Technology and policy co-evolution: the case of solar power in India 2010-2024

S.Bhowmik, A. Cherp, V.Vinichenko (pre-print). Technology and policy co-evolution: the case of solar power in India. POLET Working Paper series 2024-4

ABSTRACT

India has consistently set ambitious renewable energy targets to meet rising electricity demand and reinforce its commitment to climate action. Achieving these targets relies heavily on the rapid and sustained adoption of solar technology, particularly utility-scale solar, which has historically driven most of the country’s solar growth. However, recent regional stagnation in expansion highlights the challenges of sustaining momentum and scaling adoption. We examine the role policies have played in driving solar technology growth in India. Drawing on literature on technology growth and policy mix, we examine what policies have evolved along the S-curve, both national and sub-nationally. We systematically identify the types of barriers that emerged as solar technology grew, and the policy mix that were used to address these challenges. We find that policy responses have become increasingly diverse, dynamically adapting over time to address new and shifting priorities at different phases of technology growth. These evolving priorities are also addressed with distinct sets of policy instruments. Furthermore, even as solar technology costs have declined, we observe that the number of policies has continued to grow, suggesting that cost reductions alone are insufficient to sustain growth. We also show how solar technology, policies, and politics have co-evolved in the case of utility-scale solar in India. We find that while changes in the policy mix can drive growth, they also reflect the challenge policymakers face in balancing multiple and at times conflicting priorities. Changes in the policy mix that revolves out of the need to navigate these competeing interests can introduce hidden costs that slow technology adoption, despite positive cost developments earlier. This analysis provides an overview of the co-evolution of technology and policy, underscoring the importance of integrating policy and political considerations when projecting technological growth. Our findings highlight that relying solely on cost-based assumptions can prove inadequate. Finally, we offer a perspective from a developing country context, where similar research has been limited,  and where policymakers balance the complex task of meeting rising electricity demand, advancing electricity market liberalization, and renewable energy integration.

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Do policy targets change technology growth trajectories? Understanding the steady growth of onshore wind in Europe

Vetier, M., Pavlenko, A., Jewell, J., Cherp, A. and V. Vinichenko (pre-print). Do policy targets change technology growth trajectories? Understanding the steady growth of onshore wind in Europe. POLET Working Paper series 2024-3

ABSTRACT

Conflicts surrounding the expansion of wind power in Europe are increasing (Diógenes et al. 2020; Lundheim et al. 2022) which has hindered its growth in recent years (Pavlenko and Cherp 2023). However, in the near future, wind power needs to expand much more rapidly to meet the EU's climate and energy security goals (Vinichenko et al. 2023; Pavlenko and Cherp 2023). In fact, meeting the goals for renewable power of the Fit for 55 Package (EC 2021), REPowerEU (EC 2022d) and updated Renewable Energy Directive (EC 2023e) would require faster growth of onshore wind power across the EU compared to what has been observed not only in the EU but even in most individual countries (Vinichenko et al. 2023).

In this paper, we seek to understand whether and how European countries plan to re-accelerate the recently stalling onshore wind power deployment considering the increasing conflicts surrounding this technology. We start with analyzing the current and historical growth patterns and maximum growth rates of onshore wind power in European countries and compare these to a similar analysis completed in 2021 (Cherp et al. 2021). We show that in most European countries (except Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, and Sweden), the growth of wind power is no longer accelerating or is even slowing down.

Subsequently, we look into 17 countries’ recently updated National Energy and Climate Plans to identify their national targets for onshore wind power deployment and analyze whether and how these targets would change the historical growth trajectories. We find that eleven countries have set national targets to accelerate the historical growth of wind power, and five countries aim for growth that is faster than ever observed globally. This demonstrates the challenges for policies to overcome the inertia of socio-technical systems surrounding the deployment of wind power.

To investigate whether and how such challenges were addressed historically, the paper reviews cases of re-acceleration of onshore wind power growth in the past. We identify five notable cases of past re-acceleration (Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, and Spain) and show that these have mostly been due to major changes in the national policy environment. We find that historically stalling was induced by halting or significantly reducing subsidies, regulatory uncertainties, and the enaction of policies unfavorable to wind power growth, and re-acceleration was in most cases linked to the increasing of regulatory certainty, re-establishment or increasing of subsidies, and withdrawal of unfavorable policies. This is unlikely to guide the current situation.

