Suchergebnisse

This report provides an assessment of the impacts of the current policy and regulatory framework upon efficient energy usage, management of increased energy surpluses, storage and exchanges in and between buildings in Norway. There is currently a reinforced focus and priority towards energy efficiency in buildings. Yet, there are no explicit policy measures in place which directly aim at stimulating more energy storage and exchange. An important economic barrier is related to the ownership and management of energy infrastructure, both for district heating and electricity. The regulation of third-party access and deliveries to district heating, which is now in its beginning given recent amendments in the legislation, as well as the forthcoming regulation for plus customers (or 'prosumers') of electricity, can be seen as first steps in this regard. What kind of costs and/or benefits this will imply for producers and consumers are not fully clarified. Still, innovative pilot projects hosted by municipalities, as well as the building industry's approach to low-energy building concepts, may jointly add force to the impulse stemming from the EU legislation, towards a more 'interactive' Norwegian policy framework. ; publishedVersion

Nearly 100 percent of electricity used in Norway stems from hydropower, but no further large-scale production is politically viable. There is however increased interest in hydropower as both a supplement to the national energy supply and as provider of balance within the European energy system. Interest focuses on: (1) increased pumping and storage; (2) upgrading of existing hydropower installations; and (3) small-scale hydro production. Such measures are also considered as climate-change mitigation. As a fourth developmental path there are also alternative processes aiming at reinforcing environmental concerns in existing hydropower, not least by revising granted licenses. These processes coincide with a reinforced focus on biodiversity. This dual environmental challenge is also enhanced by Norway's follow-up of the EU Directive on renewable energy (RES) and the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). In this context, we here assess current political and regulatory practice in Norway, focusing on the status of environmental concerns, and the challenges Norwegian hydropower policy faces by the implementation of the EU Directives. The policy challenge is manifest as 'trade-offs' among hydropower priorities at both the strategic and project-specific levels; and is further enhanced by lack of clarity as to the ultimate impact of the relevant EU Directives. ; publishedVersion

The LinkS project was designed to analyse how global long-term strategies can be used as guidelines for the development of energy supply and technology deployment in regional energy systems. In order to produce recommendations for policy development and regional energy investment strategies, both quantitative and qualitative research were applied. Until an international climate change mitigation agreement with binding targets is established, the states and regions that implement mitigation strategies on their own initiative represent key actors for significant emissions reductions. This report therefore introduces a novel scenario "Global-20-20-20", where a hypothetical protocol based on the EU 20-20-20 policies is extended in time and space to a global scenario where an increasing number of the world's regions gradually adopt the EU approach. This hypothetical protocol illustrates the aggregated potential of "globalizing" individual regional climate policy efforts, and is a major reference for much of the work presented in this report. Furthermore, in-depth studies of the European and Chinese regions under several global policy scenarios are presented. An Executive Summary is published as a separate Technical Report A7373. ; publishedVersion