Author: Samuel Carrara

Green energy is gold for California, US – SF Chronicle

Green energy is gold for California, US – SF Chronicle

I am a physicist, and an energy and sustainability science researcher, and I live in California because of its penchant for not just setting but actually achieving big goals and adopting bold visions others may consider too ambitious. What California proposes, we research, debate and then accomplish. In fact, we often exceed the goals skeptics have deemed unmeetable. This is why I believe that California should — and ultimately will — pass into law the “100 Percent Clean Energy Act”…

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CCS scenarios

CCS scenarios

About one month ago, in this post I introduced the new activity that I started before the summer break, aimed at investigating the implications of a delayed deployment of CCS technologies on the energy sector and the whole economy. In these days I am enjoying my summer break in the Lombardy  mountains… but the “work virus” is always present in me! So I thought that it could be useful to exploit at least part of my spare time running some scenarios….

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Is reliable energy storage on the horizon? – FORBES

Is reliable energy storage on the horizon? – FORBES

Green and renewable energy markets are bringing power to millions with virtually no adverse environmental impacts, but before we can count on renewables for widespread reliability, one critical innovation must arrive: storage. Source: Is reliable energy storage on the horizon? In my previous posts I talked several times about storage, grid, system integration of variable renewable energies, and so on. However, I never shared non-technical articles where these issues are discussed in an accessible way for non-experts: I decided to…

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Renewables finally completed!

Renewables finally completed!

I guess the title does not need any major explanations! As I discussed in the previous posts (in particular, here and here), the implementation of the new modules regarding the system integration of renewables, storage, and grid in the master version of the WITCH model showed some issues, which took a lot of time to be solved. Also thanks to the great help from my colleagues Laurent and Johannes, the main issues have finally been solved and the new modeling…

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World Energy Investment 2018: Key Findings – IEA

World Energy Investment 2018: Key Findings – IEA

2017 was the third consecutive year of decline in global energy investment Source: World Energy Investment 2018: Key Findings The International Energy Agency (IEA) regularly releases very interesting reports on the global energy landscape. A new document was produced in the past days, this time focusing on energy investment. News is not good, actually. The following statement by Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director, clearly summarizes the main outcome of the report: “The decline in global investment for renewables and energy…

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CCS futures

CCS futures

After sharing with my colleagues the first version of the paper about  learning in solar PV (see the last post), in the past days I started working on another front of Work Package 2. I remind that this WP regards the prospects of low-carbon technologies, focusing not so much on pure technical aspects, but on general policy issues impacting on the diffusion of such technologies. The solar PV learning activity covers the investigation on renewables. Naturally renewables are not only…

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Solar PV learning in Integrated Assessment Models – first paper draft

Solar PV learning in Integrated Assessment Models – first paper draft

In the last post on this topic, which dates back to March 31, I discussed the end of the modeling work and my ambition to draft the first version of the paper within Spring. Indeed, due to the issues that I had with the renewables (which by the way are still pending… but completion is hopefully not far), I managed to complete this task only in the past days. Thus I am a bit behind schedule, but what counts is…

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The gas industry’s future looks bright over next five years – IEA

The gas industry’s future looks bright over next five years – IEA

Latest five-year market forecast highlights deep transformations in natural gas markets Source: The gas industry’s future looks bright over next five years, according to IEA analysis Natural gas is notoriously the least CO2-emitting fuel among fossil fuels. For this reason, in the medium run it will likely drive the transition phase of the decarbonization of the energy system. It is more difficult to make a forecast for the long run, instead: models in fact show conflicting results because if it…

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IEW – Gothenburg

IEW – Gothenburg

This week I participated in the 37th International Energy Workshop (IEW), organized by the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. As I specified in the post dedicated to the 2017 edition, the IEW is focused on energy and it is essentially the most relevant conference for my work over the year. Last year I gave a presentation on the solar PV learning activity, while this year I wanted to present my work on system integration, storage, and grid. Indeed…

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EMEE – Milan

EMEE – Milan

In the past two days, FEEM hosted the 11th International Workshop on Empirical Methods in Energy Economics (EMEE). Although empirical methods are not tools that I normally use in my research, I thought that it could be a good occasion to attend interesting presentations, considering that this workshop has a sound international reputation. Presentations were indeed interesting and insightful. Of course I could not fully get the details of the methodologies, but the key messages and conclusions were clear also…

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