We then investigate policies proposed by the European Commission and find that these aim to address administrative, technical, and financial problems rather than social conflicts over land and other issues. Finally, we provide a detailed analysis of Sweden’s case of attempting but failing to overcome a recurring onshore wind siting deadlock.

We conclude by pointing out that to meet the onshore wind targets, European countries will likely need to implement different policy measures than what they have applied in the past.

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Accelerating technology growth through policy interventions: the case of onshore wind in Germany

L.Nacke, A.Cherp, J.Jewell (pre-print). Accelerating technology growth through policy interventions: the case of onshore wind in Germany. POLET Working Paper Series 24-3

ABSTRACT

Climate change mitigation requires sustained and rapid growth of renewables such as wind and solar PV to decarbonise electricity systems. This is mirrored in recent policy commitments, such as the goal to triple global renewabels deployment, or national targets such as Germany’s ambition to triple the speed of renewables deployment. A natural question following from such targets is: How difficult (or easy) is it to achieve and sustain such rapid renewables growth – what type and strength of policy interventions are required? Through a combined analysis of technology growth models and policy interventions we show that the number and diversity of policy interventions increases with increased deployment of wind power in Germany. We also show that the financial compensation for new wind power has not been declining as fast as costs of wind power technology. This indicates that prolonged growth of mature low-carbon technologies may require increasing rather than decreasing policy effort in spite of technological innovation and cost decline.

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Accelerating energy transitions under security crises

A. Pavlenko, J.Jewell, A. Cherp (pre-print). Accelerating energy transitions under security crises. POLET Working paper series 24-1

ABSTRACT

To mitigate climate change, transition to clean energy should proceed faster than in the last three decades. Can policies overcome economic, technological and social inertia to achieve the required acceleration, and if so, under what conditions? The 2022 REPowerEU plan is an excellent case to investigate these questions because it responds to a profound energy security threat (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) in advanced economies that are already the global leaders in decarbonisation. Here we analyse to which extent REPowerEU and related policies aim to accelerate energy transitions, what has enabled the ambitious targets, and whether these are feasible. Considering policy-technology co-evolution involving multiple feedbacks and non-linear growth, we define policy-driven acceleration as a significant deviation of feasible policy goals from the S-curve of technology diffusion reflecting empirical trends, near-term projections and analogies.

We show that REPowerEU sets unprecedented targets implying acceleration of all renewables and a radical deviation from the onshore wind growth trajectory. At the same time, REPowerEU is not an isolated crisis response, but a continuation of a policy shift that started around 2018 and included the European Green Deal (2019), the ‘Fit for 55’ package (2021), and related plans. Before 2018, policy targets extended historical trends and did not become more ambitious over time. Although motivated by climate concerns, they were only weakly linked to long-term climate goals but strongly shaped by technological uncertainties and economic costs. Energy security was seen as protection from short-term shocks through resilient infrastructure and did not directly shape the goals for renewables. In contrast, post-2018 policies decisively link the net-zero vision for 2050 and the 2030 renewable targets.

In 2022, these climate-derived targets were securitised through directly linking them to energy independence from Russian oil and gas, now viewed as a long-term security concern. Both net-zero and energy independence goals were inspired by the declining costs of renewables and by the emerging technological opportunities of substituting fossil fuels in transport, industry and heating through low-carbon electrification. We analyse whether the new targets are feasible using the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’ view of feasibility by Jewell and Cherp (2023). We argue that the main barriers for onshore wind are conflicting land uses, for offshore wind - uncertainties around the infrastructure and complementary technologies, and for solar power - grid integration. We show that the required growth of each renewable technology is similar to the growth of nuclear in Western Europe in the 1960s-1980s. The similarities between the two contexts, including the presence of an energy security crisis, give hope that the planned growth is feasible. However, the combined growth of solar and wind is entirely unprecedented, although on a smaller scale, a similarly fast growth of nuclear occurred in France and Sweden. Our findings indicate that policy-driven acceleration of energy transitions might be possible but requires a unique constellation of motivations and capacities. Historical analogies provide useful benchmarks for the attainable speed of transition, but more research is needed on the applicability of policy lessons across different low-carbon technologies.

Link to pre-print.

