EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Interactions and implications of renewable and climate change policy on UK energy scenarios

Gabrial Anandarajah and Neil Strachan

Energy Policy, 2010, vol. 38, issue 11, 6724-6735

Abstract: As a response to the twin challenges of climate change mitigation and energy security, the UK government has set a groundbreaking target of reducing the UK's economy-wide carbon emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. A second key UK energy policy is to increase the share of final energy consumption from renewables sources to 15% by 2020, as part of the wider EU Renewable Directive. The UK's principle mechanisms to meet this renewable target are the Renewable Obligation (RO) in the electricity sector, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), and most recently the Renewable Heat Programme (RHP) for buildings. This study quantifies a range of policies, energy pathways, and sectoral trade-offs when combining mid- and long-term UK renewables and CO2 reduction policies. Stringent renewable policies are the binding constraints through 2020. Furthermore, the interactions between RO, RTFO, and RHP policies drive trade-offs between low carbon electricity, bio-fuels, high efficiency natural gas, and demand reductions as well as resulting 2020 welfare costs. In the longer term, CO2 reduction constraints drive the costs and characteristics of the UK energy system through 2050.

Keywords: Energy; policy; Renewables; CO2; emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00506-9
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:38:y:2010:i:11:p:6724-6735

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:6724-6735