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Impact of myopic decision-making and disruptive events in power systems planning

Abstract

The delayed deployment of low-carbon energy technologies is impeding energy system decarbonization. The continuing debate about the cost-competitiveness of low-carbon technologies has led to a strategy of waiting for a ‘unicorn technology’ to appear. Here, we show that myopic strategies that rely on the eventual manifestation of a unicorn technology result in either an oversized and underutilized power system when decarbonization objectives are achieved, or one that is far from being decarbonized, even if the unicorn technology becomes available. Under perfect foresight, disruptive technology innovation can reduce total system cost by 13%. However, a strategy of waiting for a unicorn technology that never appears could result in 61% higher cumulative total system cost by mid-century compared to deploying currently available low-carbon technologies early on.

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Fig. 1: Different model foresight options.
Fig. 2: Optimal capacity mix and system-wide carbon intensity from 2015 to 2050 under different scenarios.
Fig. 3: Annual average utilization factor for power generation technologies under perfect foresight and myopic planning from 2015 to 2050.
Fig. 4: Cumulative total system cost under different scenarios.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEAGHG) and MESMERISE-CCS by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/M001369/1 for funding this work.

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Contributions

N.M.D. conceived and led this study. C.F.H. developed the model formulation and implementation, and carried out the analyses. C.F.H. wrote the paper, N.M.D., I.S. and N.S. contributed to the text and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Niall Mac Dowell.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–3, Supplementary Tables 1–2, Supplementary Notes 1–7, Supplementary Discussion, Supplementary References

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Heuberger, C.F., Staffell, I., Shah, N. et al. Impact of myopic decision-making and disruptive events in power systems planning. Nat Energy 3, 634–640 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0159-3

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