Climate change, assuring energy security and increasingly vulnerable and expensive energy supplies represent important global risks.
Developing appropriate strategies for managing these energy-related risks requires an understanding of the energy systems and technologies which can contribute to their alleviation. It is also necessary to understand how (in what circumstances and at what scale) and when these systems and technologies can be deployed (particularly with regard to the timing of their commercial availability).
IRGC has long recognised the need for an appropriate risk governance approach for energy technologies. As an initial step, IRGC has decided to undertake a pre-project in which we will conduct a systematic review of the scenarios for energy technology development and deployment.
Conducted by a team from the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis at the Paul Scherrer Institut, the review will carefully compile and evaluate information and identify the key factors affecting the deployment of energy technologies as well as the dynamics of technology uptake, including technology-specific characteristics (e.g. performance, cost) and external influences (e.g. policy, resources, economic environment).
The report of the pre-project is expected in early 2009.