Direct or indirect electrification? A review of heat generation and road transport decarbonisation scenarios for Germany 2050
By Oliver Ruhnau, Sergej Bannik, S. Otten, Aaron Praktiknjo, Martin Robinius. Energy, 2019
138 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Energy scenarios provide guidance to energy policy, not least by presenting decarbonisation pathways for climate change mitigation. We review such scenarios for the example of Germany 2050, with a focus on the decarbonisation of heat generation and road transport. In this context, we characterize the role of renewable electricity and contrast two rivalling narratives: direct and indirect electrification. On the one hand, electricity directly provides heat and transport, using electric heat pumps, electric heaters, and battery electric vehicles. On the other hand, electricity, heat, and transport are indirectly linked, using gas heat pumps, gas heaters, fuel cell electric vehicles, and internal combustion engine vehicles, in combination with power-to-gas and power-to-liquid processes. To reach climate policy targets, our findings imply that energy stakeholders must (1) plan for the significant additional demand for renewable electricity for heat and road transport, (2) pave the way for system-friendly direct heat electrification, (3) be aware of technological uncertainties in the transport sector, (4) clarify the vision for decarbonisation, particularly for road transport, and (5) use holistic and more comparable scenario frameworks.
Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Energy Engineering and Power Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0ca800ca7fad2f1b52634913c87dd28954ea793
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Citations in the corpus
- A state-of-the-art techno-economic review of distributed and embedded energy storage for energy systems (2019, background): “In [102], both heat generation and road transport decarbonisation for Germany in 2050 is reviewed.”
- The CO2 reduction potential for the European industry via direct electrification of heat supply (power-to-heat) (2020, background): “Indirect electrification via synthetic electricity-based fuels (efuels) suffers from low electricity-to-fuel conversion efficiencies, and the requirements of sourcing carbon for the synthesis of hydrocarbons [3, 12].”
- Storage requirements in a 100% renewable electricity system: extreme events and inter-annual variability (2022, background): “The decarbonization of other energy sectors may require additional electricity for electric heat pumps, electric vehicles, and the production of synthetic fuels (Ruhnau et al 2019).”