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The potential of the usage of renewable energy in the Czech
Republic
Vukica Janković
Helena Mitwallyová
Vukica Janković: University of Economics, Prague, Nám. Winstona Churchilla 4, Prague 3, 13000, Czech Republic. Email:jankovic.vukica@gmail.com
Helena Mitwallyová: University of Economics, Prague, Nám. Winstona Churchilla 4, Prague 3, 13000, Czech Republic. Email:mitwally@volny.cz
Abstract
Energy is main resources for economy development in every country and have important and significant influence in all societies. The well-being of people, industry and economy depends on safe, secure, sustainable and available energy. Energy sector plays an important role for the Czech Republic’s economy and for the regional energy security. The country has established a commitment with the EU to achieve an 8% share of electricity generated from RES in domestic electricity generation by 2010 and achieve a share of 13% of energy made from RES per final consumption before 2020. This paper deals with renewable energy sources in general and with special emphasis on renewable energy sources in the Czech Republic.
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1. Introduction
Renewable energy sources play an important role today and provide a significant potential for the future. Renewable energy sources also called alternative energy sources. Developing of alternative energy can become important factor of sustainable development of economy. Renewable energy sources include biomass, hydropower, geothermal, solar, wind and marine energy. The renewable energies are domestic, available in any country, they are clean and inexhaustible energy resources. They are natural energies which does not have a limited supply.
At present, consumption of fossil fuels is increasing along with the growth of population all over the planet. That makes additional pressure on the basic resources of the planet and also has significant adverse impact on the environment, resulting in increasing of health risks and the threat of global climate change.
Increasing CO2 emission and increasing consumption of nonrenewable energy sources (coal,
oil and natural gas) and their limited reserves are factor which influence higher interests for renewable energy. Also, renewable energy sources have become more important because of their characteristics of reproducibility and less harmful impact on the environment.
Renewable energy sources supply 16 % of the total world energy consumption and the share of renewable energy sources is expected to increase very significantly. According to the International Energy Agency achieving the goal of halving global energy related CO2 emissions
by 2050 will require a doubling (from today’s levels) of renewable generation by 2020.
Growth of renewable energy sources reflects growth and investment in all market sectors. During the period 2005-2010 total global capacity of many renewable energy technologies grow to average rate around 15 to nearly 50 % annually. Total investment in renewable energy reached 211 billion $ in the 2010. Wind power added the most new capacity, followed by hydropower and solar PV (Sawin, L.J. at all, 2011).
Governments and consumers take measures to increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies for three principal reasons, which are interlinked:
• to improve energy security;
• to encourage economic development, particularly associated with rural and agricultural sectors, or with innovation and high tech manufacturing;
• to protect the climate and the wider environment from impacts of fossil fuels use.
At early 2011, at least 119 countries had some type of policy target or renewable support policy at the national level, up from 55 countries at early 2005.
In general renewable forms of energy are considered “green” because they cause little depletion of the Earth’s resources, have beneficial environmental impacts and cause negligible emissions during power generation.
It is becoming clear that future growth in the energy sector will be primarily in the new regime of renewable energy, and to some extent natural gas-based systems, not in conventional
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oil and coal sources. Industry specialists suggest that the future growth in the energy sector will be primarily in renewable energy (Herzog, A.V. at all. 2001).
2. Benefits of Renewable Energy Use
The use of renewable energy sources have many advantages and offer many environmental benefits compared to conventional energy sources. Each type of renewable energy also has its own special advantages that make it uniquely suited to certain applications. Some of the benefits includes: renewability, environment protection, savings of non-renewable energy resources, energy efficiency, availability, low exploitation costs, increase of employment, energy security and independence, independence from frequent market change.
From these advantages, the main benefits is the fact that these sources of energy are renewable. That mean we can use renewable energy repeatedly without depleting it. That is the main advantage to conventional energy sources which are non-renewable and have limited resources. We will never run out of renewable energy (at least in our lifetime, as long as humans will exist). For example: we will always have possibility to use sun energy. The amount of solar energy intercepted by the Earth every minute is greater than the amount of energy the world uses in fossil fuels each year. The wind will always exist. This advantage can provide the energy security in many parts of the world.
A second advantage is that we can stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity. With renewable energy we can use as much electricity as we like without adding to global warming.
Renewable sources are available. A kay aspect of energy availability is a diversity of energy sources. Conventional fuels and renewable energy sources have very different characteristics in terms of the possibility to storage, extraction requirements, amount of reserves, susceptibility to meteorological conditions and localization of the supply chain. These differences lead to a different risk profile associated with the availability of the either source, according to the Policy consideration for developing renewables.
