Schedule

Contacts and office hours

Course Requirements

(1)   Active participation is the key. Check the literature and other required sources before each session and join us on time with your webcam on. Be ready for in-class polls and discussions. 

(2)  Submit three questions or discussion topics related to renewable energy. They can, but do not have to, follow-up on issues covered in sessions or course sources. The questions shall be submitted in a doc(x) or odt format into a dedicated IS vault linked below by November 29. Late submission will be penalized by a loss of 2 points per each day of delay.

(3)  Team up with a classmate and submit a country analysis together (see details below). Register your topic (country) by November 1 via this excel sheet. Late registration will be penalized by a loss of 1 point.

The final analysis should be submitted by November 16 via an IS vault linked below. Late submission will be penalized by a loss of 2 points per each day of delay.

(4) Submit a short feedback to one country analysis. Each analysis shall therefore receive feedback by two students. After the submission deadline, check the available (submitted) analyses and register to one of them in the same excel sheet. The feedback should be submitted to the same folder as the analyses by November 22, 2020. In the feedback, discuss the clarity and validity of argumentation, analytical depth and the selection and use of sources and data. Late submission will be penalized by a loss of 1 points per each day of delay.

Country analysis

Details and recommendations

(1) Form a group of two. Together select a country whose approach to renewable energy stands out in some way (fast build up of renewable energy over short period of time, little development of renewable energy despite favorable conditions, rapid decline in (previously) high pace of deployment of renewable energy, etc.)

(2) Use the explaining-outcome process-tracing methodology (see for example Beach 2017 - attached below) to identify and discuss e.g. the socio-political or techno-economic factors behind the examined situation.

(3) Prepare a bullet-point outline of your argument before you start writing.

(4) Be concise, avoid text fillers. The goal is not to fill up the required word count but to learn and to facilitate learning. Streamline the text as much as possible during the final reading and editing (yes, this should take place).

Required structure

(1) Title (think of something interesting not just "Czech Republic"), full names of the authors and the estimated contribution of each author to the whole endeavor - this will be reflected in the grading (see below). Example: Filip Černoch (60%), Jan Osička (40%).

(2) Justification: What makes the selected country a relevant case for the analysis (max 5 sentences).

(3) Results at a glance (4-5 most important takeaways from your analysis; max 3 sentences per result; see Agora Energiewende studies for inspiration).

(4) Analysis (900-1,500 words).

(5) Conclusions (4-5 most important takeaways from your analysis; one paragraph per result)

(6) References (the use of citation manager such as Mendeley is highly recommended).

- items 1-3 can be placed on the front page, do not bother with faculty logos.

Evaluation criteria

Validity, consistency and analytical depth: up to 10 points
Data and literature (richness and validity): up to 5 points
 

Grading

Grading details

The final grade will be determined by the country analysis (up to 15 points), the submitted questions (3 points if submitted in time) and the feedback (2 points if submitted in time).

To avoid freeriding in the groups, the authors' scores will be determined by weighting the analysis' final score by the authors' stated contribution. Example: the analysis by Filip (60%) and Jan (40%) receives 8 points out of 15, which makes it 2 x 8 = 16 points in total for both authors. Consequently, Filip will receive 16 x 60% = 9.6 = 10 points. Jan will receive 16 x 40% = 6.4 = 6 points (and will have to retake the course). 

Points and grades

A                     20-19
B                     18-17
C                     16-15
D                     14-13
E                      12
F                      11 and less

Content: How are electricity markets designed in Europe?

Study materials: If a newcomer to the field, learn the basics of what is electricity and what it takes to supply it.  Then you should be ready to review the electricity market design as it can be found in Europe (spoiler alert: it is a layered stack of multiple markets operating simultaneously!) Here, we can thank Bilal Dahlab for his accessible explanations and move to TU Delft's Laurens de Vries and his insight into the market's organizing principles.

Get ready: First, try to come up with as many distinctive features by which we can differentiate between the individual sources for electricity production. Which ones are typical for conventional sources? Which for renewable energy? Are there differences within these groups?  Second, once you have the list of features, think which ones are reflected in the current market design and how?

