CenSES Annual Report 2015

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3 CenSES annual report 2015
CenSES’ objective is to conduct research that supports
public and private decision makers in strategic decisions
and policies that will promote environment-friendly energy
technologies and lead to a sustainable energy system.
During the first 5 years more than 100 people have been
involved in CenSES, including both participating research
partners and user partners. Below are some of the highlights
of what we have achieved.
Within the topic energy and climate policies national policy
instruments in Norway have been assessed regarding their
effectiveness, with a particular focus on energy efficiency
in buildings. Studies of learning and innovation in policy
processes have given us a good fundament to understand
how energy policy is made. We developed a model that
describes how the public administration uses or choose
not to use, scientific knowledge in political problem solving
processes combined with experience based knowledge.
Energy citizenship: Public involvement and engagement
with low carbon energy transition are important to the
development of environmentally friendly energy. The
concept of energy citizenship emphasizes responsibility
for climate change and actions with respect to production,
distribution and consumption of energy aiming at mitigating
climate change, and represents political ideals related to
democratic participation.
Work on Innovation and commercialization of technology
has provided a better understanding of drivers and
barriers, and how to identify commercial potential and
enable viable paths towards actual commercialization of
renewable energy technologies in the future. We applied
this work to find success factors for innovation in the
current technological FMEs. The research was conducted
by researchers within various disciplines, with different
theoretical and methodological approaches, that may
give a more holistic picture of challenges related to the
innovation and implementation of emergent technologies.
One example is the implementation of CSS, focusing on
which (financial and political) instruments that are needed
to get early implementation as well as public acceptance.
When it comes to learning processes for developing offshore
wind energy in China, our work finds that the Chinese have
a higher willingness to take risks. One characteristic is also
their focus on finding solutions to technological challenges
without learning directly from European companies.
Climate policy and the energy system: When it comes to
understanding how the global climate policy influences the
regional energy systems, a major achievement has been to
link the Integrated Assessment Model GCAM with energy
system models, and to study the impact climate policy has
on the European energy system. Results from this work show
that transition paths towards a low carbon electricity system,
may becomemuchmore expensive without CCS technology,
and that renewables and storage alone is not a cost efficient
way to reduce emissions in the electricity sector towards EUs
announced targets for 2050.
We have also studied Norwegian scenarios, in particular
focusing on possible projections for Norwegian energy
demand towards 2050. The need for a publically available
energy demand projection initiated this work. The current
projections based on “top-down” economic models give a
higher demand growth than our “bottom-up” approach
using our long-term energy systems models. We are
currently trying to combine the two approaches to see the
mutual influence between the energy system and the
economy.
The role of Norway in Europe´s transition to a sustainable
energy system: Norway’s potential role will depend on the
European climate and the energy policy. A main challenge
in the transition to a sustainable energy system is how to
manage and operate large volumes of renewable energy
that cannot be controlled. We have conducted different
studies about two Norwegian resources; natural gas and the
hydropower system. Both have their benefits, and together
these two Norwegian resources may be an important part of
the solution for Europe in the future to come.
We are looking forward to studying similar topics and
research challenges of high importance for Norway in the
next following years.
Asgeir Tomasgard
Centre Director, CenSES
Report from the Centre Director