Ecological transition as a system transition Flashcards
Term: Co-benefits
Co-benefits of transitioning to clean, renewable energy:
- Reduction of climate damages
- Massive air-pollution health damage prevention
- Enhanced energy security
Term: Should we employ only carbon pricing?
Considerations regarding carbon pricing:
- Static-cost effectiveness: Equating marginal abatement costs across all options and agents for emission reduction.
- Managing without uniform pricing: Risk of free-riding and carbon leakage due to fragmented international climate policy landscape.
- Tailored policies: Local and sectoral contexts may require specific policies to address lock-in and promote innovation.
Term: Lock-ins in the transition
Challenges related to lock-ins and transition:
- Ongoing investments in carbon-intensive infrastructures hinder alignment with decarbonization pathways.
- Political difficulty and cost of retiring existing investments.
- Incremental change through carbon pricing alone is insufficient to achieve low-carbon pathways.
- Accelerating transitions involves weakening lock-ins and supporting radical innovations.
Term: Promoting green innovation
Factors influencing green innovation:
- R&D investments in energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear, hydrogen, and others.
- Market failures in underinvestment due to the public good nature of knowledge.
- Subsidies, patent rules, and technology prizes to incentivize private research.
- Balancing effectiveness and efficiency in mitigation options.
- Recognizing the system problem of sociotechnical adjustments in transitioning to a low-carbon society.
> > > Public investments and subsidies for R&D in energy efficiency and mitigation technologies are needed «<
Term: Timeline for an energy transition to 100% renewable
Feasibility and practicality of transitioning to 100% renewable energy:
- 80% transition by 2030, 100% between 2035 and 2050.
- Varied transition speeds for different technologies.
- Early retirement of existing infrastructure.
- Development of electric grids to manage dispersed generation.
Term: Fuel Cell
Definition and applications of fuel cells:
Convert chemical energy into electricity using fuel and oxidizing agent.
Power commercial, industrial, residential buildings, vehicles, and submarines.
Term: Heat Pump
Definition and advantages of heat pumps:
- Use electricity to transfer heat from a cool space to a warm space.
- More energy-efficient than other heating methods.
- Low carbon footprint when powered by solar panels.
Term: Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE)
Definition of LCOE:
- Measure comparing different electricity generation methods.
- Represents the average total cost to build and operate a power-generating asset over its lifetime divided by the total energy output of the asset.
Write about the development in levelized cost of electricity based on this picture
Write about the development in R&D investments based on this picture
Term: Effectiveness, not only efficiency
Term: market failure versus system problem