Historical diffusion of nuclear, wind and solar power in different national contexts: implications for climate mitigation pathways

V. Vinichenko, J. Jewell, J. Jacobsson, A. Cherp. (2023). Historical diffusion of nuclear, wind and solar power in different national contexts: implications for climate mitigation pathways. Environmental Research Letters 18, 094066. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf47a

Climate change mitigation requires rapid expansion of low-carbon electricity but there is a disagreement on whether available technologies such as renewables and nuclear power can be scaled up sufficiently fast. Here we analyze the diffusion of nuclear (from the 1960s), as well as wind and solar (from the 1980–90s) power. We show that all these technologies have been adopted in most large economies except major energy exporters, but solar and wind have diffused across countries faster and wider than nuclear. After the initial adoption, the maximum annual growth for nuclear power has been 2.6% of national electricity supply (IQR 1.3%–6%), for wind − 1.1% (0.6%–1.7%), and for solar − 0.8% (0.5%–1.3%). The fastest growth of nuclear power occurred in Western Europe in the 1980s, a response by industrialized democracies to the energy supply crises of the 1970s. The European Union (EU), currently experiencing a similar energy supply shock, is planning to expand wind and solar at similarly fast rates. This illustrates that national contexts can impact the speed of technology diffusion at least as much as technology characteristics like cost, granularity, and complexity. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mitigation pathways, renewables grow much faster than nuclear due to their lower projected costs, though empirical evidence does not show that the cost is the sole factor determining the speed of diffusion. We demonstrate that expanding low-carbon electricity in Asia in line with the 1.5 °C target requires growth of nuclear power even if renewables increase as fast as in the most ambitious EU's plans. 2 °C-consistent pathways in Asia are compatible with replicating China's nuclear power plans in the whole region, while simultaneously expanding renewables as fast as in the near-term projections for the EU. Our analysis demonstrates the usefulness of empirically-benchmarked feasibility spaces for future technology projections.

Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production

L. R. Camargo, G. Castro, K. Gruber, J. Jewell & M. Klingler. (2022). Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production. Nature Communications 13, 3157. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2

Biofuels are currently the only available bulk renewable fuel. They have, however, limited expansion potential due to high land requirements and associated risks for biodiversity, food security, and land conflicts. We therefore propose to increase output from ethanol refineries in a land-neutral methanol pathway: surplus CO2-streams from fermentation are combined with H2 from renewably powered electrolysis to synthesize methanol. We illustrate this pathway with the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry using a spatio-temporal model. The fuel output of existing ethanol generation facilities can be increased by 43%–49% or ~100 TWh without using additional land. This amount is sufficient to cover projected growth in Brazilian biofuel demand in 2030. We identify a trade-off between renewable energy generation technologies: wind power requires the least amount of land whereas a mix of wind and solar costs the least. In the cheapest scenario, green methanol is competitive to fossil methanol at an average carbon price of 95 €/tCO2.

National growth dynamics of wind and solar power compared to the growth required for global climate targets

A. Cherp, V. Vinichenko, J. Tosun, J. Gordon & J. Jewell. (2021). National growth dynamics of wind and solar power compared to the growth required for global climate targets. Nature Energy 6, 742–754. Gated. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00863-0. Free SharedIt link (view only) code on GitHub: https://github.com/poletresearch/RES_article

Climate mitigation scenarios envision considerable growth of wind and solar power, but scholars disagree on how this growth compares with historical trends. Here we fit growth models to wind and solar trajectories to identify countries in which growth has already stabilized after the initial acceleration. National growth has followed S-curves to reach maximum annual rates of 0.8% (interquartile range of 0.6–1.1%) of the total electricity supply for onshore wind and 0.6% (0.4–0.9%) for solar. In comparison, one-half of 1.5 °C-compatible scenarios envision global growth of wind power above 1.3% and of solar power above 1.4%, while one-quarter of these scenarios envision global growth of solar above 3.3% per year. Replicating or exceeding the fastest national growth globally may be challenging because, so far, countries that introduced wind and solar power later have not achieved higher maximum growth rates, despite their generally speedier progression through the technology adoption cycle.

Covid-19 and the politics of sustainable energy transitions

C. Kuzemko, M. Bradshaw, G. Bridge, A. Goldthau, J. Jewell, I. Overland, D. Scholten, T. van de Graaf & K. Westphal. (2020). Covid-19 and the politics of sustainable energy transitions. Energy Research & Social Science, 68, 101685. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101685. Preprint.

