Cooperative Renewable Energy Expansion in Europe: Cost Savings and Trade Dependencies

Abstract

Using the best variable renewable energy (VRE) resources available for power generation and exploiting spatio-temporal balancing effects of renewable power generation and electricity demand can help to minimize capacity requirements and thus costs for future power supply. The larger the region, the higher the benefits. From the EU perspective, it is therefore clear that markets should be coupled and policies harmonized as far as possible. One question that arises in this context is whether VRE capacity expansion should be planned and executed cooperatively in Europe to maximize the benefits. From the perspective of individual countries, the potential benefits are accompanied by a potential increase of national import and export dependencies. This chapter deals with the questions: How high are the potential cooperation benefits? How high can import and export dependencies become?