2020, Ershad, Ahmad Murtaza, Pietzcker, Robert, Ueckerdt, Falko, Luderer, Gunnar

An Indian electricity system with very high shares of solar photovoltaics seems to be a plausible future given the ever-falling solar photovoltaic (PV) costs, recent Indian auction prices, and governmental support schemes. However, the variability of solar PV electricity, i.e., the seasonal, daily, and other weather-induced variations, could create an economic barrier. In this paper, we analyzed a strategy to overcome this barrier with demand-side management (DSM) by lending flexibility to the rapidly increasing electricity demand for air conditioning through either precooling or chilled water storage. With an open-source power sector model, we estimated the endogenous investments into and the hourly dispatching of these demand-side options for a broad range of potential PV shares in the Indian power system in 2040. We found that both options reduce the challenges of variability by shifting electricity demand from the evening peak to midday, thereby reducing the temporal mismatch of demand and solar PV supply profiles. This increases the economic value of solar PV, especially at shares above 40%, the level at which the economic value roughly doubles through demand flexibility. Consequently, DSM increases the competitive and cost-optimal solar PV generation share from 33-45% (without DSM) to ∼45-60% (with DSM). These insights are transferable to most countries with high solar irradiation in warm climate zones, which amounts to a major share of future electricity demand. This suggests that technologies, which give flexibility to air conditioning demand, can be an important contribution toward enabling a solar-centered global electricity supply. © 2020 by the authors.

2020, Roelfsema, Mark, van Soest, Heleen L., Harmsen, Mathijs, van Vuuren, Detlef P., Bertram, Christoph, den Elzen, Michel, Höhne, Niklas, Iacobuta, Gabriela, Krey, Volker, Kriegler, Elmar, Luderer, Gunnar, Riahi, Keywan, Ueckerdt, Falko, Després, Jacques, Drouet, Laurent, Emmerling, Johannes, Frank, Stefan, Fricko, Oliver, Gidden, Matthew, Humpenöder, Florian, Huppmann, Daniel, Fujimori, Shinichiro, Fragkiadakis, Kostas, Gi, Keii, Keramidas, Kimon, Köberle, Alexandre C., Aleluia Reis, Lara, Rochedo, Pedro, Schaeffer, Roberto, Oshiro, Ken, Vrontisi, Zoi, Chen, Wenying, Iyer, Gokul C., Edmonds, Jae, Kannavou, Maria, Jiang, Kejun, Mathur, Ritu, Safonov, George, Vishwanathan, Saritha Sudharmma

Many countries have implemented national climate policies to accomplish pledged Nationally Determined Contributions and to contribute to the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2023, the global stocktake will assess the combined effort of countries. Here, based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, we show that implementation of current policies leaves a median emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq by 2030 with the optimal pathways to implement the well below 2 °C and 1.5 °C Paris goals. If Nationally Determined Contributions would be fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by a third. Interestingly, the countries evaluated were found to not achieve their pledged contributions with implemented policies (implementation gap), or to have an ambition gap with optimal pathways towards well below 2 °C. This shows that all countries would need to accelerate the implementation of policies for renewable technologies, while efficiency improvements are especially important in emerging countries and fossil-fuel-dependent countries.

2020, Malik, Aman, Bertram, Christoph, Despres, Jacques, Emmerling, Johannes, Fujimori, Shinichiro, Garg, Amit, Kriegler, Elmar, Luderer, Gunnar, Mathur, Ritu, Roelfsema, Mark, Shekhar, Swapnil, Vishwanathan, Saritha, Vrontisi, Zoi

Cost-effective achievement of the Paris Agreement's long-term goals requires the unanimous phase-out of coal power generation by mid-century. However, continued investments in coal power plants will make this transition difficult. India is one of the major countries with significant under construction and planned increase in coal power capacity. To ascertain the likelihood and consequences of the continued expansion of coal power for India's future mitigation options, we use harmonised scenario results from national and global models along with projections from various government reports. Both these approaches estimate that coal capacity is expected to increase until 2030, along with rapid developments in wind and solar power. However, coal capacity stranding of the order of 133–237 GW needs to occur after 2030 if India were to pursue an ambitious climate policy in line with a well-below 2 °C target. Earlier policy strengthening starting after 2020 can reduce stranded assets (14–159 GW) but brings with it political economy and renewable expansion challenges. We conclude that a policy limiting coal plants to those under construction combined with higher solar targets could be politically feasible, prevent significant stranded capacity, and allow higher mitigation ambition in the future.