نقش بالقوه انرژی خورشیدی متمرکز (CSP) در آفریقا و اروپا - ارزیابی پویا از توسعه فن آوری، توسعه هزینه و موجودی چرخه عمر تا سال 2050

Concentrated solar power (CSP) plants are one of several renewable energy technologies with significant potential to meet a part of future energy demand. An integrated technology assessment shows that CSP plants could play a promising role in Africa and Europe, helping to reach ambitious climate protection goals. Based on the analysis of driving forces and barriers, at first three future envisaged technology scenarios are developed. Depending on the underlying assumptions, an installed capacity of 120 GWel, 405 GWel or even 1,000 GWel could be reached globally in 2050. In the latter case, CSP would then meet 13–15% of global electricity demand. Depending on these scenarios, cost reduction curves for North Africa and Europe are derived. The cost assessment conducted for two virtual sites in Algeria and in Spain shows a long-term reduction of electricity generating costs to figures between 4 and 6 ct/kWhel in 2050. The paper concludes with an ecological analysis based on life cycle assessment. Although the greenhouse gas emissions of current (solar only operated) CSP systems show a good performance (31 g CO2-equivalents/kWhel) compared with advanced fossil-fired systems (130–900 CO2-eq./kWhel), they could further be reduced to 18 g CO2-eq./kWhel in 2050, including transmission from North Africa to Europe.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) is one of the promising, future-oriented renewable energy technologies. In the last five years, CSP attracted more and more interest from energy utilities all over Europe and in the United States. Private initiatives like the Desertec Foundation (Desertec, 2010) and political roadmaps like the Mediterranean Union’s Solarplan (Euromed, 2010) call for a strong deployment in the mid- and long-term. To assess the sustainability of these concepts, a holistic view into the future is necessary: what are the drivers of CSP; why should CSP be brought forward as soon as possible? Which individual technologies within CSP could develop in the long term? How much capacity could be installed and how much electricity could be generated over the next decades, at what economic and ecological cost? All in all, what could be the potential role of CSP technology in the future? These questions were analysed in the EU-funded project NEEDS (New Energy Externalities Developments for Sustainability), together with similar analysis of other future electricity generating systems (Viebahn et al., 2008 and NEEDS, 2009). This paper gives insights into the basic results. It is structured as follows: First, a short introduction into CSP technology is given (Section 2). Based on an analysis of drivers, general aims and supporting instruments (Section 3), three long-term development scenarios are explored (Section 4). These scenarios and expectations of technological breakthroughs are the basis for the specification of future technology configurations (Section 5). Applying the learning curve approach, future electricity generation cost is modelled depending on the development scenarios (Section 6). To assess the ecological impacts, a dynamic life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis is carried out for the current systems and updated to the assumed characteristics of the future technologies (Section 7). Following the discussion in Section 8, the main conclusions are drawn in Section 9. It should be noted that both, the technical development scenarios and the cost assessment consider CSP technology in general, whereas the life cycle analysis differentiates between different technology configurations.

Our integrated assessment of CSP plants shows significant potential for a strong and long-term CSP deployment. The energy policy of the near future will decide whether this ambitious but (in order to be able to meet the 2 °C goal) necessary development pathway can be realised or whether a continued fossil fuel based supporting scheme will enable only a “pessimistic” CSP diffusion. As the cost assessment shows, the pathway pursued in the next years will also decide about the reduction of electricity generating costs—whether they can reach about 4 ct/kWhel, as modelled for the “very optimistic” case, or only 6 ct/kWhel, as in the “pessimistic” case. Although greenhouse gases and other emissions from CSP plants are already quite low if the current systems – operated in solar-only mode – are compared with advanced fossil fired systems, life-cycle emissions of CSP plants can further be reduced in the future. Altogether, CSP plants could play a promising role helping to reach the climate protection goals aimed for in the next decades.