Climate change: the key challenge of the 21st century, and a rising and prominent topic of discussion in recent years worldwide. “The world cannot afford to press “pause” on the expansion of renewables and governments need to act quickly to correct this situation and enable a faster flow of new projects,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Executive Director. “Thanks to rapidly declining costs, the competitiveness of renewables is no longer heavily tied to financial incentives. What they mainly need are stable policies supported by a long-term vision but also a focus on integrating renewables into power systems in a cost-effective and optimal way1.”
According to the Global Energy & CO2 Status Report 2019, global CO2 emissions rose 1.7% to a historic high in 20182, mainly due to emissions from fossil fuels driven by higher energy consumption. Furthermore, emissions from the power sector accounted for nearly two thirds of emissions growth3. The solution seems simple; cut man-made greenhouse gas emissions, phase out fossil fuels and move to renewable energy. Renewable capacity additions need to grow by over 300 GW on average each year between 2018 and 2030 to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to the IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS)4. And yet, after nearly two decades of strong annual growth, renewables around the world added as much net capacity in 2018 as they did in 20175, an unexpected flattening of growth trends that raises concerns about meeting long-term climate goals.
So why aren’t we building more renewables projects? The main barriers to renewable energy industry development are:
There are many solutions proposed for these highlighted problems. However, one solution seems to stand out: Hybrid Renewable Energy (HRE). HRE projects combine two or more forms of energy generation, storage or end use technologies; for example, wind and solar technologies, coupled with an energy storage system. Wind power is typically most productive during the night and solar only produces during the day; combining both resources with energy storage allows project developers to maximize the revenue generation from a given amount of land and grid interconnection. Curtailed output will end up in the battery, which is programmed to either sell electricity into the grid when prices are high (arbitrage) or inject power to provide grid ancillary services, such as frequency regulation.
The key advantages of HRE technology can be easily identified:
On the other hand, there are some substantial obstacles to overcome before this combined approach can be deployed on a large scale. These can be summarised as follows:
In conclusion, HRE projects are certainly emerging as a major trend in the global transition to renewable energy, which can lead the scale-up of renewables. The real growth in these projects has occurred in the past two years, driven in part by new projects pioneered in India, with hybrid renewable energy projects developing at a larger scale now evident in Mongolia, Australia, China, Europe and even the USA. “Hybrid is the next frontier in renewables,” says Mike Bowman, chief technology officer of GE’s Renewable Hybrids business. “It’s a paradigm change driven by technology development and market development7.” Governments, investors, insurers and grid operators should prepare for the rapid growth of these systems to ensure they do not become barriers to technology and/or market development, but facilitators to real climate change solutions.
Melanie Carter is an Account Director, Renewable Energy GB, Willis Towers Watson.
1 https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-capacity-growth-worldwide-stalled-in-2018-after-two-decades-of-strong-expansion 2 https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-and-co2-status-report-2019/emissions 3 https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-and-co2-status-report-2019/emissions 4 https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-capacity-growth-worldwide-stalled-in-2018-after-two-decades-of-strong-expansion 5 https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-capacity-growth-worldwide-stalled-in-2018-after-two-decades-of-strong-expansion 6 https://www.vox.com/2015/6/19/8808545/wind-solar-grid-integration 7 https://www.energy-xprt.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-hybrids-new-ge-unit-blends-batteries-and-renewables-to-boost-wind-and-solar-power-ou-826315