Geopolitics and energy security of CSP deployment for domestic use and intra-European trade in the time of COVID-19. Deliverable 9.2 MUSTEC project

The outbreak of COVID-19 has completely changed the European Union’s internal geopolitical landscape, including in the energy domain. The political and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has made internal geopolitical and geo-economic drivers even more relevant than before. Countries like Italy and Spain are expected to be among the most affected, having the higher death tolls and the biggest economic and social costs, which risks exacerbating populist and nationalist movements and political parties. Anti-EU feelings and a North-South political divide risk to re-emerge and intensify, re-opening the wounds of the financial crisis. Because the COVID-19 crisis implies a significant shift in the EU’s geopolitical and energy geopolitics’ landscape, the scope of this deliverable has been expanded to reflect the new context. Sufficiently high climate ambitions are another enabler of CSP development, because they hinder the use of fossil power plants as a backup of fluctuating renewables and supply of electricity demand exceeding the realizable potential of other renewables. Hence, CSP with its additional advantage of dispatchability becomes more important under such conditions.