In this perspectives piece, an interdisciplinary team of social science researchers considers the implications of Covid-19 for the politics of sustainable energy transitions. The emergency measures adopted by states, firms, and individuals in response to this global health crisis have driven a series of political, economic and social changes with potential to influence sustainable energy transitions. We identify some of the initial impacts of the ‘great lockdown’ on sustainable and fossil sources of energy, and consider how economic stimulus packages and social practices in the wake of the pandemic are likely to shape energy demand, the carbon-intensity of the energy system, and the speed of transitions. Adopting a broad multi-scalar and multi-actor approach to the analysis of energy system change, we highlight continuities and discontinuities with pre-pandemic trends. Discussion focuses on four key themes that shape the politics of sustainable energy transitions: (i) the short, medium and longterm temporalities of energy system change; (ii) practices of investment around clean-tech and divestment from fossil fuels; (iii) structures and scales of energy governance; and (iv) social practices around mobility, work and public health. While the effects of the pandemic continue to unfold, some of its sectoral and geographically differentiated impacts are already emerging. We conclude that the politics of sustainable energy transitions are now at a critical juncture, in which the form and direction of state support for post-pandemic economic recovery will be key.

Solar has greater techno-economic resource suitability than wind for replacing coal mining jobs

S. Pai, H. Zerriffi, J. Jewell & J. Pathak. (2020). Solar has greater techno-economic resource suitability than wind for replacing coal mining jobs. Environmental Research Letters. 15 (3), 034065. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6c6d.

Coal mining directly employs over 7 million workers and benefits millions more through indirect jobs. However, to meet the 1.5 °C global climate target, coal's share in global energy supply should decline between 73% and 97% by 2050. But what will happen to coal miners as coal jobs disappear ?Answering this question is necessary to ensure a just transition and to ensure that politically powerful coal mining interests do not impede energy transitions. Some suggest that coal miners can transition to renewable jobs. However, prior research has not investigated the potential for renewable jobs to replace 'local' coal mining jobs. Historic analyses of coal industry declines show that coal miners do not migrate when they lose their jobs. By focusing on China, India, the US, and Australia, which represent 70% of global coal production, we investigate: (1) the local solar and wind capacity required in each coal mining area to enable all coal miners to transition to solar/wind jobs; (2) whether there are suitable solar and wind power resources in coal mining areas in order to install solar/wind plants and create those jobs; and (3) the scale of renewables deployment required to transition coal miners in areas suitable for solar/wind power. We find that with the exception of the US, several GWs of solar or wind capacity would be required in each coal mining area to transition all coal miners to solar/wind jobs. Moreover, while solar has more resource suitability than wind in coal mining areas, these resources are not available everywhere. In China, the country with the largest coal mining workforce, only 29% of coal mining areas are suitable for solar power. In all four countries, less than 7% of coal mining areas have suitable wind resources. Further, countries would have to scale-up their current solar capacity significantly to transition coal miners who work in areas suitable for solar development.

Comparing electricity transitions: a historical analysis of nuclear, wind and solar power in Germany and Japan

Cherp, A., Vinichenko, V., Jewell, J., Suzuki, M. & Antal, M. (2017). Comparing electricity transitions: a historical analysis of nuclear, wind and solar power in Germany and Japan. Energy Policy, 101, 612-628. Open Access. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.10.044.

This paper contributes to understanding national variations in using low-carbon electricity sources by comparing the evolution of nuclear, wind and solar power in Germany and Japan. It develops and applies a framework for analyzing low-carbon electricity transitions based on interplay of techno-economic, political and socio-technical processes. We explain why in the 1970s–1980s, the energy paths of the two countries were remarkably similar, but since the 1990s Germany has become a leader in renewables while phasing out nuclear energy, whereas Japan has deployed less renewables while becoming a leader in nuclear power. We link these differences to the faster growth of electricity demand and energy insecurity in Japan, the easier diffusion of onshore wind power technology and the weakening of the nuclear power regime induced by stagnation and competition from coal and renewables in Germany. We show how these changes involve the interplay of five distinct mechanisms which may also play a role in other energy transitions.