Focus Markets

17.06.2021
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10 key energy transition technologies

According to DNV's Report, the ten key energy transition technologies
DNV, a company belonging to Norway-based Det Norske Veritas group and involved in global transformations aimed at protecting life and environments around the world, released its Technology Progress Report, a new supplement to the Energy Transition Outlook it publishes each year.

The research examines 10 energy technologies that will enable to reach global decarbonisation and energy transition goals in the 3 primary energy sectors (manufacturing, freight and consumption) and studies how they will develop, compete and interact over the next 5 years. The report offers a factual assessment of the state of the art of these systems to understand how they will help to bring the world’s energy system towards the energy transition.

The DNV research team adopted two selection criteria to choose which technologies to take into consideration: first, a technology’s ability to actually change the energy system, based on deployment speed and forecast future costs of the technology; second, how the different technologies interact with each other. Each section of the report was written by an expert at DNV and examines the technical details, safety, effectiveness, and costs of a technology.

The following are the 10 technologies contained in the DNV report:
 
  • Floating wind turbines
  • Developments in solar PV
  • Waste-to-fuel and feedstock
  • Pipelines for low carbon gases
  • Meshed HVDC grills
  • New battery technologies
  • New shipping technologies
  • Electric vehicles and integration with grids
  • Green hydrogen production
  • Carbon capture and storage 2.0
 
DNV’s research focused on the interconnection and interdependence between transition technologies. For example, as it grows, solar PV is becoming increasingly supplemented by floating wind while green hydrogen has to take account of advancements in electricity from renewables and in storage and transport systems.

It is crucial that people dealing with energy understand how and when to deploy energy transition technologies and in what way these need to interact with each other to avoid missing Paris agreement ambitions. Climate change caused by carbon emissions and overexploitation of the resources that our ecosystem has made available to us is a complex issue for which there is no immediate and simple solution. Reaching the goal of zero emissions requires carefully planning out a programme of long-term strategic actions that will enable to grow electricity from renewable sources, speed up and improve the energy transition, and capitalise on CO2 capture and storage systems.

Although at a slow, less than satisfactory pace, global energy systems are transitioning from a system based on fossil fuels to one based on a vast range of more sustainable technologies able to reduce emissions considerably. However, it will take a lot of time before an existing technology will be displaced by a new one, and this is especially true because we are talking about changes that must take place all over the world.

Remi Eriksen, Group President and CEO of DNV said: "The world needs to transition faster to a deeply decarbonised energy system, reducing emissions by around 8% each year to ensure an energy future compliant with the 1.5-degree ambition set under the Paris Agreement. This urgent and complex challenge requires full energy system thinking: understanding the timeline and interdependencies of technologies, policies, and the difficult decisions that need to be made”.