Sebastian Sterl

Verified

Sebastian verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

Verified

Sebastian verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

Learn more

• Doctor of Engineering
• Professor (Assistant) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel

[Note: This article is accessible to all via https://rdcu.be/b4pI8] The worldwide growth of variable renewable power sources necessitates power system flexibility to safeguard the reliability of electricity supply. Yet today, flexibility is mostly delivered by fossil fuel power plants. Hydropower can be a renewable alternative source of flexibilit...

Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are currently embroiled in a politically charged conflict that surrounds the soon-to-be-completed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), with Ethiopia’s energy objectives purportedly conflicting with the water needs in Sudan and Egypt. Here we show that the multiple political and environmental challenges that surround GER...

For many African countries, energy models point toward variable renewable energy (VRE), mainly solar photovoltaics and wind power, as the potential backbone of future power systems. However, such models have not typically been able to explicitly include geospatial aspects around future VRE power plant siting with respect to cost optimization. For i...

This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of research on African energy transitions and pinpoints critical questions that require answering to allow science-based policymaking. It both highlights unique elements of energy transitions research in the African context, and explains why these need deeper investigation to enable decisions informed by clea...

With growing gas and oil prices, electricity generation based on these fossil fuels is becoming increasingly expensive. Furthermore, the vision of natural gas as a transition fuel is subject to many constraints and uncertainties of economic, environmental, and geopolitical nature. Consequently, renewable energies such as solar and wind power are ex...

This dataset provides model-ready data to include geospatial differentiation in solar and wind power investment options in energy models (primarily capacity expansion models and dispatch models) at the level of every Central and South American country. The methodology used to create the dataset takes into account resource quality, land use restri...

This issue brief reviews an analysis of African energy transitions and pinpoints critical questions we need to answer to foster science-based policymaking to enable decisions informed by clear and objective country-specific analysis. This also helps debunk common myths about the energy transition in Africa and identifies gaps in the current knowled...

This issue brief reviews an analysis of African energy transitions and pinpoints critical questions we need to answer to foster science-based policymaking to enable decisions informed by clear and objective country-specific analysis. This also helps debunk common myths about the energy transition in Africa and identifies gaps in the current knowled...

This issue brief reviews an analysis of African energy transitions and pinpoints critical questions we need to answer to foster science-based policymaking to enable decisions informed by clear and objective country-specific analysis. This also helps debunk common myths about the energy transition in Africa and identifies gaps in the current knowled...

Across continental Africa, more than 300 new hydropower projects are under consideration to meet the future energy demand that is expected based on the growing population and increasing energy access. Yet large uncertainties associated with hydroclimatic and socioeconomic changes challenge hydropower planning. In this work, we show that only 40 to...

In support of West Africa's potential energy transition under climate change, an international team of scientists and a wide range of local stakeholders in Ghana and Burkina Faso jointly assessed different mitigation and adaptation pathways for energy and water supply and demand, including their implications for achieving SDGs, in a transdisciplina...

This review paper, the first to examine Africa's state of the art fully renewable energy system analyses, assesses the status and findings of 100% renewable energy system analyses for Africa published in scientific journals. In total, 54 articles published since 2000 have been identified and analyzed. Most of these studies are relatively new and fo...

While high renewable electricity targets are feasible under current climatic conditions, planning the power sector from a long-term perspective requires great precaution, given the strong dependency of renewable energy potential on climate and potential future changes. Power balance optimization modelling is a powerful tool for adequate power syste...

With solar and wind power generation reaching unprecedented growth rates globally, much research effort has recently gone into a comprehensive mapping of the worldwide potential of these variable renewable electricity (VRE) sources. From a perspective of energy systems analysis, the locations with the strongest resources may not necessarily be the...

Aligning development and climate goals means Africa’s energy systems will be based on clean energy technologies in the long term, but pathways to get there are uncertain and variable across countries. Although current debates about natural gas and renewables in Africa are heated, they largely ignore the substantial context specificity of the starti...

Cette étude a pour objectif d’évaluer les options pour potentiellement renoncer à la construction de Koukoutamba en faveur des investissements dans le solaire PV à sa place. Ceci est fait du point de vue des coûts (coûts nivelés ainsi que coûts d’investissement initial), des niveaux de production d’électricité à atteindre, des défis posés par la va...

Moving from fossil fuel-based electricity generation to renewable electricity generation is at the heart of current developments in power sectors worldwide. In this context, synergy assessment between renewable electricity sources is of great significance for local and regional power planning. Here we use synergy metrics (stability coefficient (C s...

The modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. Whereas such resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diur...

Understanding and quantifying land management impacts on local climate is important for distinguishing between the effects of land management and large-scale climate forcings. This study for the first time explicitly considers the radiative forcing resulting from realistic land management and offers new insights into the local land surface response...

In support of West Africa's potential energy transition under climate change, an international team of scientists and a wide range of local stakeholders in Ghana and Burkina Faso jointly assessed different mitigation and adaptation pathways for energy and water supply and demand, including their implications for achieving SDGs, in a transdisciplina...

The modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. Whereas such resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diur...

An important transition is underway across the world: we are relying less and less on fossil fuels to power our homes, offices, and industries, and more and more on inexhaustible sources like solar and wind power. But the sun does not always shine and the winds do not always blow. For this reason, we need to design our future electricity systems i...

