Characteristics and quality of energy scenarios

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1, University of Graz, course: Angewandte Betriebswirtschaftslehre, language: English, abstract: [...] Renewable energy sources on the other hand have been the major primary energy sourcebefore the era of the black gold. Today they amount for about 15% of the total primary energydemand, with biomass and hydro-power having with 10% and 5% the biggest shares. All theother renewable energy sources, as wind power, solar heat and photovoltaic, play a minor rolesince they don t even cover 1% of the primary energy demand. Renewable energy sourcescould solve both major problems of the energy sector, since they are carbon neutral and bydefinition renewable. The drawbacks are that at the moment most renewable sources are notcompetitive and need to be subsidized by governments and the technical challenge of storingthe produced energy.It is easy to understand that the future of the energy sector is highly uncertain and that toolsthat are extrapolating past trends are of no use under these circumstances. In the last yearsseveral energy scenarios have been conducted, trying to display the major uncertainties. Notsurprisingly the results are strongly varying, leading to question of the characteristics and thequality of scenarios. However there has been no analysis of the characteristics and quality ofenergy scenarios, which is being done in this bachelor thesis.After a short introduction of the history of scenarios in chapter 2.1, a general framework ofthe scenario development process is developed in chapter 2.2 and its possible variations arelisted in chapter 2.3. The result is a scenario typology consisting of 15 variables that can beused to examine the characteristics and the quality of scenarios. The scenario typology is thenapplied at a total of 5 scenarios at chapter 2.4. The sample of scenarios was chosen to displaythe broad range of different scenario developers. It consists of the DESERTEC scenario of acharitable trust, the EU-Roadmap 2050 of a political institution, the Greenpeace [R]evolutionof an NGO, the World Energy Outlook of an intergovernmental institution and the ShellEnergy scenarios of a company dealing in the energy sector.