Our Western society is in crisis. It is increasingly obvious, that the crisis is not only economic, but it is more serious - a societal crisis. The post-war (still) high prosperity of the Western civilization is due to fossil fuels and bipolar world. Unfortunately the bipolar world ended with disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the world of fossil fuels is only an episode on the timeline of humanity. Even from the perspective of only two next generations, nowadays we are not able to predict what will be the life of our children and grandchildren like. Undoubtedly, for preservation of the core values of the Western civilisation (democracy, standard of living) transformation of both the energy and transport systems, and the way of life will be crucial. For this transformation we have much less time than the development of the Western society took from the beginning of the industrial revolution, because of the energy return of the remaining fossil fuel resources is permanently decreasing.

Our Western society is in crisis. It is increasingly obvious, that the crisis is not only economic, but it is more serious - a societal crisis. The post-war (still) high prosperity of the Western civilization is due to fossil fuels and bipolar world. Unfortunately the bipolar world ended with disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the world of fossil fuels is only an episode on the timeline of humanity. Even from the perspective of only two next generations, nowadays we are not able to predict what will be the life of our children and grandchildren like. Undoubtedly, for preservation of the core values of the Western civilisation (democracy, standard of living) transformation of both the energy and transport systems, and the way of life will be crucial. For this transformation we have much less time than the development of the Western society took from the beginning of the industrial revolution, because of the energy return of the remaining fossil fuel resources is permanently decreasing.

The article presents the current state of the issue of flat hybrid photovoltaic-thermal (FVT) collectors, focused on the differences between the basic types of collectors, their advantages and disadvantages. There is also presented an overview of the current global manufacturers. The article aims to highlight the problems but also the opportunities associated with different types of the hybrid FVT collectors.

In a decision-making process – such as the one about national energy strategy – an economic assessment of alternative energy systems should account for social costs of electricity (and heat) production. This encompasses both private costs of the producer(s) as well as external costs, which are primarily associated with health and environmental impacts. Because the risks are not fully reflected in the prices of electricity, the application of alternative approaches is needed for monetary valuation of externalities. In this respect, ExternE is currently the most worked-out approach, which is already more than 20 years used and developed in the research projects for the European Commission. Fact that ExternE treats the analysis of externalities from bottom to up (bottom-up approach), makes possible to quantify marginal impacts of different energy facilities using different fuel types, in a particular place and time. At the same time ExternE enables to structure external costs estimates by type of the impact on health risks, loss of agricultural production and biodiversity, corrosion of materials and damage associated with climate change.

In practical aspects of recycling of photovoltaic modules have been relatively minor shift. It was, however, adopted a new legislation both at the European level and in the Czech Republic. Requirements of the Czech legislation in the case of photovoltaic panels are beyond the requirements of the European Directive and the Czech decree on waste electrical and electronic equipment. Operators of PV power plants (owners of photovoltaic modules) are obliged to provide financing for the recycling by 1^st January 2019, even though the large-scale recycling will come into effect the earliest after 2030 and real cost of the recycling is not known recently.

Last day of July the Minister of Industry and Trade Martin Kuba hosted briefing on the planned update of the State Energy Policy. In his 40-minute presentation he presented the main points of the upcoming strategy document that aims to comments from other ministries. State Energy Policy document should be determining the direction of energy development in the next 25 years.

The USA introduced anti-dumping duty to Chinese photovoltaic panels, such a move is going in the EU too. China responded by introducing duties on solar silicon imported from the USA. The result in each case is the price increase and extension of the panels in photovoltaics being competitive with electricity from fossil sources.

This paper investigates the use of activity-explicit Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACC) to design abatement strategies. It shows that introducing inertia, in the form of the cost in time of available options, changes significantly the message from MACCs. With an abatement objective in cumulative emissions (e.g. emitting less than 200 GtCO2 in the 2000-2050 period), it makes sense to implement some of the most expensive options before exhausting the potential of the cheapest ones. With abatement targets expressed in terms of emissions at one point in time (e.g. reducing emissions by 20% in 2020), it can even be preferable to start implementing the most expensive options if their potential is high and their inertia is significant. Also, the best strategy to reach a short-term target depends on whether this target is the ultimate objective or there is a longer-term target. The best way to achieve Europe's goal of 20% reduction in emissions by 2020 is different if this objective is the ultimate objective or if it is only a milestone in a trajectory toward a 75% reduction in 2050. The cheapest options may be sufficient to reach the 2020 target but may create a carbon-intensive lock-in and making the 2050 target unreachable. These results show that without perfect foresight and perfect credibility of the long-term carbon-price signal, a unique carbon price in all sectors is not the most efficient approach. Overlapping sectoral objectives, such as the 20% renewable energy target in Europe, fuel-economy standards in the auto industry, or changes in urban planning, building norms and infrastructure design may be part of an efficient mitigation policy.
The paper was presented on EAERE 2012 conference.
Full version of the paper is available here: Vogt_WPS5803.pdf

Prevailing formulations especially in the Czech mass media could give the impression that the German nuclear phase-out is a hysterical reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident. In fact it was only a return to the original plan, which was enacted in an agreement negotiated with the operators of nuclear power plants.

A simplified procedure is described which determines the sizes of the PV array and wind turbine in a PV/wind energy hybrid system. Using the measured values of solar and wind energy at a given location, we review a method based on a simple graphical construction which determines the optimum configuration of the two generators that satisfies the energy demand of the user throughout the year.