The use of renewable energy sources has no contribution to global warming and no polluting emissions. In the process of transformation of renewable energy in other forms of energy, releases small amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Almost none of them release gaseous or
liquid pollutants during operation. (Hepbasli, 2008). Renewable resources are ‘’green’’, or environmentally friendly. This is because they do not emit carbon dioxide (the biggest contributor to global warming) into the atmosphere. Renewable technologies are considered as clean sources of energy and optimal use of these resources minimize environmental impacts, produce minimal secondary wastes and there are sustainable based on current and future economic and social societal needs. Renewable energy technologies provide an excellent opportunity for mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and reducing global warming through substitution conventional energy sources (Panwar, Kaushik, 2010).
The growth of renewable energy sources may also have the potential to create new industries, to stimulate employment, through the creation of jobs in new ‘green’ technologies. Development
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and implementation of renewable energy project in rural areas can create job opportunities and minimizing migration towards urban areas.
Using renewable energy resources we saved non-renewable energy resources, which can have positive effects on energy security and stability in the long term.
Renewable energy sources also offers a range of others exceptional benefits, including: a decrease in external energy dependence; a boost to local and regional component manufacturing industries; promotion of regional engineering and consultancy services specializing in the utilization of RE; increased R&D, decrease in impact of electricity production and transformation; increase in the level of services for the rural population; creation of employment, etc. (Hepbasli, 2008).
However, there are some few disadvantages of renewable energy sources. The main barrier is that renewable energy sources are not competitive with fossil fuels because of high costs of investment and non-competitive price of output. However, in time, this problem will only be lessened because of development and modernizing renewable energy sources technologies.
3. Renewable energy sources in the Czech Republic
Energy sector plays an important role for the Czech Republic’s economy and for the regional energy security. Like in a many others countries, the main objective of energy sector is to satisfy the energy needs of the Czech Republic for a long-term horizon. The key priorities of energy sector are efficiency, safety, independence and sustainable development. Safe and secure supply of energy can be reach by using of all available domestic energy sources in the most environmentally friendly manner.
The Czech Republic has one of the lowest energy important dependencies in the European Union, mainly due to its domestically produced solid fuels. It is an important producer of hard coal and imports are limited to natural gas and oil. Coal is the main energy source for electricity production. The second important source is nuclear power. The share of renewable energy sources has also been increasing, although still below EU average.
The energy policy framework of the Czech Republic is set by the State Energy Policy adopted in 2004. The basic priorities are to strive for independence from foreign energy sources; maximize the safety of energy sources, including nuclear; and promote sustainable development.
The main national instrument laying down the general principles of the country’s renewable energy policy is The Act on the Promotion of Use of Renewable Sources (“Zákon o podpoře využívání obnovitelných zdrojů”). Another relevant legal source is the general Energy Law (“Energetický zákon“).
Addition of non-renewable energy sources (especially coal reserves), renewable sources represent an important part of domestic sources and are likely to graduate develop in the future. The Czech Republic started from a low share of renewable energy sources of 1,9 % in 1990. which mainly consisted of large hydro energy plants built. In 2009 share of renewable energy sources in gross production electricity reached 5,66% (Bufka, A. at all, 2010).
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The Czech Republic is the third-largest electricity exporter in the European Union, after France and Germany. Electricity generation is largely composed of domestic coal (60%) and nuclear (32%), whereas natural gas (3.5%) is mainly used as complementary fuel. In the total electricity production, share of renewable sources have increased during the years. According to the ‘’Report on the fulfillment on the indicative target for electricity production from renewable energy sources’’, in the 2004 the share of electricity production from renewable energy sources in gross national electricity consumption participate by 4,00 %, and during the years the share was: in the 2005 (4,48 %), in the 2006 (4,91 %), in the 2007 (4,74 %), in the 2008 (5,18 %), in the 2009 (6,8 %). In the 2008, the largest electricity production from renewable energy sources was from hydroelectric power plants, followed by biomass. In the same year biogas and wind power plants were significant sources of electricity from renewable energy sources – they almost doubled their output compared to the year before. The renewable energy sources share in national consumption amounted to 8,3% in 2010 (Jirouš, F. at all.,2011).
According to the same report, among the individual renewable sources, the percentage share was: hydroelectric power plants 2,42 %; biomass 1,40%; biogas 0,32%; photovoltaic systems 0,02 %; solar power plants 0,02 %; solid communal waste 0,0 1%.
