Page 17 - European Energy Innovation - autumn 2018 publication
P. 17
Autumn 2018 European Energy Innovation 17
ROOFTOP PV
meet the targets of the Paris a) Large-scale or utility plants, with Rooftop installations have higher
Agreement, CO2 emissions from the arrays of free-standing modules, capital costs, but the electricity can
power sector have to decrease to connected to the transmission grid. be consumed either wholly or in part
65g CO2/kWh by 2050 from 506g on site, so the value is related to the
in 2015[3,4]. This is a huge task and b) Dual use of traffic or water relevant industrial or residential retail
can only be realised under the infrastructure[7,8], closed landfills [9] prices. Rooftop PV also brings a better
Sustainable development Scenario and the re-naturalisation of mining geographical match between supply
of the IEA's World Energy Outlook sites offer potentials, often in the and demand, a factor of increasing
2017. For Europe the challenge is perimeter of existing electricity importance as we progressively
even bigger as electricity emissions infrastructure. electrify the heating and cooling and
in Europe should decrease to 45g the transport sectors.
CO2/kWh by 2050. c) PV located on roofs or facades of
buildings. Several studies suggest that roof
Recent 100% renewable electricity space is not an issue, even for
scenarios have highlighted the The different options have different the most ambitious scenarios.
importance of solar photovoltaics to economic rationales. Utility PV plants can For instance the IEA 2016 Energy
achieve this goal and decarbonise take advantage of economies of scale Technology Perspectives reports an
the power sector in a cost effective to reduce investment and operational estimate for PV potential in EU urban
manner. To realise a carbon free costs, and the electricity generated areas of over 500GW and 4,350GW
power supply by 2050 the installed can be traded in wholesale markets. worldwide by 2030[10].
PV generation capacity of about
400GW at the end of 2017 hast to Dual use systems can have higher Like many other EU-wide studies
increase to more than 4TW by 2025 capital costs, but this can partially the IEA relies entirely on population
and 21.9TW by 2050 to make it be offset by the additional value, the density data as a proxy. In order to
happen[5,6]. system provides, like the reduction use a more direct approach and to
of water evaporation, noise barriers, map actual buildings right across
What options are available to install lower infrastructure costs or local Europe using earth observation
the required capacity? employment. data, the Joint Research Centre
Figure 2: Cumulative installed PV power capacity between 2005 and 2018Cumulative Photovoltaic Power [GWp]
120
n Rest of EU
n Greece
100 n United Kingdom
n Czech Republic
n Belgium
n France
80 n Spain
n Italy
n Germany
60
40
20
0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018e
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