This review paper assesses recent scientific findings around the integration of variable renewable electricity (VRE) sources, mostly solar PV and wind power, on power grids across Africa, in the context of expanding electricity access while ensuring low costs and reducing fossil fuel emissions. In this context, significant research attention has b...

The modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. Whereas such resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diur...

This article reviews climate change mitigation policies implemented in five major emitting economies: China, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States. It analyses their historical performance in terms of energy system and greenhouse gas emissions indicators. In cases where policies aim to reduce future emissions, their target performa...

A new model, REVUB-Light, an extended modelling approach for the recently developed “Renewable Energy Variability Upscaling and Balancing” (REVUB) model, is highlighted in this study for its relatively simple and effective parameterization for power balance optimization simulations, considering high Intermittent Renewable Energy integration. We dem...

A new study shows that several disagreements between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt around Africa’s largest hydropower plant, the new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), could be alleviated by massively expanding solar and wind power across the region. Adapting GERD operation to support grid integration of solar and wind power would provide tangible...

The Caribbean nation of Suriname has historically depended on a mix of hydropower and oil-based fossil fuels for meeting electricity needs. Continued reliance on fossil fuels poses challenges both for climate change mitigation and for energy security. This paper explores the potential for increasing the share of renewables in Suriname's electricity...

This article quantifies the aggregate potential of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in 2030 from the assumed full implementation of major international cooperative initiatives (ICIs). To this end, a methodology is proposed to aggregate emission reduction goals of the most significant and potentially impactful global initiatives. We identif...

Regression-based trend analysis is applied to observations and present-day ensemble simulations with the Community Earth System Model to assess if climate models overestimate warming trends because theoretical constant levels of irrigation and conservation agriculture (CA) are excluded. At the regional scale, an irrigation- and CA-induced accelerat...

In sub-Saharan Africa, 160 million grid-connected electricity consumers live in countries where hydropower accounts for over 50% of total power supply. A warmer climate with more frequent and intense extremes could result in supply reliability issues. Here, (i) a robust framework to highlight the interdependencies between hydropower, water availabi...

In sub-Saharan Africa, 160 million grid-connected electricity consumers live in countries where hydropower accounts for over 50% of total power supply. A warmer climate with more frequent and intense extremes could result in supply reliability issues. Here, (i) a robust framework to highlight the interdependencies between hydropower, water availabi...

West African countries' energy and climate policies show a pronounced focus on decarbonising power supply through renewable electricity (RE) generation. In particular, most West African states explicitly focus on hybrid mixes of variable renewable power sources—solar, wind and hydropower—in their targets for the electricity sector. Hydropower, the...

Climate policy needs to account for political and social acceptance. Current national climate policy plans proposed under the Paris Agreement lead to higher emissions until 2030 than cost-effective pathways towards the Agreements' long-term temperature goals would imply. Therefore, the current plans would require highly disruptive changes, prohibit...

This article identifies and quantifies the 10 most important benchmarks for climate action to be taken by 2020–2025 to keep the window open for a 1.5°C-consistent GHG emission pathway. We conducted a comprehensive review of existing emissions scenarios, scanned all sectors and the respective necessary transitions, and distilled the most important s...

This new report by NewClimate Institute, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) provides an overview of projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 25 major emitting countries/regions up to 2030, taking into account the emission trajectories based on current policies and...

A drop of water that freezes from the outside-in presents an intriguing problem: the expansion of water upon freezing is incompatible with the self-confinement by a rigid ice shell. Using high-speed imaging we show that this conundrum is resolved through an intermittent fracturing of the brittle ice shell and cavitation in the enclosed liquid, culm...

A drop of water that freezes from the outside-in presents an intriguing problem: the expansion of water upon freezing is incompatible with the self-confinement by a rigid ice shell. Using high-speed imaging we show that this conundrum is resolved through an intermittent fracturing of the brittle ice shell and cavitation in the enclosed liquid, culm...

This new report by NewClimate Institute, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) provides an overview of projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 25 major emitting countries/regions up to 2030, taking into account the emission trajectories based on current policies and...

The adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 moved the world a step closer to avoiding dangerous climate change. The aggregated individual intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) are not yet sufficient to be consistent with the long-term goals of the agreement of ‘holding the increase in global average temperature to well below...

In this paper, we present results from an experimental study into turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection forced externally by periodically modulated unidirectional rotation rates. We find that the azimuthal rotation velocity $\dot{\theta}$(t) and thermal amplitude $\delta$(t) of the large-scale circulation (LSC) are modulated by the forcing, exhibiti...

In this paper, we present results from an experimental study into turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection forced externally by periodically modulated unidirectional rotation rates. We find that the azimuthal rotation velocity $\dot{\theta}$(t) and thermal amplitude $\delta$(t) of the large-scale circulation (LSC) are modulated by the forcing, exhibiti...

- G20 policies are insufficient for decarbonizing the power sector - Emerging countries face a huge investment gap while the OECD countries are leaders in policy framework - The G20 countries need to establish coherent strategies and policies to attract investments

We present measurements of the azimuthal rotation velocity θ(t) and thermal amplitude δ(t) of the large-scale circulation in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection with modulated rotation. Both θ(t) and δ;(t) exhibit clear oscillations at the modulation frequency ω. Fluid acceleration driven by oscillating Coriolis force causes an increasing phase la...