transition processes towards a sustainable energy system.
2. Objectives This special issue of Energy Policy gives an overview of some key issues, debates and policy implications of current research on transitions to more sustainable energy systems. Papers within it are partly derived from a conference organised by the European Network for Energy Economics Research (ENER), which was funded by the European Commission. The special issue investigates the following core issues: 1. What are the basic relations between human needs, human activities, energy services and energy use? 2. What are the conditions for a system providing sustainable energy services? To what extent and how are different types of primary energy sources (e.g. coal, oil, nuclear, biofuels, wind, etc.) and secondary energy carriers (e.g. electricity, hydrogen, etc.) sustainable? 3. What is the role of conversion technologies in the whole energy chain? How can we optimise the delivery of energy services using inputs such as primary energy sources and technologies? How can we recognise and mitigate path dependencies and lock-ins during the transition process? 4. What are indicators that allow an appraisal of whether such a system is on a path towards sustainability or not? 5. What is the role of energy efficiency improvements, technological progress, demand reduction, increases in the share of renewable energy sources and behaviour change? 6. What are the opportunities for policy-makers, NGOs and other players to bring these indicators on the track towards sustainability? 7. What are the conceivable strategies and policies that help to change the track towards sustainability? What institutional 0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2008.06.015
changes are necessary to provide an adequate frame for the transition processes? 8. What are the necessary conditions for successful implementation? 9. What is the particular role of developing countries in the transition process? How can they integrate sustainable energy technologies into their developing process or even establish lead markets in this field? In addition to these questions, an important aspect of this special issue is the variable scope of the energy systems that are covered by different papers. It includes analyses conducted on a local or regional level, and investigations at national and global levels are also provided.
3. Content of this special issue The first two papers focus on the basic relations between human needs, human activities, energy services and energy use. The paper by Reinhard Haas, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Amela ¨ ller and Gustav Ajanovic, Thomas Faber, Lukas Kranzl, Andreas Mu Resch looks at the interrelation between energy services, economic parameters and technology. Virtually all goods and services that characterize modern societies’ welfare depend on the provision of commercial energy. The core objective of this paper is to identify necessary changes in historical and current trends for achieving a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and development paths. The major conclusions of this analysis are (i) a rigorous rethinking process has to take place to identify which level of energy services per capita lead to enhancing human welfare and quality of life; (ii) a significant increase in energy conversion efficiency (doing more with less) has to be triggered to finally provide energy services with far less input of energy than today; (iii) a continuous increase in the share of renewable energy sources and other low-emission supply options has to be brought about; (iv) however, as has been shown by history this process of technological learning has to be accompanied by proper energy pricing and regulatory policies. Otherwise, it will be very likely that energy conservation gains due to technical efficiency improvements will be outweighed again by increases in energy service demand and, straightforward, energy consumption. These issues are investigated for households in India and China in the paper by Shonali Pachauri and Leiwen Jiang. They look at key similarities and differences in household energy consumption across rural and urban regions in these countries through an
ARTICLE IN PRESS 4010
Editorial / Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4009–4011
analysis of large nationally representative household survey data and aggregate energy statistics. The two countries differ sharply in several respects. Residential energy consumption in China is twice that in India, in aggregate terms. In addition, Chinese households have almost universal access to electricity, while in India almost half of the rural households and 10% of urban households still lack access. At an aggregate level, urban households in China also derive a larger share of their total energy from liquid fuels and grids (77%) as compared to urban Indian households (65%). Yet, at every income level, Indians derive a slightly larger fraction of their total household energy needs from liquid and grid sources of energy than Chinese with comparable incomes. Despite these differences trends in energy use and the factors influencing a transition to modern energy in both nations are similar. Compared with rural households, urban households in both nations consume a disproportionately larger share of commercial energy and are much further along in the transition to modern energy. However, total energy consumption in rural households exceeds that in urban households, because of a continued dependence on inefficient solid fuels, which contribute to over 85% of rural household energy needs in both countries. In addition to urbanisation, key drivers of transition in both nations include income, energy prices, energy access and local fuel availability. A critical discussion of the sustainability of different primary energy sources and secondary energy carriers like electricity and hydrogen can be found in the following five papers. Aviel Verbruggen discusses the prospects for a common future for renewables and nuclear power. Nuclear power and renewable energy are two of the main options (or groups of options in the case of renewables) to bring the carbon intensity of commercial energy supply down. The extent to which