According to the State National Renewable Energy Action Plan approved by the Czech government on 25 August, 2010, national target is 13,5 % share of energy from renewable energy sources in gross final energy consumption and 10 % share of renewable energy in the transport sector energy consumption by 2020. Czech renewable energy policy is mainly driven by EU policies and by the government’s efforts to increase the share of domestic resources in the energy mix.
Table no. 1. Electricity generation from RES in 2009 Hydro
power plants
Biomass Biogas Municipal
solid waste Wind power plants Photovoltaic systems (licensed) Gross production electricity MW 2 429 620,0 1 396 261,1 441 266,1 10 937,4 288 067,0 88 807,0 Share of gross production electricity % 2,95% 1,70% 0,54% 0,01% 0,35% 0,11% Share of gross dom. consumption electricity % 3,54% 2,04% 0,64% 0,02% 0,42% 0,13% Share of green electricity % 52,19% 30,00% 9,48% 0,23% 6,19% 1,91%
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In 2009 the gross production of electricity from renewable energy sources has a total of 4,655 GWh. In 2008, produced 3,731 GWh. Gross production of electricity from renewable energy sources and increased by 924 GWh (Bufka, A. at all, 2010).
State financial support of renewable energy sources in the Czech Republic is defined by the price decisions of the Energy Regulatory Office. Producers can choose between a fixed energy purchase price and so-called green bonus, which is a contribution to the market purchase price of electricity. Many investors are, mainly because of these state subsidies, interested in building small groups of wind power plants as well as whole wind farm (Belatka, 2009).
The Czech government plans to expand and develop the role of renewable energy sources in its energy mix to meet its stated energy security objectives and its obligations under EU directives. According to International Energy Agency statistics, the share of renewable energy sources in total primary energy supply increased from 2 % in 2000 to 5.4 % in 2008. The share of renewable energy ranks the Czech Republic in the twentieth position among the 28 IEA member countries.
Table no. 2. Sources of renewable energy and number of objects
Sou rce: http://calla.ecn.cz/atlas
Priorities of the National Program for the energy management and the use of renewable sources of energy are:
Maximization of energy effectiveness and electricity effectiveness and the use of energy savings;
Higher use of renewable and secondary energy sources; Higher use of alternative fuel in transport.
It is important fact that generation of the electricity from renewable sources is supported by the government of the Czech Republic. One of the reasons is to fulfill the commitment regarding share of electricity generated from renewable sources at the total electricity generation. Signing the Kyoto agreement, the EU accepted the obligation to increase this share up to 21%.
Sources of renewable energy Number of objects
1. Small hydro power plants 560
2. Biomass heating 230
3. Biogas Resources 177
4. Wind power 79
5. Solar thermal systems 419
6. Photovoltaics 299
7. Heat pumps 112
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Renewable resources in the Czech Republic are understood in the following way: renewable non-fossil natural energy resources which are wind energy, sun shine energy, geothermal energy, water energy, soil energy, air energy, biomass energy, landfill gas energy, mud gas energy and biogas energy. (Law n. 180/2005 from the Collection of Laws About the Support of Electricity Production from Renewable Resources). They are using in electricity, heating, cooling and transport.
According to the data of Ministry of industry and trade of the Czech Republic, in electricity generation from renewable energy sources the highest share has hydropower (54%), than biomass (31%), biogas (7%) and wind energy (7%).
The main barrier to the future development of renewable energy sources in the Czech Republic lies in the grid connection procedure. Grid capacity was not sufficient for additional RES-E installations, the electricity generated by PV or wind power plants shall be eventually traded on the free market (Jirouš, F. at all, 2011).
3.1. Hydropower
Hydropower energy is one of the most important renewable sources for electricity production. Water flows in the Czech Republic are governed by a total of five administrations. They are: River Elbe, Vltava River, Eger River, River Morava and Odra River. Hydropower plants represent about 3 % of total generation. Small hydroelectric power station in the Czech Republic produce an average of 680 GWh a year, and 1580 GWh come from the large plants. The Czech Republic is eight largest producer of electricity from small hydropower installation (<10 MWe) in the EU. The installed capacity of hydroelectric power plants is over 1 GWe, and represents 8 % of the total installed capacity of sources for electricity production. The achievable potential is one tenth of the currently used output. In 2008 the highest share of renewable electricity production came from hydropower and biomass. The total installed capacities of hydropower plants are 2 202 MW. The highest install capacities are in the Středočeský region (679,9 MW) and in Olomoucký region (662,4 MW).
