Brian O Gallachoir

University College Cork | UCC · Environmental Research Institute

Substantial energy subsidies are recognised as the leading cause of Iran's inefficient electricity generation and consumption. This paper investigates the impacts of subsidy removal on future electricity demand and the required generation mix. A hybrid modelling framework is developed to analyse supply and demand sides under harmonised assumptions....

Energy subsidies can incentivise the overconsumption of energy resources and contribute to other economic or social distortions. In this paper, an ex-post analysis is presented that explores the extent to which electricity subsidy reform could have reduced Iran's energy demand during the period 1984–2017. It also quantifies the techno-economic and...

The Deliberative Futures Toolkit includes a series of guiding pieces that offer advice on good practice around engagement and provides guidance for those interested in incorporating different futures-thinking tools into their practice, either individually or as part of their wider process. To support the application of these tools we showcase the w...

Deep decarbonization of the global electricity sector is required to meet ambitious climate change targets. This underlines the need for improved models to facilitate an understanding of the global challenges ahead, particularly on the concept of large-scale interconnection of power systems. Developments in recent years regarding availability of op...

Abstract Emerging literature highlights the essential role played by decarbonised electricity generation in future energy systems consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement. This analysis compares the impacts of high levels of renewable electricity and negative emissions technologies on exploratory visions of the future EU power system (2050) in t...

To achieve set greenhouse gas mitigation targets, deep decarbonization of the global electricity sector is required. Considering the enormous task at hand, it is of importance that researchers and other actors can get insights in the diversity of the worlds electricity system. Being the first of its kind, this study describes the development of an...

The integration of variable generation challenges electricity systems globally. Using Ireland's electricity sector as a case study, we highlight multiple challenges in reconciling ambition for variable renewable integration with market economics and system operation. Ireland has the highest share of non-synchronous variable renewable electricity on...

Globally interconnected power grids are proposed as a future concept to facilitate decarbonisation of the electricity system by enabling the harnessing and sharing of vast amounts of renewable energy. Areas with the highest potential for renewable energy are often far away from current load centres, which can be integrated through long-distance tra...

The transportation sector accounts for the largest consumption of non-renewable energy globally, highlighting the need for a broader understanding of alternative paths towards mitigating this status. Technological advancement is on the rise and with increasing policy support, studies present diverse approaches on evaluation of policy mix options to...

Governments must increase bioenergy use to realise the Paris agreement ambition. Most countries have limited biomass resources and policy goals beyond carbon reduction. This can lead to policy incoherence. Previous studies tended to focus on one end-use sector or on optimising CO2 reduction. This study goes beyond optimisation approaches and invest...

Decarbonizing the power sector is a necessary step towards a low-carbon future. Interconnecting power systems on different continents could be a method to contribute to such a future, by utilizing highly efficient renewable resources around the globe, while simultaneously providing additional benefits of power system integration. In this paper, we...

The traditional paradigm of centralised electricity systems is being disrupted by increasing levels of distributed generation. It is unclear as to what level of distributed generation is expected, appropriate or optimal in future power systems. Many researchers have focused on how to integrate distributed generation into centralised electricity sys...

There is a growing consensus that moving to a low carbon future within the transport sector will require a substantial shift away from fossil fuels toward more sustainable means of transport. A particular emphasis has been given to battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), with many nations investing in improving...

The increase in renewable energy sources has contributed to lowering electricity wholesale prices in many markets (although not necessarily retail prices) by causing a shift in the merit order curve and substituting part of the conventional generation, which has higher marginal production costs. This merit order effect, along with priority dispatch...

In most areas of transport, emission reductions (as measured by their marginal abatement costs) are generally expensive. To date surface transport in the EU has benefited from the push effect of renewable transport energy policy. This has led to the development of a biodiesel industry in the EU to meet the demand created by renewable fuel obligatio...

The EU remains widely dependent on external gas supplies, with imports representing 70% of its consumption in 2013. Member States have different import profiles with divergent levels of dependency on Russian imports. Several European Member States rely heavily on Russian supplies, which shows that the EU gas supply security needs to be examined bot...

Kazakhstan is an upper-middle-income country and one of the coldest countries in the world with rich energy resources and energy prices considerably lower than in developed countries. This paper presents the first comprehensive overview of household fuel use in Kazakhstan and assesses the causes and extent of energy poverty using the Households Liv...

