Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

By T. W. Brown, Tobias Bischof-Niemz, K. Blok, Christian Breyer, Henrik Lund, Brian Vad Mathiesen. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2017

437 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A recent article ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’ claims that many studies of 100% renewable electricity systems do not demonstrate sufficient technical feasibility, according to the criteria of the article's authors (henceforth ‘the authors’). Here we analyse the authors’ methodology and find it problematic. The feasibility criteria chosen by the authors are important, but are also easily addressed at low economic cost, while not affecting the main conclusions of the reviewed studies and certainly not affecting their technical feasibility. A more thorough review reveals that all of the issues have already been addressed in the engineering and modelling literature. Nuclear power, which the authors have evaluated positively elsewhere, faces other, genuine feasibility problems, such as the finiteness of uranium resources and a reliance on unproven technologies in the medium- to long-term. Energy systems based on renewables, on the other hand, are not only feasible, but already economically viable and decreasing in cost every year.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Energy Engineering and Power Technology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fe4c5ec13c7768533959f4e96a78b064be346913

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Energy Engineering and Power Technology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Flexible electricity generation, grid exchange and storage for the transition to a 100% renewable energy system in Europe (2019, background): “For these reasons, 100% RE systems have been proposed as feasible and economically viable solutions on a global level [25], and there appears to be a growing body of scientific literature to support this [26].”
European electricity sector decarbonization under different levels of foresight (2019, result): “electricity sector, which is in line with many scientific studies in the literature (compare [47]).”
Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050 (2020, background): “Current deployment rates of low-carbon energy sources are compatible with the required shift but when scaled up are expected to encounter considerable resistance due to the rigidities inherent in political and economic decision making (7, 8), as well as new technological demands (9, 10).”
On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research (2022, methodology): “[233] who in 2018 provided the first broad overview of 100% RE research and highlighted the technical feasibility in detail, complemented by the response by Diesendorf and Elliston [234].”
Cost optimal scenarios of a future highly renewable European electricity system: Exploring the influence of weather data, cost parameters and policy constraints (2018, result): “Similar results have been seen in the literature when increasing the sampling resolution higher than one hour, for example to 5 minute intervals: only minor changes to system costs are seen [33], but flexibility may be undervalued [34, 35]; a more general discussion of time resolution in energy syst”