On the role of solar photovoltaics in global energy transition scenarios

The global energy system has to be transformed towards high levels of sustainability in order to comply with the COP21 agreement. Solar photovoltaic (PV) offers excellent characteristics to play a major role in this energy transition. The key objective of this work is to investigate the role of PV in the global energy transition based on respective scenarios and a newly introduced energy transition model developed by the authors. A progressive group of energy transition scenarios present results of a fast growth of installed PV capacities and a high energy supply share of solar energy to the total primary energy demand in the world in the decades to come. These progressive energy transition scenarios can be confirmed. For the very first time, a full hourly modelling for an entire year is performed for the world, subdivided in 145 sub-regions, which is required to reflect the intermittent character of the future energy system. The model derives total installed solar PV capacity requirements of 7.1-9.1 TWp for the electricity sector (as of the year 2015) and 27.4 TWp for the entire energy system in the mid-term. The long-term capacity is expected to be 42 TWp and, because of the ongoing cost reduction of PV and battery technologies, this value is found to be the lower limit for the installed capacities. Solar PV electricity is expected to be the largest, least cost and most relevant source of energy in the mid-term to long-term for the global energy supply

Recasting the city into city-regions: place promotion, competitiveness benchmarking and the quest for urban supremacy

This essay critically examines twenty-two studies designed to measure the competitiveness of cities and city-regions. We suggest that while this research may show statistical correlations between different dimensions of competitiveness, there is little in the way of causation. More fundamentally, our main point is to question the utility of such studies. Regional disparities in terms of wealth and living standards are well known; simply recasting the spatial scale to the city or the city-region does not change the underlying fundamentals of regional performance