one or more of these technologies can be relied upon for large-scale deployment depends on their performance against sustainability criteria. The paper focuses on some of these including the extent to which options are ‘democtratic’, globally accessible, environmentally benign, low risk, affordable. The author contends that risks and externalities and the nature of nuclear technology limit its development perspectives, while efficiency and renewable technologies are said to be still in their infancy. The major conclusion of this paper is that there is no common future for nuclear and renewable technologies, mainly due to various risks. The relevance of renewable energy sources for a sustainable energy system, and the potentials and the prospects for renewable energies at a global scale are analysed in the contribution by Gustav Resch, Anne Held, Thomas Faber, Christian Panzer, Felipe Toro and Reinhard Haas. Generating electricity, heat or biofuels from renewable energy sources has become a high priority in national energy policy strategies as well as at a global scale. Challenging goals for these ‘new’ supply options to meet our energy demands have been set, e.g. at European level by the commitment of meeting 20% of the overall energy demand from renewable energy sources by 2020. Obviously, for a comprehensive investigation of the future renewable energy development, it is of crucial importance to provide a detailed investigation of the country- or region-specific situation. The core objective of this paper is to fulfil the aforementioned constraints, aiming to present an overview of renewable energy potentials and prospects globally—but largely based on region- and/or country-specific assessments. Thereby, a topical focus is put on both the near to midfuture as well as the long-term perspective, indicating besides theoretical and technical potentials also the realisable mid-term potentials and prospects for various renewable energy options. Beside this, emphasis is given on the illustration of the possible contribution of renewable energies to power supply. ´rez-Arriaga depict Pedro Linares, F Santos and Ignacio Pe scenarios for the evolution of the Spanish electricity sector and
discuss the question whether it is on the right path or not. They argue that the Spanish energy and electricity systems are currently unsustainable: the large increase in electricity demand, a huge dependency on energy imports and significant environmental impacts are clear reasons for concern. Recent measures have been adopted that may start to drive these systems towards a more sustainable path. In this paper, the authors look at the possible evolution of the Spanish electricity sector under different policy scenarios, and try to identify which are the policies that may help to achieve the desired goal, as well as the role that different technologies may play. The authors reach an optimistic conclusion in that, under the appropriate policy measures, carbon emissions may be reduced in 2020 by up to 37% compared to 1990 levels. Energy imports may be also much reduced, at reasonable costs. However, they also note that this may only be achieved by strongly pursuing energy efficiency, which should be central for all energy plans in Spain, together with renewable energy promotion and stronger focus on other carbon reduction policies. The paper by Claus Doll and Martin Wietschel analyses the current externalities of the transport sector and the role of hydrogen in visions for sustainable transport systems. The importance of the external effects of transport is highlighted by recent estimates for Germany, which indicate that the full external costs of road transport are roughly four times the costs of providing and maintaining the roadway infrastructure. The analysis shows that the possible CO2 effects of hydrogen as a fuel can significantly reduce CO2 emissions of the transport sector compared to other scenarios without hydrogen, even if taking into account tailpipe and upstream emissions as well as alternative technology developments (e.g. biomass as a transport fuel, efficiency improvements of the propulsion system). The authors note that this is an important result because CO2 emissions reduction in the transport sector is a very challenging task. With respect to climate change it could be shown that the introduction of hydrogen would lead to a more sustainable transport system compared to an oil-based transport system. These papers are followed by four contributions that focus more on concrete policies for sustainable energy systems. The challenges and tools with respect to transition towards a ¨rte Fouquet sustainable energy supply system are analysed by Do and Thomas Johannsson. The paper starts from an overview of the basic elements for regulatory, executive and financing incentives for the change towards sustainable energy use and supply. It evaluates existing ways of support and regulations in the light of sustainability challenges. It investigates whether there is a common approach for all systems which would follow similar rules, or whether the approach depends on specific factors such as the existing supply structure, its validity and its necessity, which have to be remodelled or reformed. The paper focuses on the European situation in a global context. It evaluates the experience of a decade of liberalisation of energy markets, often with strong policies to increase the uptake of renewables and efficiency in the face of significant obstacles. The authors contend that good and proven policy instruments have to be rapidly acknowledged, secured and multiplied wherever applicable. They argue that wishful thinking about the effectiveness of emissions trading systems and a reluctance to acknowledge failure do not help to move things forward. Instead, the authors conclude that these factors may only cement a polarised energy world between incumbent industry interests and independent sustainable power production approaches, thus avoiding rapid transition to energy for sustainability. Florian Kern and Adrian Smith analyse energy systems for sustainability by investigating the example of energy transition policy in the Netherlands. Increasingly, researchers and policymakers are looking for ways to restructure these energy systems