Residential coal consumption has decreased significantly since 1990 in most developed and developing countries, due to fuel switching. However, there are still countries with a high proportion of households using coal for heating purposes, in some cases with increasing coal consumption trends. This review discusses the patterns of the coal use, ass...

It is anticipated that the decarbonisation of the entire energy system will require the introduction of large shares of variable renewable electricity generation into the power system. Long term integrated energy systems models are useful in improving our understanding of decarbonisation but they struggle to take account of short term variations in...

Integrating a range of complementary energy models is becoming an increasingly common method for informing low carbon energy pathways at both national and global levels. Multi-modelling approaches facilitate improved understanding of the detailed technology pathways required to meet decarbonisation targets; however, to-date there has been limited a...

Over the past century, Ireland's electricity sector has undergone a significant transformation. This paper documents the nation's struggle to build an electricity system, to improve security of electricity supply through portfolio diversification and to promote indigenous energy sources. This was a challenge for an (electrically) isolated island wi...

The EU dependence on imported gas is increasing, rising to 67% in the year 2014 with 30% of total gas consumption used for electricity generation that year. With such a dependence on imported gas, gas supply interruptions can have significant impacts on the EU energy system and economy. This points to the need for integrated electricity and gas mod...

The European Council has agreed ambitious EU climate and energy targets for 2030, including a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels and a minimum share of 27% renewable energy consumption. This paper investigates the challenges faced by the European power systems as the EU transitions towards a low carbon energy system w...

This article explores the causes for differences in the average CO2 emissions intensity of the new passenger car (NPC) fleet in member states (MS) across Europe. Although EU policies mitigating CO2 emissions from NPCs have been in place since 1999, MS strongly diverge in the absolute amount and relative change in emissions over the last decade. The...

To implement an energy saving measure, companies must first decide to investigate the options available. Representative survey data shows that almost half of companies in the Irish commercial sector do not take this step. This paper explores the barriers and drivers of this. Two logit models are fit to data to estimate the influence of variables, r...

This paper estimates the potential energy savings in the Irish residential sector by 2020 due to the introduction of an ambitious retrofit programme. We estimate the technical energy savings potential of retrofit measures targeting energy efficiency of the space and water heating end uses of the 2011 stock of residential dwellings between 2012 and...

Mobilising greater levels of private finance through local citizen investment in low-carbon technologies can help bridge the capital shortfall to meeting climate objectives, while also building societal support for the low-carbon transition. Within this context we undertake a systematic review of literature assessing the impact of technology-specif...

Energy security is an interdisciplinary concept. Its definitions leaves it vulnerable to exploitation as a justification for energy policy instruments. The extensive literature has yet to converge to formulate a unified definition of energy security and many outline a multitude of methods of measurement, such as the Supply/Demand index applied here...

Transport is the most significant energy consuming sector in Ireland, accounting for 40% of final energy demand in 2013, with private cars and road freight contributing 51% and 25% to transport energy demand respectively. Despite a large literature body analysing private car energy use, there has been very little published analysis on freight trans...

This paper presents a model which estimates current car fleet energy consumption in Andorra and forecasts such consumption as a reference scenario. The base-year model is built through a bottom-up methodology using vehicle registration and technical inspection data. The model forecasts energy consumption up to 2050, taking into account the fleet st...

Lack of access to modern fuels, high fuel prices, poor building insulation, and income poverty are some of the aspects leading to the energy poverty problem. Kazakhstan may be particularly highly affected by this phenomenon due to the high heating demand and severe continental climate, as well as due to the high use of coal and biomass in some of i...

The greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions from land-use change are of particular concern for land-based biofuels. Emissions avoided by substituting fossil fuels with biofuels may be offset by emissions from direct and indirect land-use changes (LUC). There is an urgent need to investigate what impact land-use change emissions may have on the expansion o...

Presentation given at the Panel Session titled ”Linking modeling tools across temporal and functional domains” of the 2016 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting

Energy modelling work in Ireland to date has mainly taken place at a national level. A regional modelling approach is necessary however, for Ireland to reach the ambitious targets for renewable energy and emissions reduction. This paper explores the usefulness of the energy modelling tool EnergyPLAN in investigating the energy system of the South W...

