3.5.1 Other climate-neutral electricity technologies

Course subject(s) 3. Climate-neutral electricity: the pivotal role of renewables

In this final module of module 3, we complete our survey of climate-neutral electricity options by looking at a range of other climate-neutral electricity technologies: including ocean energy, nuclear energy, bioenergy, and the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to capture emissions when burning fossil fuels or biomass in traditional power plants.

Key takeaways:

  • Some as-yet unavailable technologies are interesting, and it is good to put more research and development effort into them, but they are unlikely to be commercially viable in the time frame needed for rapid climate mitigation
  • Current nuclear fission reactors should continue operating as long as they are safe, but no satisfying options for new nuclear plants are market-ready at the moment
  • Bioenergy and carbon capture and storage technologies are attractive because they allow traditional fully controllable power plants to continue operating, but they remain uncertain and controversial, and might be more urgently needed outside of the electricity generation sector
  • Ultimately, wind and solar power remain the best-placed technologies to deliver large amounts of climate-neutral electricity — if their variability can be dealt with, which we look at in module 4
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Designing Climate-Neutral Industry and Electricity Generation by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/designing-climate-neutral-industry-and-electricity-generation//
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