Renewable energy for sustainable development Author: Poul Alberg Østergaard
Abstract
This review article addresses the status of research within the application of renewable energy sources. It focuses on the status of renewable technologies, the role of renewable energy sources in meeting sustainable development goals, the status of the research into the sustainability of the renewable energy systems, and finally on the integration of renewable energy technologies in low carbon energy systems. Regarding renewable resources and technologies, wind and wave power resource assessment, heating and cooling, solar energy, renewable energy fuels, and integrated energy systems are reviewed and summarized. The article takes a starting point in work presented at the conference series on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES), published in the Renewable Energy journal and puts this work into a broader context.
Introduction
This special issue from the 2022 conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water, and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) present some of the latest advances in wind and wave power resources and assessments. The special issue follows up on previous special issues published in several journals, including this journal [[1], [2], [3]], Energies [[4], [5], [6]], and the IJSEPM [[7], [8], [9]].
A 2022 survey on the research on 100% renewable energy systems demonstrated a wide consensus on the technical and economic feasibility of these types of systems in the research community, and that wind and solar power could play pivotal roles in future fully renewable energy systems [10]. There are of course technical, economic, resource, environmental and other implementation hurdles to be addressed, however there is a growing consensus on the general feasibility of the basic concept.
Long-term planning for energy systems is provided in different ways to predict and supply the required energy. Energy planning pursues various goals, including increasing the stability and security of the energy system [11], reducing dependence and importing energy [12], greenhouse gases [13], energy losses, and reducing energy production costs simultaneously or separately [14,15].
In the SDEWES special issue of the journal Renewable Energy that this article targets in particular, Herc et al. [16] address the transitional phases of decarbonization by specifying the share of renewable energy in different stages. The optimization's goals are to reduce the system's cost and achieve a predefined share of renewable energy and emission in each step. Bhandari [17] and Aunedi et al. [18] address the issue of hydrogen in new energy systems models to investigate the potential of hydrogen production, decarbonization, and economic evaluation.
Some future studies have investigated the exploitation of wave energy in the future [19]. Rusu [20] evaluate the predicted wave energy dynamics in the Iberian Peninsula's coastal environment. The wave energy data for the subsequent 20-year era (2026–2045) are contrasted with those for the preceding 20-year period. The findings indicate that neither the maximum values nor the overall patterns of the wave power fields significantly alter between the two periods under consideration, particularly in the transitional seasons. Like wave energy, research has been done on energy classification and potential measurement based on wind energy and power in coastal and offshore areas [21,22].
Space heating in a building based on renewable energy and storage has been considered in many studies. Egea et al. [23] propose a new scraped surface design for increasing thermal storage efficiency in buildings. Gaucher-Locksts et al. [24] looks at three main aspects of air source heat pump and building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems used in the residential sector. This study evaluates three combinations of BIPV and heat pump energy. They investigate the proposed systems' efficiency and flexibility in interacting with an intelligent grid. The reference scenario consists of a 5 kW BIPV system on the roof and a separate air-source heat pump water heater (HPWH). According to the results, the HPWH's air source receives heated air from the BIPV/T system, which also has integrated thermal storage as an innovative solution that utilizes roughly 80% less energy than the reference system. They also discover that the solarium and tank size significantly impact the system's adaptability.
In another study, Bilardo et al. [25] investigate the potential of solar cooling to reduce carbon emission and fossil fuel consumption. They propose a dynamic model with auxiliary supply and storage for zero energy building. The effectiveness of various system design choices was examined in eight different climates with a particular focus on energy storage. The results quantify the potential of green energy ratio and related costs in the various regions and demonstrate how solar cooling should be best planned. The use of solar energy to achieve zero-energy buildings has been investigated in other research.