ARTICLE IN PRESS Editorial / Energy Policy 36 (2008) 4009–4011
into more sustainable forms. A ‘transition management’ model, and its adoption in the Netherlands, is attracting attention. Starting from the socio-technical multi-level theory that informs ‘transition management’, the paper analyses the ‘energy transition’ project carried out by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. The paper argues that despite considerable achievements, this approach risks capture by the incumbent energy regime, thereby undermining original policy ambitions for structural innovation of the energy system. The authors conclude that this experience presents generic dilemmas for transitions approaches. David Ockwell, Jim Watson, Gordon MacKerron, Prosanto Pal and Farhana Yamin investigate the key policy considerations for facilitating low-carbon technology transfer to developing countries. Based on collaborative study between UK and India, they analyse two case studies of low-carbon technologies—hybrid vehicles and coal-fired power generation via integrated gasification combined cycle. The paper highlights the following six key considerations. First, technology transfer needs to be seen as part of a broader process of sustained, low-carbon technological capacity development in recipient countries. Second, the fact that low-carbon technologies are at different stages of development means that low-carbon technology transfer involves both vertical transfer (of technologies from the R&D stage through to commercialisation) and horizontal transfer (from one geographical location to another). Third, less integrated technology transfer arrangements, involving, for example, acquisition of different items of plant from a range of host country equipment manufacturers, are more likely to involve knowledge exchange and diffusion through recipient country economies. Fourth, recipient firms that strategically aim to obtain technological know-how and knowledge necessary for innovation during the transfer process are more likely to be able to develop their capacity as a result. Fifth, whilst access to Intellectual Property Rights may sometimes be a necessary part of facilitating technology transfer, it is not likely to be sufficient in itself. Sixth, there is a central role for both national and international policy interventions in achieving low-carbon technology transfer. The paper by Michael Jefferson discusses the barriers to accelerating the transition to sustainability energy systems. He argues that the most important barriers are that targets are usually too short term and unrealistic, especially where fossil fuel use is rising very rapidly and renewable energy use expands modestly. He notes that government subsidies for traditional energy forms continue. Furthermore, the paper contends that insufficient attention is paid to what individuals might achieve in energy efficiency and renewable energy terms if permitted to have, or retain (in industrialized countries where the burden of taxation is often inhibiting), the wherewithal to make the necessary investments. The paper concludes that without departing from the sense of urgency required to address the pressing needs for sustainable energy systems, it is imperative that the involvement of people at the grassroots level is harnessed and appropriate commercial and technical criteria are applied to potential strategies for action.
4011
The final group of two papers focuses on one of the most important issues with respect to a broader market penetration of renewables: the public acceptance of their deployment. Petra Schweizer-Ries analyses the relevance of environmental–psychological investigations for the development of energy sustainable communities (ESC). She notes that energy sustainability is becoming an increasing issue in our society. Often it is reduced to a purely technical problem. Renewable energies and energy-efficient technologies are developed to solve the problem, but finally the end-users will ‘‘decide’’ how much and what kind of energy they are going to consume. This article aims to show the environmental–psychological aspects of changes in energy demand and supply. It builds upon a transactional model of human technology interchange and is summarising work done during the last 5 years. It refers to the idea of ESC, shows the development of one example community and concentrates on one aspect of the social dimension of ESC, the ‘‘acceptance of renewable energy technology’’, its definition and measurement in Germany. Jan Zoellner, Petra Schweizer-Ries and Christin Wemheuer address the issue of public acceptance of renewable energies for large gridconnected ground-installed PV systems, biomass plants and wind turbines from a socio-scientific perspective. Using an environmental–psychological approach to investigate the social factors relevant for the formation of public acceptance towards renewable energies in four different regions, recommendations for the further implementation of renewable energy systems are derived. The paper argues that the economic consideration of a renewable energy system, which means a positive cost–benefit calculation made by the individual, is the strongest predictor for reported acceptance. Furthermore, the importance of landscape evaluation and a strong connection between the criteria such as transparency, early and accurate information as well as possibilities to participate, and reported public acceptance became evident. Our thanks go to all authors and peer reviewers for their contributions, but especially to the Editor-in-chief of Energy Policy, Nicky France, for her prompt readiness to produce such a special section and finally her patience. We hope that the set of articles compiled in this special issue will trigger debate and further research in this vital area to assist the transition to more sustainable energy futures.
Reinhard Haas Energy Economics Group (EEG), Vienna University of Technology, Austria E-mail address: [email protected]
Jim Watson Sussex Energy Group, Science and Technology Policy Research (SPRU), University of Sussex, UK
Wolfgang Eichhammer Fraunhofer-Institute Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), Karlsruhe, Germany