Sunday, November 05, 2023

Two million European households could abandon the electrical grid by 2050

CELL PRESS

Evaluation of self-sufficiency potential for 41 million European homes — IMAGE:
EVALUATION OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY POTENTIAL FOR 41 MILLION EUROPEAN HOMES
view more
CREDIT: JOULE/KLEINEBRAHM ET AL.

Researchers report that 53% of European freestanding homes could have supplied all their own energy needs in 2020 using only local rooftop solar radiation, and this technical feasibility could increase to 75% in 2050. Publishing November 2 in the journal Joule, the study shows that there is no economic advantage for individual households to be fully self-sufficient under current or future conditions, though in some cases the costs are on par with remaining on-grid. The researchers estimate that self-sufficiency will be economically feasible for 5% (two million) of Europe’s 41 million freestanding single-family homes in 2050, if households are willing to pay up to 50% more than the cost of remaining fully grid dependent.

“Our results show that even in 2050 going off-grid won’t be the most economic choice, but it could make sense to invest in these kinds of self-sufficient buildings if you are willing to pay more for self-sufficiency,” says lead author Max Kleinebrahm, an energy economics researcher at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Grid energy costs are rising while renewable energy technology is becoming more affordable. In pursuit of self-sufficiency, more and more households are showing interest in producing their own renewable energy supplies. Kleinebrahm’s team wanted to know how feasible it would be for individual residential buildings in different parts of Europe to become fully self-sufficient, and whether doing so would come with any financial benefits. Though the potential of converting Europe to 100% renewable energy has been considered at the continental, national, and regional scale, this study is the first analysis at the level of individual buildings.

To identify regions and building types that are more amenable to self-sufficiency, the researchers compiled a database of homes across Europe and identified 4,000 homes that were representative of different regions in terms of architecture, household electricity demand, climate conditions, and the local economic framework. Then, the researchers designed optimal energy systems for each representative home that would fully cover electrical and thermal energy needs while minimizing costs. These systems included measures such as rooftop solar panels, small wind turbines, different types of storage systems, heat pump installation, and retrofitting and insulation measures.

Next, the researchers scaled their results up to estimate the technical and economic feasibility of energy self-sufficiency for Europe’s 41 million freestanding single-family homes. Overall, they estimated that 53% of homes could have technically achieved energy self-sufficiency in 2020, and that this proportion could increase to 75% by 2050 with expected improvements in renewable energy and storage technologies. However, becoming fully self-sufficient was more expensive than remaining fully dependent on the grid, both in 2020 and 2050.

Homes in sunny European countries such as Cyprus, Malta, and Italy have more economic potential for self-sufficiency, while northern European countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden (where there is a large mismatch between high winter energy needs and solar radiation) have the lowest potential. Regions with larger rooftops, such as Denmark, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and France, also have greater potential for self-sufficiency. The researchers also noted that there is greater potential for self-sufficient buildings in countries with high on-grid electricity costs, such as Germany, since there is less financial incentive to remain on-grid.

Though becoming fully self-sufficient may not be economically advantageous, the researchers demonstrated that partial self-sufficiency—where a building remains connected to the electricity grid but also invests in a photovoltaic system, heat pump, and insulation—could lower household energy costs. The optimal degree of self-sufficiency varied for different buildings and regions, but for one representative building in Germany, the researchers estimated that it would have been cost-optimal to be 73% self-sufficient in 2020 and 78% self-sufficient in 2050.

The researchers note that high carrier costs make leaving the grid more appealing and say that policymakers and utility companies should encourage even fully self-sufficient households to remain connected to the grid. “At a macroeconomic scale it would be less efficient to have a large number of households abandoning the grid rather than supporting it,” says Kleinebrahm.

Since the costs of supporting the grid are shared amongst users, there is also the potential for grid costs to climb further as households choose to leave the grid. “From the social perspective, you have to consider the possibility that very rich households could go off grid, in which case the rest of the grid operation would have to be paid for by economically weaker households,” says Kleinebrahm.

This study is unable to answer questions about how the expanding number of self-sufficient homes would impact electricity demand and electricity markets, but the researchers plan to address those topics in future.

###

This research was supported by the Helmholtz Association.

