This part of the project analyses energy security, including power reliability (outages) and avoided capacity costs (reduced peak power demand). Power quality events (e.g. voltage dips and swells or harmonic distortions) are treated marginally and in the framework of power reliability, as the link with energy security turns out to be fairly minimal.
A literature review reveals that energy security is a rather elusive concept, which is not only problematic to define, but also to measure. Moreover, literature on energy security policies and related costs/benefits is poor. In that perspective, an important first step is to agree on an “operational definition” of energy security.
The assessment is based on an energy systems approach, where scenario results of existing energy systems models are combined with a carefully selected set of energy security indicators, taking into account the operational definition of energy security. Selection criteria are amongst others the extent to which indicators directly quantify (and if possible monetize) the impacts of a threat on the energy system, the transparency of the indicators, the amount of expert judgment required, and data availability.
Modelling
The dedicated COMBI energy balance model has been developed and applied to estimate the energy system and security indicators.The energy systems of the 28 EU member states are assessed by the construction of detailed energy balances for each individual country. The energy balances are a thoroughly reworked version of the balances published by EUROSTAT, to better fit the needs of COMBI.
Results
- Energy intensity is reduced by up to 22 kgoe/1000€ GDP
- The COMBI HHI index measuring energy security through import dependency, diversification of energy sources and geographical diversification improves by up to 5%
- Avoided generation of power from combustibles-based power plants amounts to 257 TWh in the EU and avoided investments to these power plants to around 10bn €.
- De-rated reserve capacity rate (defined as the reserve capacity of the power sector, divided by its total installed capacity, multiplied by 100) improves in almost all EU countries.
Available resources from this Work Package
Quantification and monetization of selected energy system and security impacts (D7.4)
