Sustainability assessment of renewable power and heat generation technologies
Mihály Dombi,
István Kuti and
Péter Balogh
Energy Policy, 2014, vol. 67, issue C, 264-271
Abstract:
Rationalisation of consumption, more efficient energy usage and a new energy structure are needed to be achieved in order to shift the structure of energy system towards sustainability. The required energy system is among others characterised by intensive utilisation of renewable energy sources (RES). RES technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, for the strategic planning there is a great demand for the comparison of RES technologies. Furthermore, there are additional functions of RES utilisation expected beyond climate change mitigation, e.g. increment of employment, economic growth and rural development. The aim of the study was to reveal the most beneficial RES technologies with special respect to sustainability. Ten technologies of power generation and seven technologies of heat supply were examined in a multi-criteria sustainability assessment frame of seven attributes which were evaluated based on a choice experiment (CE) survey. According to experts the most important characteristics of RES utilisation technologies are land demand and social impacts i.e. increase in employment and local income generation. Concentrated solar power (CSP), hydropower and geothermal power plants are favourable technologies for power generation, while geothermal district heating, pellet-based non-grid heating and solar thermal heating can offer significant advantages in case of heat supply.
Keywords: Renewable energy sources; Electric power generation; Heat supply; Sustainability assessment; Choice experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513012767
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:67:y:2014:i:c:p:264-271
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.12.032
Access Statistics for this article
Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France
More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).