Abstract
The global growth of wind energy markets offers opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, wind variability and intermittency (across multiple timescales) indicate that these energy resources must be carefully integrated into the power system to avoid mismatches with grid demand and associated grid reliability issues. At the same time, community concerns regarding the local installation of renewable energy and energy storage systems have already delayed or even halted the proposed projects. We propose a broadly defined, co-design approach that considers wind energy from a full social, technical, economic, and political viewpoint. Such a co-design can address the coupled inter-related challenges of cost, technology readiness, system integration, and societal considerations of acceptance, adoption, and equity. Such a successful design depends on the understanding of the needs of relevant communities, the regional grid infrastructure and its demand variability, local and global grid decarbonization targets, available land and resources for system siting, policy and political constraints for energy development, and the projected regional and global impact of these systems on the environment, jobs, and communities.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1995-2015 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Joule |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 21 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors wish to thank Prof. Jessika Trancik of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for feedback on the manuscript and set of topics covered, particularly on the potential to incorporate a participatory process and broader societal considerations into the design and advancement of clean energy technologies. The authors also wish to thank William W. Hogan of the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University for key advice on economic issues and the support of the National Science Foundation, award number 1937039. Finally, support from a Palmer Endowed Chair Professorship at the University of Colorado is also gratefully acknowledged. The authors contributed equally. The authors declare no competing interests.
Funding Information:
The authors wish to thank Prof. Jessika Trancik of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for feedback on the manuscript and set of topics covered, particularly on the potential to incorporate a participatory process and broader societal considerations into the design and advancement of clean energy technologies. The authors also wish to thank William W. Hogan of the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University for key advice on economic issues and the support of the National Science Foundation , award number 1937039. Finally, support from a Palmer Endowed Chair Professorship at the University of Colorado is also gratefully acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Inc.
Keywords
- energy storage
- grid decarbonization
- socio-technical-economic-political co-design
- wind energy