Food production has increased dramatically over the last fifty years, in line with the increase in the world’s human population, and projections suggest that this demand will further increase. However the expansion of agri-food sector has a possible competitor in the land usage patterns: the energy sector. The urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas e...

We have extended the Integrated Assessment Model TIAM-MACRO to consider externalities related to Local Atmospheric Pollution (LAP) of 15 world regions. Externalities are changes of welfare due to activities (in our case the impacts of LAP originated from the energy and transportation system) without being reflected in market prices (hence not paid...

This paper presents a methodological framework using a multi model approach to assess power system security. System security is viewed here as a multidimensional systemic property of the entire energy system. The paper shows that the different dimensions of a secure energy system are correlated, and hence their behaviour cannot be explained solely...

Several electricity systems supply significant proportions of electricity from weather dependent renewable sources. Different quantification methods have estimated the associated historical savings of fuel and CO2 emissions. Primary energy equivalent and econometric methods do not readily quantify factors like operational changes to fossil fuel gen...

This work builds a comprehensive North-West European Electricity Market model for the year 2020 and uses it to quantify the impacts of ambitious national renewable electricity targets. The geographical coverage of the model comprises Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Great Britain and Ireland. The model simulates the electricity mar...

This paper presents a novel bottom up approach to modelling the energy savings potential of energy efficiency improvement measures to be applied through retrofit of the existing dwelling stock. It takes advantage of a newly available, rich dataset on the construction characteristics of the 2011 housing stock in Ireland. The methodological innovatio...

We generate efficient climate change mitigation scenarios of low emission pathways for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) such that global warming remains below 2 °C with high probabilities. Then, we balance the cost of mitigation for different world regions based on equity principles and fairness. The study assumes early mitigation a...

This paper assesses through scenario analysis the future role of bioenergy in a deep mitigation context. We focus in particular on the implications for sustainability – namely, competing demands for land-use, import dependency, availability of sustainable bioenergy and economics. The analysis here is limited to one Member State, Ireland, which is a...

This paper examines the potential role for Power to Gas (P2G) as applied to an island energy system with high levels of renewable electricity penetration. P2G systems require both a supply of green electricity and a source of CO2. Cheap electricity is essential for a financially sustainable P2G system. Using a PLEXOS model it was determined that de...

Electric vehicles (EV) are proposed as a measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in transport and support increased wind power penetration across modern power systems. Optimal benefits can only be achieved, if EVs are deployed effectively, so that the exhaust emissions are not substituted by additional emissions in the electricity sector, which...

A key objective of IEA-ETSAP is to assist decision makers in robustly developing, implementing and assessing the impact of energy and climate mitigation policies. This chapter focuses on four case studies, in which there is clear evidence of a direct link between the use of MARKAL and TIMES scenario modelling activities and the resulting policy dec...

Soft-linking TIMES models with carefully selected complementary models can provide useful additional insights into the results from the TIMES model and can usefully scrutinize specific TIMES results in greater detail with another model. This multi-model approach can take advantage of the individual strengths of different modelling approaches. This...

Climate change mitigation clearly requires a focus on transport that should include improved representation of travel behaviour change in addition to increased vehicle efficiency and low-carbon fuels. Energy system models focus however on technology and fuel switching and tend to poorly incorporate travel behaviour. Conversely, transport demand mod...

The role that energy modelling plays in improving the evidence base underpinning policy decisions is being increasingly recognized and valued. The Energy Technology Systems Analysis Program is a unique network of energy modelling teams from all around the world, cooperating to establish, maintain and expand a consistent energy/economy/environment/e...

In 2014, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a global renewable energy roadmap—called REmap 2030—to double the share of renewables in the global energy mix by 2030 compared to 2010 (IRENA, A Renewable Energy Roadmap, 2014a). A REmap tool was developed to facilitate a transparent and open framework to aggregate the national r...

In a climate constrained future, hybrid energy-economy model coupling gives additional insight into interregional competition, trade, industrial delocalisation and overall macroeconomic consequences of decarbonising the energy system. Decarbonising the energy system is critical in mitigating climate change. This chapter summarises modelling methodo...

This book highlights how energy-system models are used to underpin and support energy and climate mitigation policy decisions at national, multi-country and global levels. It brings together, for the first time in one volume, a range of methodological approaches and case studies of good modeling practice on a national and international scale from t...

