Carnegie Institution
for Science
Using software tools
developed by Near Zero, a research group hosted by the Carnegie Institution for
Science's Department of Global Ecology, a team of researchers has completed the
largest expert survey yet on any energy technology, in this case wind energy.
Near Zero conducts
research and assessment of energy and climate issues, focusing on integrating
quantitative analysis with expert judgment.
In this way, they inform
decision-making to accelerate the global transition to a near-zero emission
energy system. To support this work, Near Zero has developed open-source
software tools to examine where experts agree and disagree and why.
Using Near Zero's
online expert survey platform, researchers were able to gather responses from
163 of the world's foremost experts on wind energy to forecast future costs for
this energy source.
The study, led by Ryan Wiser, Group Leader in the
Electricity Markets and Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
is published in the September 12, 2016, advanced on-line publication of Nature
Energy.
On average, the participants expected wind power costs to continue falling for the next several decades, for three major classes of wind turbines, both onshore and offshore, with prices falling by 24-30% by 2030, and 35-41% by 2050.
"The cost of wind
power is a crucial issue, since aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions
will likely involve scaling up wind power further," remarked Near Zero's
leader Mike Mastrandrea.
To gauge how much wind
power production might scale up, researchers often use energy system models,
such as the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook model, or the
integrated assessment models used for generating scenarios assessed by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The models' assumptions about future costs of
wind energy have an important influence on modeling results for the future
potential for wind energy, Wiser and colleagues argue.
Future costs of wind
energy are often forecasted by looking at how past costs have fallen, following
a "learning curve," and then extrapolating that curve into the
future. Another method for estimating future costs is through bottom-up
engineering assessments, looking at the costs of various parts of wind
turbines.
Surveys of experts --
known as expert elicitations -- are an additional method for forecasting the
future, which allows for more scope for experts to draw on technical knowledge
as well as their informed opinion about future developments.
The new elicitation
using Near Zero's platform asked experts to estimate future wind power costs
under a range of scenarios -- including a median scenario as well as "high
cost" and "low cost" cases.
This allowed the study to assign probabilities
to the range of possible scenarios.
"The elicitation
results will enable energy-system and integrated-assessment models to better
explore these options," the paper argued.