Eslami et al. [26,27] investigate a hybrid solar-based system to meet the energy demand of zero energy building. Additionally, a small-scale system was created and experimentally tested to validate the simulation. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the system is technically and economically feasible and might be adapted to additional sites in urban and rural situations. The equity paybacks of solar-based systems are varied from 1.6 to 4.4 years and prevent at least 300 tons of CO2 emission per year. Research has targeted increasing the energy yield from photovoltaic (PV) systems in the building. Some researchers worked on reducing the losses of these systems, including reducing the effect of dust and temperature to increase PV efficiency [[28], [29], [30]].
Various building integrated solar systems have been investigated from different aspects. In a new research by Barone et al. [31] an innovative building integrated concentrating PV thermal glazing system is modelled, simulated, and technologically and economically evaluated. Vassiliades et al. [32] look into BIPV integration for energy retrofitting of existing structures. Using various filters of solar urban planning/building integration of active solar systems, evaluate the thermal conditions in the public space before and after the integration. Then, focus on proposing the most workable combination of urban practice and building integration approach. D'Agostino et al. [33] compare fixed and tracking solar systems to meet the actual NZEB energy demand. The findings demonstrate that the annual PV surface that meets the NZEB target does not necessarily accomplish the same goal as the monthly demand. Additionally, due to more consistent energy output, the size of the PV system with dual axes tracking is 50% smaller than the fixed one when taking a monthly balance into account. In order to decrease the annual electricity bill for a single-family customer, Ancona et al. [34] calculate the electricity output that may be achieved by combining an existing kW-size recuperated Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) prototype with a commercial solar thermal collector.
In the following section, we focus more on the work published in the renewable energy area within the fields of wind and wave power resource assessment (Section 2), heating and cooling (Section 3), solar energy (Section 4), renewable energy fuels (Section 5), integrated Energy systems (Section 6). Finally, Section 7 synthesizes the main findings of the article.
Section snippets
Wind and wave power resource assessment
The utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) has become a necessity with increasing demand and environmental issues caused by the consumption of fossil fuels. Wind power production is one of the most economical renewable energy generation systems. Wind power technology is also continuously growing, which has made it one of the fastest-growing renewable energies. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the global wind capacity increased by 93.6 GW in 2021 (+12%) to 837 GW.
With its
Heating and cooling
Industrial, commercial and residential areas are synonymous with energy consumption for both heating/cooling and electricity demands, which has increased fossil fuel consumption. Utilizing fossil fuels for heating and cooling has caused energy and environmental crises in many societies. Meanwhile, renewable energy resources are a suitable option to meet the demand for heating and cooling due to their renewability and environmental friendliness. Many research papers on heating/cooling systems
Solar energy
Solar energy resources assessment and technology development to meet sustainable development goals have cached attention in recent decades. In recent years, the cost of energy production (power, heating, and cooling) from solar resources decreased remarkably. Much research on resources assessment and new conversion technology development facilitated this progress. Some of the important research works are reviewed in this section.
Poletto et al. [34] investigated the prospects of an 1800 W
Renewable energy fuels
The world energy market is mainly based on fossil fuels such as crude oil, natural gas, and coal, as well as their chemical products. But since it takes millions of years for these fuel resources to come into being, consuming them means depleting these resources. Meanwhile, there are other carbon sources called renewable energy fuels that are natural and renewable and can replace fossil fuel sources. These fuels are produced from renewable resources; examples include biofuels and Hydrogen fuel
Integrated energy systems
The EnergyPLAN model [78] is widely applied in the literature with 95 journal applications in 2015 [79] and 315 in 2022 [80] and a contributing factor in its wide application is its ability to integrate with other tools. For instance, Herc et al. [16] improved on the eplanOPT framework developed by Prina [81,82], which is centred around EnergyPLAN to enable better analyses of flexibility options in integrated energy systems. The focus lies in the computational requirement of decreasing the…
Conclusion
This article has demonstrated considerable research progress towards filling the gaps in the literature when it comes to the technologies and systems important for the transition towards renewable energy-based energy systems.
Considerable research on resource assessment of both wind and wave power show good promise for the wider application of these technologies. Heating and cooling remaining dominating energy demands, however, also demands that are feasible to cover with building-integrated...