A fossil free future - scenarios for Austria - implications for Europe

Abstract

If the energy transition completely away from fossil fuels to renewable energies due to climate change and to reduce the dependency from not or semi democratic countries is taken serious, many implications and needed measures have to be faced. In the keynote a general approach with the options reduction of energy demand, generation of renewables within the countries and, if not enough renewable energy is available locally, where could the additional renewable energy be imported from, will be shown. Additionally, the question of energy storage is tackled to overcome the timely variation of the production of renewable energy carriers and the demand. The whole process is shown in detail for the province of Tyrol/Austria, where the possible potential of renewables is compared to the energy need after possible reduction of the energy demand in the whole energy system. The sectors housing, mobility/transportation and industry are included. It will be shown, that the energy efficiency of the whole system needs to be as high as possible and that not only technologic measures are needed but also many other aspects like laws, democracy, micro- and macroeconomics etc. have to be looked at and several dilemmas have to be solved. Concerning the cost it has to be stated that no transition if the energy system will become far more expensive due to the costs of climate change compared to the costs for the energy change, which ranges in about 1 %/GNP.