Joule, Kleinebrahm et al., “Two million European single-family homes could abandon the grid by 2050” https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00402-6

Joule (@Joule_CP), published monthly by Cell Press, is a new home for outstanding and insightful research, analysis, and ideas addressing the need for more sustainable energy. A sister journal to Cell, Joule spans all scales of energy research, from fundamental laboratory research into energy conversion and storage to impactful analysis at the global level. Visit http://www.cell.com/joule. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

JOURNAL

Joule

DOI

10.1016/j.joule.2023.09.012

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Two million European single-family homes could abandon the grid by 2050

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

2-Nov-2023

Jawless ‘bite’ from the past: Jurassic fossils shed light on lamprey evolution

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES HEADQUARTERS

Reconstruction of the Jurassic (ca. 160 million years ago) lampreys Yanliaomyzon from the Yanliao Biota, northern China — IMAGE:
RECONSTRUCTION OF THE JURASSIC (CA. 160 MILLION YEARS AGO) LAMPREYS *YANLIAOMYZON* FROM THE YANLIAO BIOTA, NORTHERN CHINA
view more
CREDIT: NICE VISTUDIO

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators have reported two extremely rare fossil lampreys from the Jurassic of northern China and revised our understanding of lamprey evolution.

The study was published in Nature Communications on Oct. 31.

The precious specimens were discovered in the famed Lagerstätte Yanliao Biota from rocks dating back 158–163 million years. One of them, Yanliaomyzon occisor or "Yanliao sucker killer," is 642 mm long (about 25 inches) and is the largest fossil lamprey ever found.

Both fossils superbly preserve the lampreys' keratinous teeth. After carefully examining the fossils, the scientists reinterpreted lamprey evolution, particularly their feeding apparatus, life cycle, and historic biogeography.

The Jurassic fossils' feeding apparatus strikingly resembles that of the living pouched lamprey Geotria australis, a flesh-feeding species. "Our study resolved these Jurassic lampreys as the closest fossil relatives to extant lampreys," said WU Feixiang, lead author of the study.

"Contrary to conventional wisdom that modern lampreys' ancestors fed on blood, our study showed that these two Jurassic lampreys must be flesh eaters, which foreshadows the flesh-eating habit of the most recent common ancestor of modern lampreys," added WU.

The study also recognized the Jurassic as a watershed in lamprey evolutionary history.

During the earlier Paleozoic era, lampreys may not have been predacious like their living relatives. This is based on consideration of Paleozoic lampreys' dwarfed body size and weak, simply assembled teeth. Furthermore, most other contemporaneous ancient fishes were heavily armored—with hard scales and body covers that prevented these tiny lampreys from biting through. However, as the abundant emergence of the 'advanced' teleost fishes with thinned scales since the Early Jurassic—changes that increased food availability—lampreys also changed.

"The abundant emergence of advanced teleost fishes with thinned scales by the Early Jurassic might have provided an important evolutionary opportunity for lampreys," said WU. "With the enhanced feeding structures, Jurassic lampreys onward were able to grow sufficiently large to meet the energy requirement of the evolution of a 'prolonged' life cycle interposed by the metamorphosis stage and involved in dramatic environmental shifts."

A time-calibrated family tree is the basis of an evolutionary history narrative. Inference of the time tree for lamprey evolution was performed in a Bayesian total-evidence dating framework. "Compared with the parsimony method, Bayesian inference is able to integrate various sources of information in a probabilistic setting while accounting for the uncertainties of the parameters, thus avoiding ad-hoc determinations and partial use of the data," said ZHANG Chi, another corresponding author of the study.

This method also makes possible the inference of ancestral geographical areas for lampreys. The history of the anti-tropical distribution pattern of lampreys has baffled biogeographers due to the extremely thin fossil record of the group. With the calibrations of the Jurassic lampreys, the lineage of the pouched lamprey in the Southern Hemisphere was resolved as the earliest diverged lineage among living lampreys. Thus, the study estimates that modern lampreys originated in the Southern Hemisphere during the Late Cretaceous. This contradicts the conventional wisdom that lampreys originated in the Northern Hemisphere, where most extant lamprey species live.

"This discovery clearly indicates that the extant southern lampreys retain a feeding morphology that already arose in the Jurassic, and that modern lamprey phylogeny is now consistent with a Southern Hemisphere origin, combined with an adaptation to a carnivorous diet," said Prof. Philippe JANVIER of France's National Museum of Natural History, a co-author of the study.

Although large gaps in the long evolutionary history of lampreys still exist, the discovery of Jurassic lamprey fossils is expected to promote more research in the future.