Oliver Iskandar Banks

Policymakers often set broad and lofty goals for achieving clean energy transition, but the macroscopic nature of these goals often makes it difficult to translate them into implementation. Due to the lengthy time horizons involved and technological uncertainty, decarbonisation targets tend to be primarily aspirational, with few concrete details on what actions will be taken. This paper attempts to reconcile long-term energy system planning with technical factors to identify the highest impact areas for regulatory support of technological innovation and project financing and achieve energy system decarbonisation. It does so through four stages of analysis. Firstly, the engineering constraints on improving the efficiency of two dominant sources of renewable energy - wind and solar - are explicated, noting the role of complementarity in minimising fossil fuel dependence. Secondly, a Sobol sensitivity analysis is performed on an hourly model of Great Britain's (GB) 2050 energy system, determining in what domains dramatic technological progress is necessary for decarbonisation by varying rates of technological change and adoption rates across supply, demand, and flexibility inputs using a quasi-random sampling method. Thirdly, Great Britain is compared to the Chinese energy system, highlighting the key structural differences like market liquidity, demand profiles and heavy reliance on Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs), thereby evaluating what an efficient and effective low-carbon energy system would look like for China in 2050. Fourthly, policy recommendations are formulated based on the two cases and extrapolated into general conclusions for energy policymakers, which speak to the value of carbon capture, nuclear power, and power system flexibility.