Wolfram Jörß - Böcker

In the coming 20 years, decentralised generation (DG) is expected to play an in- creasingly important role in the European electricity infrastructure and market. DG can be defined as small-scale generation connected to the distribution network or on the customer side of the meter. The application of DG is often highly loca- tion specific and depends on such diverse issues as the possibilities of technical implementation, resource availability, environmental aspects, social embedding of the project, regulation and market conditions. These factors vary considerably among technologies and among the ED Member States. The DECENT study (Decentralised Generation Technologies -Potentials, Suc- cess Factors and Impacts in the Liberalised ED Energy Markets (Joerss et al. 2002" was designed and carried out to identify the main barriers and success fac- tors to the implementation of DG projects within the ED and to formulate a num- ber of related recommendations to ED and Member State policy makers to en- hance the feasibility of DG projects within the internal energy market.

Foresight is a vital prerequisite in order to bring our current energy system onto the path of sustainable development. Which technologies may be available in 25 years from now? Which technologies will be needed in the future? The European Energy Delphi project – EurEnDel aimed at bri- ing orienting knowledge to these two questions. Trying to show a glimpse of European Energy Futures in the year 2030. This book contains the main results of the EurEnDel project. It includes the findings of the European Energy Delphi survey and the resulting recommendations for R&D policy. In comparison to other industry sectors, energy has two very remarkable features: For one, transformations are very slow. Life-times of power plants are 30 years and longer. Thus the decisions we take today will still have impacts 30 to 50 years from now – which makes sound foresight so important. On the other hand, the energy system is strongly dependent on national political decisions. Priority setting may change quite drastically with new parties coming to power, at least for individual country. This is one of the reasons, why predictions in the energy field can be extremely difficult. Combining these two characteristics it becomes evident why foresight in the energy field must not be restricted to an analysis of what the future could be like, but must always assess what the future should be like. This book tries to weave together these two traces which were inh- ent in the EurEnDel project.

In the coming 20 years, decentralised generation (DG) is expected to play an in- creasingly important role in the European electricity infrastructure and market. DG can be defined as small-scale generation connected to the distribution network or on the customer side of the meter. The application of DG is often highly loca- tion specific and depends on such diverse issues as the possibilities of technical implementation, resource availability, environmental aspects, social embedding of the project, regulation and market conditions. These factors vary considerably among technologies and among the ED Member States. The DECENT study (Decentralised Generation Technologies -Potentials, Suc- cess Factors and Impacts in the Liberalised ED Energy Markets (Joerss et al. 2002" was designed and carried out to identify the main barriers and success fac- tors to the implementation of DG projects within the ED and to formulate a num- ber of related recommendations to ED and Member State policy makers to en- hance the feasibility of DG projects within the internal energy market.