The Current and Future Role of Renewable Energy Sources for the Production of Electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean (original) (raw)
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Journal on Innovation and Sustainability. RISUS ISSN 2179-3565
A renewable energy matrix plays a fundamental role in providing energy services ina sustainable platform and, particularly, to reduce climate change on a global basis. However,alternative energy sources usually poses extra challenges to adopters due to higher costs, mainlyin the developing and emerging countries where: 1) basic needs still remain to be covered, and 2)top technologies, such as the required in those initiatives, are likely not to be promptly available.This article aims to verify the status of the current renewable energy sources contribution tothe regular energy systems of some countries across the Latin American region as a measureto reduce the adverse impact over the average temperature and extreme climate events. LatinAmerica, despite its vast territory and considerable availability of natural resources – which couldwell place the region in a leading position in terms of alternative energy – is still in the earlystages of having the mindset and infrastructure requi...
Global renewable energy resources and use in 2050
Managing Global Warming: An Interface of Technology and Human Issues. Trevor Letcher (ed), 2019
The main forms of renewable energy (RE) used today are biomass energy, hydroelectricity, wind energy, solar energy, and geothermal energy. Although several other RE sources have been extensively discussed, including various forms of ocean energy, these five are likely to still be dominant in 2050. In assessing the probable future of each RE type, it is important to know what factors will tend to enhance or decrease their future output. These include: their energy return on input energy; their technical potential; the impacts that future land use, climate and other environmental changes will have on their availability; and alternatively, the effects of RE production on the environment.
Power systems for South and Central America based on 100% renewable energy (RE) in the year 2030 were calculated for the first time using an hourly resolved energy model. The region was subdivided into 15 sub-regions. Four different scenarios were considered: three according to different high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission grid development levels (region, country, area-wide) and one integrated scenario that considers water desalination and industrial gas demand supplied by synthetic natural gas via power-togas (PtG). RE is not only able to cover 1813 TWh of estimated electricity demand of the area in 2030 but also able to generate the electricity needed to fulfil 3.9 billion m 3 of water desalination and 640 TWh LHV of synthetic natural gas demand. Existing hydro dams can be used as virtual batteries for solar and wind electricity storage, diminishing the role of storage technologies. The results for total levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) are decreased from 62 €/MWh for a highly decentralized to 56 €/MWh for a highly centralized grid scenario (currency value of the year 2015). For the integrated scenario, the levelized cost of gas (LCOG) and the leve-lized cost of water (LCOW) are 95 €/MWh LHV and 0.91 €/m 3 , respectively. A reduction of 8% in total cost and 5% in electricity generation was achieved when integrating desalination and power-togas into the system.
Journal of Solar Energy Research Updates, 2020
Without a doubt, Latin America and the Caribbean will significantly contribute to the continuous global solar capacity expansion during the coming decades. The whole region could grow its current installed solar power capacity by a factor of 40 by 2050. It is expected that by 2050, solar power would represent the second-largest power source behind wind power, generating around 25% of the world’s power. The Intеrnаtіоnаl Energy Agеnсу (IEA) projected, in 2014, that under іtѕ high rеnеwаblеѕ scenario, by 2050, solar PV and соnсеntrаtеd ѕоlаr power (CSP) would contribute about 16% and 11%, rеѕресtіvеlу, of the worldwide electricity соnѕumрtіоn. Ѕоlаr power is expected to be the largest ѕоurсе of еlесtrісіtу generation at the world level in 2050. In total, global solar power capacity would increase around 14- folds, rising from 578,6 GW in 2019 to over 8.000 GW by 2050. Annual investments in solar power are likely to exceed US$7 billion.