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- Barney, Andrew
(författare)
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Energy planning for islands : Guiding island energy transition and decision-making
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The importance and benefits of transitioning away from fossil fuel based energy systems is becoming ever clearer. The transition is especially crucial for geographic islands that typically have limited, or no, access to mainland energy networks. This limited access means that they must rely on costly, economically and environmentally, imported fossil fuels for energy production. This isolation and reliance on imported fuels makes islands particularly energy insecure, which is only expected to worsen because of climate change. At the same time, much of the current guidance and policy developed to help plan for islands’ energy transition is based on the conditions and circumstances present on the mainland or on energy planning that focuses primarily on technical or economic parameters. To plan for a smoother, more successful transition away from fossil fuel based energy production on islands, more data is needed about islanders themselves and their local circumstances as well as planning guidance flexible enough to fit the variable needs of island planners that goes beyond a techno-economic focus.In this PhD Thesis and in response to these transition issues, an energy planning platform, REACT-DECARB, has been developed to specifically address the needs of island energy planners. This platform seeks to be holistic in its approach to facilitate the island energy transition planning procedure by considering typical island characteristics and energy transition processes while also including key technical, social, environmental and economic dimensions and granting planners flexibility in how they incorporate them. Additionally, surveys and interviews with island residents are conducted to gain an understanding of islanders’ motivations, priorities and awareness in relation to energy and energy transition as well as to determine if these can be of guidance to island energy transition planners.The applications of the REACT-DECARB platform on geographic islands representing eight different countries from around the EU with varying populations, land areas and climates identified energy transition opportunities and obstacles specific to the islands where the platform was applied as well as to other islands seeking to transition their energy systems. Moreover, these applications of the planning platform demonstrated its ability to help island planners in the development of holistic energy transition paths. The platform takes island energy transition planning beyond a focus on techno-economics by including a wider range of planning dimensions allowing them to decide the methods best suited to their island’s needs. Further, the interactions with island residents demonstrated that their relationships to energy could be informative in the development of energy transition plans as well as likely being critical to their success. Islanders’ understandings, motivations, priorities and awareness were found to be not only directly useful in guiding planners during the designing of island energy transition plans but can also serve to inform planners in how best to educate local residents about and engage them in local energy transition projects. Ultimately, the work in this Thesis contributes to the efforts to make sure islands’, and islanders’, needs and perspectives are considered and included as a part of the wider energy transition.
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- Barney, Andrew, et al.
(författare)
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Energy scenarios for the Faroe Islands : A MCDA methodology including local social perspectives
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainable Futures. - : Elsevier. - 2666-1888. ; 4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Planning for the decarbonisation of island energy systems is both crucial and fraught with complexities. The process to develop and evaluate these plans needs to encompass not only technical and economic specifics but each plan's impacts on the environment and local inhabitants must also be considered. This inclusive planning involves multiple criteria and requires a means of handling them. In this paper a series of potential future energy systems are generated with the EnergyPlan software for the Faroe Islands before these systems are assessed using a set of criteria covering their environmental, social, technical and economic aspects. These criteria are used by two multi-criteria approaches, along with actual weights obtained from local stakeholders, to rank the energy systems. It is found that there is a clear shift in rankings towards systems employing offshore technologies due to the inclusion of social criteria specifically fitted to the Islands’ resident's preferences. This shift, however, was not sufficient for these offshore scenarios to outperform other scenarios that performed well on the other criteria. These findings indicate there is likely value in terms of local acceptance for transition planning on the Islands in adjusting to include greater quantities of offshore technologies in future energy strategies.
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- Barney, Andrew
(författare)
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Integrated regional energy planning for islands : Development of a decision-aiding methodological framework and application
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Clear and inclusive planning guidance for island planners seeking transitions away from traditional fossil fuel based energy systems is currently needed. At present, the guidance from the scientific community has largely been provided piecemeal and with significant focus on the specifics of single islands and, more often than not, on proposed energy systems’ techno-economics. To address these gaps in applicability and encourage a more balanced energy project analysis the REACT-DECARB integrated energy planning and decision-aiding platform has been developed. REACT-DECARB seeks to work as a comprehensive planning platform for island energy transition and this thesis investigates the ability of the platform to provide the support to planners needed to facilitate their transition planning. To do so the core concepts, descriptions and applications of decision making as well as a number of energy planning tools are presented. The platform is then described and its individual steps are applied to eight geographic islands within the EU. These applications of the platform identified key opportunities for the islands, such as significant RES potential, while also finding potential obstacles, such as land use conflicts. Further, it highlighted the high economic cost of seeking full electricity autonomy and of using substantial battery capacities. The platform additionally identified the importance local preferences can potentially have on the ranking of future energy scenarios as well as the impact lifetime project environmental costs can have on overall system environmental impacts. In summation, the REACT-DECARB platform is found to be an effective tool in directing island energy decarbonisation efforts by guiding local energy planners in what should be included in their planning and how these key elements can be incorporated in the decisions made. Further, the platform is found to be flexible enough to be applied to more than the specific circumstances of a single island and allows planners to adjust their approaches to its different steps as needed and to better match their capabilities.
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- Barney, Andrew, et al.
(författare)
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Transition towards decarbonisation for islands : Development of an integrated energy planning platform and application
- 2021
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Ingår i: Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments. - : Elsevier BV. - 2213-1388 .- 2213-1396. ; 47
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents REACT-DECARB, an energy planning decarbonisation platform employing renewable energy sources coupled with storage for islands. The paper implements the energy scenario creation and economic evaluation steps of the platform on eight geographic islands in seven countries within the EU. Twenty-one technologically feasible energy scenarios, applicable to the specific conditions of each island, are specified and their economic assessment via a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) calculation is then performed. The main aim of this application is to verify the noted steps of the platform as well as to test its flexibility across geographically, socially and dimensionally disparate islands with various scenario generation methods. The results of the economic analysis show a wide variation of LCOE depending primarily on whether full island autonomy is assumed. In some cases the islands’ scenarios’ costs approach current market prices but are never below them; some scenarios are, however, below the current price of the island’s thermal generation. The sensitivity and uncertainty of the economic performance results’ and the variables used to calculate them are evaluated and discussed for two of the islands. The overall analysis and application has shown that the REACT-DECARB platform is suitable for different islands, regardless of location and size and can be useful for island energy planners.
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