Headline: RIFS Blog May 2015

Did you know that after buses, cycling is the most effective use of road space? It’s not really surprising if you think about it, but still a cool statistic. Last week I attended the 4th National German Bicycling Congress. This year it was conveniently held around the corner from the IASS in Potsdam – so, ironically, I didn’t even need to bike there, I could just walk.

In the electricity sector, generation has always been driven by demand. But the Energiewende could turn this paradigm on its head. In what’s known as ‘demand response’, demand reacts to market signals and electricity consumption adapts to the level of generation from photovoltaic and wind energy. To give an example: on a winter’s evening German electricity consumption is very high, but there is no sunshine or wind. As a result, the so-called residual load – i.e. nationwide electricity consumption less generation from photovoltaic and wind energy – is also very high.

Recently, the Eiffel Tower in Paris was equipped with two small vertical wind turbines, which, while they spawned many news articles, have a generation capacity that is rather symbolic. In the same week, the French Parliament debated and voted on an extensive new bill laying out the country’s plans for transforming its energy supply and curbing GHG emissions.

In recent years, the Nordic countries, and especially Sweden, Iceland and Denmark, have been giving serious thought to the option of becoming entirely independent of fossil fuels in the coming decades. Indeed, Sweden aims to have a fossil-free terrestrial and marine transportation system by 2030 – as a first step on the way to the fully electric transportation system envisaged for 2050.