As the shares of variable renewable generation in power systems increase, so does the need for, inter alia, flexible balancing mechanisms. These mechanisms help ensure the reliable operation of the electricity system by compensating for fluctuations in supply or demand. However, a focus on short-term balancing is sometimes neglected when assessing...

Summary: The increase in renewable energy sources has contributed to containing and even lowering electricity wholesale prices in many markets (although not necessarily retail prices) by causing a shift in the merit order curve and substituting part of the generation of conventional thermal plants, which have higher marginal production costs. This...

Agriculture is responsible for approximately 25% of anthropogenic global GHG emissions. This significant share highlights the fundamental importance of the agricultural sector in the global GHG emissions reduction challenge. This article develops and tests a methodology for the integration of agricultural and energy systems modelling. The goal of t...

In a climate constrained future, hybrid energy-economy model coupling gives additional insight into interregional competition, trade, industrial delocalisation and overall macroeconomic consequences of decarbonising the energy system. Decarbonising the energy system is critical in mitigating climate change. This chapter summarises modelling methodo...

The objective of this work is to determine the impact of sub-hourly modelling of a power system with significant amounts of wind generation. This paper presents the modelling of the Irish power system for a one year period at 5 min, 15 min, 30 min and 60 min resolution simulations using a unit commitment and economic dispatch model assuming perfect...

The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government has commissioned the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and University College Cork (UCC) to provide technical advice and guidance on the development of a low carbon roadmap for Ireland with the aim of achieving transition to a low carbon, climate resilient and environment...

This paper focuses on Ireland’s ambitious target for 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% below 2005 levels for sectors not covered by ETS (Non-ETS). Ireland is an interesting case study due to the role of agriculture (a particularly challenging sector with regard to GHG emissions reduction), that represents 29% of Ireland’s GHG emi...

This paper focuses on the impact of electric vehicles on electricity generation in Ireland in 2025 based on five alternative generation portfolios. The year 2025 was selected for assessment due to the information on the composition of the five generation portfolios from Eirgrid the system operator in Ireland being provided. Detailed market simulati...

This paper models large pumped hydro energy storage in a future power system where variable generation, primarily in the form of wind generation, is the dominant source of power generation. The research question posed is how to formulate day-ahead and week-ahead reservoir targets for pumped hydro energy storage in the context of wind forecast uncer...

This paper builds a model of energy demand and supply for Ireland with a focus on evaluating, and providing insights for, energy efficiency policies. The demand-side comprises sectoral sub-models, with a detailed bottom–up approach used for the transport and residential sectors and a top–down approach used for the industry and services sectors. The...

One of the most notable outcomes of Ireland's recent spectacular rise in income was an apparent 140% increase in domestic passenger transport fuel use from 1990 to 2008, at the same time as the car stock has more than doubled in magnitude. However, there have been very few comparisons and decomposition analyses of the data underlying this increase...

There are many long‐term energy models currently in use with different underlying principles, characteristics, inputs, and outputs. Over the past 30 years, considerable efforts have been made to develop new models, following different approaches that vary in terms of model starting point and on the type of questions they are designed to answer. The...

The Copenhagen Accord established political consensus on the 2 °C limit (in global temperature increase) and for deep cuts in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels to achieve this goal. The European Union has set ambitious GHG targets for the year 2050 (80–95% below 1990 levels), with each Member State developing strategies to contribute to these t...

Ireland imports 88% of its energy requirements. Oil makes up 59% of total final energy consumption (TFC). Import dependency, low fuel diversity and volatile prices leave Ireland vulnerable in terms of energy security. This work models energy security scenarios for Ireland using long term macroeconomic forecasts to 2050, with oil production and pric...

Index decomposition analysis based on economic output is frequently employed to provide an indication of energy intensity trends in industry. Additionally, composite energy efficiency indicators, calculated using physical output, are used to give a more accurate view of energy efficiency progress. Both approaches are commonly presented in one study...

In this paper we present a soft-linking methodology that employs detailed simulation outputs from a dedicated power systems model to gain insights and understanding of the generation electricity plant portfolio results for the electricity sector from a separate energy systems model. We apply the methodology and present and discuss the results. The...