Content: The technological challenges of integrating variable renewable energy

Study materials: Start with the accessible overview of the role of grids in harnessing more renewable energy provided by Agora Energiewende (2018a, attached below) and think of the challenges variable renewable energy brings to grid operations. Then learn more about the two most impactful solutions to many of these challenges: cross-border trade and supply and demand flexibility. The former is covered neatly in this video by Real Engineering while for the latter get back to Agora (2018b, skip the case studies if under time pressure).

Get ready: You learned about the challenges of integrating large amounts of variable renewable energy into the grid and some of the envisioned or already deployed solutions. Now go one step further and think about the challenges of implementing these solutions - what are they? How can you deal with them? 

Content: The financial side of expanding renewable energy

Study materials: RES are now the cheapest source of electricity per unit of energy produced. Revisit how this happened and what factors behind it in the last part of the Agora's "Word on..." series (2018c, attached). That is a good news but as we know from the last week, integrating vRES into the system takes more than replacing one type of source with another.  Learn more about the challenges that the current markets and vRES introduce to one another in this video by TU Denmark's Pierre Pinson (check his other videos and get one renewable energy course for free).

Get ready: How do vRES affect the markets? How do they affect the conventional producers? How do the markets limit further deployment of vRES? What changes in the market design do we need to smoothen the transition?

Presentation

Content: The acceptance of renewable energy

Study materials: This week, there are two entangled topics ahead of us. A rather established issue of local opposition and acceptance and the recently emerged political backlash against climate policies. Start with local acceptance. The factors that affect it are nicely summarized in the attached texts by IEA Wind (parts III and IV) and N. M. A. Huijts et al. who focus on the psychology of local opposition. Next, at least skim through the text by Susana Batel who maps the development of the scientific reflection of local opposition (and try to absorb the good practice of doing literature reviews while at it).

Second, social acceptance. Start with the case study of the yellow vests movement - either in form of BBC Service podcast or as presented in Agora's slightly more elaborate analysis, and finish with Cornelia Fraune and Michele Knodt's introductory paper on sustainable energy transformations in an age of populism, post-truth politics, and local resistance.

Get ready: What features must "acceptable" policies or local solutions exhibit? Can you identify a few examples of successful policies or local solutions?

Content: The big picture of transition to renewable energy

Study materials: In this session we put aside deconstruction and analysis, zoom out to the sheer complexity of our energy transition and approach it as a system. System thinking is hard. In particular because most of us were conditioned to make sense of complex issues via breaking them down into individual parts (that is what "analysis" means, right?). We therefore start with this introductory video on systems thinking. After watching it, try to apply this perspective on what you have learned so far and synthetize it into a system perspective.

Next, learn about leverages. Leverages are points at which systems are susceptible to change. In other words, certain type of change in/of the system requires certain type of action directed at certain (leverage) point in the system. More on leverages can be found in this accessible video or, if you want to get serious about systems thinking (and you probably should given your choice of study program), read this overview by Dana Meadows, one of the leading figures to develop systems thinking in the 1970s. Her writing style is very talkative and she makes no effort to hide her political views so you can treat the text as an interesting field trip outside of what we now consider academic writing.

Next, systems thinking is not only about introducing changes in systems but also about controlling unintended consequences these changes bring along. Get the idea by watching either this short, single-case video or this more elaborated TED talk by Edward Tenner.

Finally, see systems thinking in practice in the EU's draft plan to implement the European Green Deal (the executive summary should suffice).

Get ready: What we going to do with renewable energy will be largely determined by where we set the boundaries of the system that we want to change, and how far do we want the change to go. That is, will we end up simply replacing fossil fuels with RES within the same structure or are we going to climb higher on Meadows' ladder and change the rules or the goals of the system or even the mindset behind it? 

Content: Discussing your country analyses

Study materials: Your country analyses

Get ready: What general takeaways can be formulated based on the batch of analyses?

Content: In the final session we will discuss whatever we did not have time to cover earlier and, of course, your questions. 

Study materials: Go through the materials assigned for the earlier sessions once again and make sure you understand everything.

Get ready: Whatever you do not understand in the materials or about what we discussed at earlier sessions.