Blowing in the wind

Over the course of the next decade the way in which Europe’s demand for electricity is met will change fundamentally. Driven by a political will to meet ambitious targets for reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and supported by generous subsidy schemes, electricity generation from renewable sources is expected to grow explosively between now and 2020. For example, commentators expect growth in the volume of renewables electricity generation capacity to be over 150% over the next decade and constitute 75% of all new generating capacity constructed over the period.
 
The vast proportion of this new renewables generation, some 90 GW, is likely to be wind generation which relative to today’s thermal generation has output which is intermittent and unpredictable. Frontier Economics and Consentec have been commissioned by Energibedriftenes Landsforening (EBL) (now Energy Norway) to examine the implications of an increase in the prevalence of intermittent and unpredictable generation for Europe’s electricity system and how it might be managed in an efficient manner. This report presents the findings.