3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (located in Freiburg, Germany), total
energy consumption is estimated to be 25,419 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2015. Because of
various energy policies and programs now in place, together with expected market trends, 385
the overall energy efficiency of the Luxembourg economy in the reference case is expected to
approach 3 percent per year which will offset any significant growth in total energy
consumption. This is a significant rate of improvement, compared to, for example, the one
percent rate of improvement seen globally over the last decade or so. The end result is that
Luxembourg’s total reference case energy demands in 2050 are anticipated to be nearly
identical to those in 2015, at about 25,545 GWh. 386 As prices increase slightly (in real 2015
Euros) through 2050, the reference case projection suggests that total energy expenditures will
increase from just under €2 billion in 2015 to just short of €2.2 billion by 2050.
At this point there are several questions that can be asked, including: (1) how much more
energy efficiency improvements are possible; (2) how much of the remaining energy demands
can be met by an array of renewable energy technologies (whether wind, solar photovoltaics,
solar heating, and biomass resources); and 3) how much might all of this cost? In such a case it
is often helpful to begin with a thought experiment to provide a working estimate of
magnitudes. Table 3 below highlights this first approximation to begin to answer these three
questions.
In collaboration with the Ministry of the Economy and others within STATEC, the Fraunhofer
Institute laid out what is called the Ambitious Energy Efficiency (AEE) scenario, or what we call
here the “TIR Innovation Scenarios.” 387 That assessment determined that it would make
Sweeney. 1982. Modeling for Insights, Not Numbers: The Experiences of the Energy Modeling Forum. Omega: The
International Journal of Management Science 10(5): 449-462.
385 For example, see the discussion of Energy Efficiency Trends and Policies in Luxembourg (January 2016), at
http://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/national-reports/energy-efficiency-luxembourg.pdf
386 There are several items that might be worth commenting on. First, a GWh is generally a unit of measure for
electricity consumption. Nonetheless, all forms of energy—whether natural gas, coal, oil, conventional electricity,
or even renewable energy technologies—can be expressed in terms of their equivalent heat value, and then
converted to an equivalent GWh total. For example, 1 GWh is the equivalent to 86.04 tons of oil (toe). For this
exercise, the Fraunhofer Institute has provided the GWh as the metric of use in this discussion. The 25,419 GWH
of total energy demand in 2015 is a sum of total electricity demand in Luxembourg of 5,895 GWh, various demands
for heat at 13,322 GWh, and local personal transportation energy requirements of 6,202 GWh equivalent. These
totals do not consider the need for fuel tourism, transit, and aviation.
387 See, for example, the discussion and Table 2 results in the Energy section of the master plan which summarizes
the final energy demand for 2015 and the projections for 2050. The discussion that follows here integrates the
findings of Fraunhofer ISE presented to the Luxembourg Working Group on 5 July 2016, entitled ‘Results of Energy
System Modelling of Luxembourg’ and the energy sub-report, ‘Results of Modelling the Energy System of
Luxembourg.’ Fraunhofer ISE, 27 July 2016.
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