3.2. Wind power
Wind plants produced 245 GWh in 2008. By the end of 2008, 150 MW of wind power had been installed in the Czech Republic (Bufka, A. at all, 2010). Wind energy potential depends on geographical and climatic conditions in a given region. It can be determined from long-term measuring data of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It is estimated that available wind energy potential in the Czech Republic corresponds to a power of about 2700 MW (Belatka, M. 2009). Since, this paper is focused on capacities of wind energy in the Czech Republic, more discussion will be presented in fourth chapter.
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3.3. Solar energy
On the surface of the Czech Republic turns solar radiation with an average intensity of 800 W/m2, depending on location and climatic conditions. According to the conditions of the country, the photovoltaic system with 1 kW can produce 900 to 1,000 kWh of electricity per year (ČEZ, 2007). Energy production from solar thermal collector was 202 TJ. Total area of glazed collectors in 2008 was 165 000 m2 (Bufka, A. at all, 2010). Gross electricity production from photovoltaics was 12,9 GWh. The best solar resources are located in Central and especially South Moravia, around the city of Brno (Jirouš, F. at all., 2011). Greatest potential is in photovoltaic systems for houses, and therefore most system could be servicemen on rooftops and facades of residential buildings. Total installed capacity in 2010 amounted 1 959,1 MW. From that, the highest level of installed capacities was in Jihomoravský region (442,8 MW).
3.4. Biomass
The most frequently used renewable resources in the Czech Republic is biomass (Obršálová, at all. 2011). The use of biomass for energy purposes in the CR is supported in accordance with the Biomass Action Plan for the country. The Czech Republic supports the use of biomass for heating and investment, particularly at this time the Green Investment Scheme, which is in contrast for example, from purchase of electricity from RES meaningful (Káňa, J. 2011). According to the natural conditions of the Czech Republic, biomass has the highest exportable potential. Around 70% of the biomass used for energy in the Czech Republic is used to produce heat. However, biomass has limits, refers to transportation. Growing biomass for energy purposes is only effective within a range of 50 km from its intended location of use. Gross electricity production from biomass amounted to 1 396 GWh in 2009. Heat production from biomass amounted to 15 463 TJ (without households) (Bufka, A. at all, 2010).
3.5. Biofuel
In the Czech Republic has traditionally been widely used as part of the anaerobic fermentation technology of municipal waste water treatment plant. Biogas produced here is used primarily for own need for operations (heating reactors, heating buildings, hot water). Development is currently enjoying the construction of biogas plants. In 2009 it was used for energy purposes 259.6 million m3 of biogas, which is much more than in year 2008 (175.6 million m3). Most of this increase involved in production biogas plants, where the volume of biogas produced increased from 51 to 132 million m3 (Bufka, A. at all, 2010).
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3.6. Geothermal energy
In the Czech Republic the share of large heating installation using geothermal energy is likely to be marginal. From many studies identified at least 60 sites suitable for the production of electricity with a total capacity of 250 MW and heat output for heating with about 2 000 MW. In the far term, after additional research at selected locations, CEZ group identify the possibility of building power plants with a total capacity of 3200 MW. These installations are relatively evenly distributed around the country and their annual production will be about 26 TWh. One of the hottest areas of the Czech Republic covers the Cheb and Sokolov basins. However utilization of these two areas is limited by their inclusion in protection zones of the Františkovy Láznì and Karlovy Vary spas (Myslil,V. at. all, 2005). The well-known geothermal project is Litoměřice.
Conclusion
Search for sources of energy which will not further affect the pollution of the environment, resulted that renewable energy sources become part of a strategy of energy development in almost all countries in the world. Considering required investment, developed countries are leading in technology of development, implementation, and in using renewable energy. The advantages of renewable energy compared to conventional fuels are numerous, and we can extract the main reproducibility and total lack of emissions into the atmosphere. Renewable resources are and the important factors for regional development.
The Czech Republic is one of the least dependent European countries from import of fuels due to large reserves of coal, which is the main resource for electricity generation. Another important resource is nuclear energy. The third important resource is renewable energy that is slowly getting an important role in the energy market. In accordance with the national action plan, country was set a target to increase the share of renewables to 13% by 2020. The Czech Republic from the renewable energy sources used hydro energy, biomass, solar and wind energy. Renewable energy sources cannot be the basis for future energy production in the Czech Republic but part in the energy mix. Apart from the positive effects related primarily to the absence of harmful emissions into the atmosphere, various studies and researches have shown that the use of these energy sources required large financial investments in investment costs, the energy is more expensive, and that their use should be based on a precise assessment of the existing potential. It is important fact that generation of the electricity from renewable sources is supported by the government of the Czech Republic. One of the reasons is to fulfill the commitment regarding share of electricity generated from renewable sources at the total electricity generation.
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