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The U.S. Coal Sector between Shale Gas and Renewables: Last Resort Coal Exports?

Coal consumption and production have sharply declined in recent years in the U.S., despite political support. Reasons are mostly unfavorable economic conditions for coal, including competition from natural gas and renewables in the power sector, as well as an aging coal-fired power plant fleet. Nevertheless, coal remains a major energy source in the North American energy markets. Supplementing EMF34 ...

Energy Outlooks Compared: Global and Regional Insights

We compare prominent global energy scenarios of organizations and companies. We supplement the analysis with four own scenarios, which were derived from structured analytic techniques in combination with a numerical global energy and resource market model (Multimod). Our paper provides three central contributions: (i) a compact survey of selected outlooks with meta characteristics (conceptual nature, ...

Energy Transition Pathways to a Low-carbon Europe in 2050: the Degree of Cooperation and the Level of Decentralization

In the framework of the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) will have to firmly set decarbonization targets to 2050. However, the viability on these targets is an ongoing discussion. The European Commission has made several propositions for energy and climate “roadmaps”. In this regard, this paper contributes by analyzing alternative pathways derived in a unique modelling process. As part of the ...

Between Stranded Assets and Green Transformation: Fossil-Fuel-Producing Developing Countries Towards 2055

Climate-related asset stranding refers to the depreciation of assets – such as resource reserves, infrastructure, or industries – resulting from the unanticipated changes, such as the tightening of climate policies. Although developing countries – especially fossil-fuel exporters – may be most concerned by this issue, its analysis in development (economics) has so far been limited.We aim at enhancing ...

The Challenges of Spatial and Temporal Aggregation: Modelling Issues, Applications, and Policy Implications: Editorial

The Death Spiral of Coal in the U.S. Will Changes in U.S. Policy Turn the Tide?

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to stop the ongoing spiralling down of the U.S. coal industry. We discuss the origins of the decline and assess the effects of policy interventions by the Trump administration. We find that, with fierce competition from natural gas and renewables, a further decrease of coal consumption must be expected by the old and inefficient U.S. coal-fired ...

Anticipating Global Energy, Climate and Policy in 2055: Constructing Qualitative and Quantitative Narratives

This study presents a set of novel and multidisciplinary scenarios (‘narratives’) that provide insight into four distinct and diverging yet plausible worlds. They combine qualitative and quantitative elements in order to reflect the interlinked and complex nature of energy and climate. We use the STEMPLE+ framework to include social, technological, economic, military (security), political, environmental, ...

Shaking Dutch Grounds Won't Shatter the European Gas Market

The Netherlands have been a pivotal supplier in Western European natural gas markets in the last decades. Recent analyses show that the Netherlands would play an important role in replacing Russian supplies in Germany and France in case of a Russian export disruption. Lately, however, the Netherlands have suffered from a series of earthquakes that are related to the natural gas production in the major ...

The Role of Natural Gas in a Low-Carbon Europe: Infrastructure and Supply Security

In this paper, we analyse infrastructure needs of the European natural gas market in response to decarbonisation of the European energy system. To this end, we use numerical modelling and apply the Global Gas Model. We investigate three pathways of future natural gas consumption: i) a decreasing natural gas consumption, following the scenarios of the EU Energy Roadmap 2050; ii) a moderate increase ...

Lifting the US Crude Oil Export Ban: A Numerical Partial Equilibrium Analysis

The upheaval in global crude oil markets and the boom in shale oil production in North America brought scrutiny on the US export ban for crude oil from 1975. The ban was eventually lifted in early 2016. This paper examines the shifts of global trade flows and strategic refinery investments in a spatial, game-theoretic partial equilibrium model. We consider detailed oil supply chain infrastructure with ...