Sustainable electricity generation: the possibility of substituting fossil fuels for hydropower and solar energy in Italy

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Tarih

2021

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Yayıncı

TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC, 530 WALNUT STREET, STE 850, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19106

Erişim Hakkı

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States

Özet

Electricity remains the most important form of end-use energy consumption and an important factor for economic growth and development. However, electricity generation also constitutes a great source of concern for global warming and climate change with threats to sustainable development as fossil fuels dominate electricity generation fuel mix for most economies of the world. This is exactly the case for Italy with fossil fuels dominating electricity generation fuel mix over the last couple of decades. Thus, there is a need to reverse this trend by increasing the shares of renewable energy sources in the fuel mix. This study, therefore, investigates the potentials for renewable energy sources of hydropower and solar energy to substitute the fossil fuels of coal and natural gas in electricity generation for Italy. Adopting the ridge regression procedure to obtain the parameter estimates, the results provide evidence that substitution is possible among all fuels. While both hydropower and solar energy are found to be substitutable for the fossil fuels, solar energy is found to provide more substitutability than hydropower. This implies that Italy has the potential to gradually move away from the carbonintensive fossil fuels of coal and gas to more environmental-friendly solar energy and hydropower in the process of generating electricity.

Açıklama

Anahtar Kelimeler

Interfuel substitution, electricity, solar energy, hydropower, translog production function, Italy

Kaynak

International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology

WoS Q Değeri

Q2

Scopus Q Değeri

Q1

Cilt

28

Sayı

5

Künye