Temporal and Spatial Explicit Modelling of Renewable Energy Systems: Modelling variable renewable energy systems to address climate change mitigation and universal electricity access

Two major global challenges climate change mitigation and universal electricity access, can be addressed by large scale deployment of renewable energy sources (Alstone et al., 2015).
Around 60% of greenhouse gas emissions originate from energy generation and 90% of CO2 emissions are caused by fossil fuel combustion (PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency et al., 2015). Eliminating 80% of fossil fuel emissions would stop the rise in CO2 in the atmosphere but atmospheric concentrations would only decrease slowly with even further reductions (NOAA, 2015).
Energy use patterns among the world's poor have remained virtually unchanged over the last century (Pachauri et al., 2013) and by 2012 still more than 1.1 billion people (one in five of the world’s population) lacked access to electricity and 40% of the world’s population relied on solid fuels for cooking with 87% of those living in rural areas (Sustainable Energy for All, 2015), 50% in Sub-Saharan Africa and 38% in South Asia (International Energy Agency, 2014a; Sustainable Energy for All, 2015). Reaching similar levels of demand as “super-developed” countries without deploying low carbon energy sources would pose substantial global-scale climate risks (Diffenbaugh, 2013).
The Paris Agreement (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 2015) aims at “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial level, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” and in order to do so “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible…and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter … so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century, on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty”. The UN Sustainable Development Goal number seven of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” (United Nations, n.d.).
As laid out in the above section renewable energy sources represent an important option for reaching both climate change mitigation and universal electricity access targets. This dissertation has two fo ci: Firstly, improving the system modelling of variable renewable energy sources (in particular wind and photovoltaic energy) and as a result facilitate their energy system integration. Secondly to investigate the role of renewable energy in reaching universal electricity access.