Monitoring & Modelling Initiative on the Targets for Renewable Energy - MITRE

Mitre was set out to monitor the European Union Renewable energy targets and to inform key policy and decision makers of the employment benefits of a proactive renewable strategy. The challenge was encompassed in the Mitre mission statement: 


Meeting the Targets & Putting Renewables to Work

 

The European Commission had set a target of 12% renewable penetration by the year 2010. However, total European energy consumption was rising so rapidly that the percentage share of renewable energy in the EU's overall share had remained static the past years, and could have actually declined by 2010 unless careful attention was paid to promoting and accelerating the adoption of renewables. Therefore, it was important to monitor the share of renewables in the EU's energy mix and understand the reasons for low penetration and actions that can be taken to improve renewable energy prospects.

 

This Alterner II project monitored the progress of renewables and undertook dynamic modelling of the factors that affect the future adoption of renewables based on the data from the monitoring exercise.

MITRE produced public domain reports every 6 months aiming at policy makers. These reports described the factors that needed to be targeted in order to have the most significant effect on the deployment of renewables, whether they were political or public opinion, technical or economic.

This project had a number of objectives. The most important was to support governments, the private sector, regional and local authorities and other key stakeholders in achieving at least those renewable energy targets set out in the White Paper and CTO.

This project was carried out using a modelling framework, based upon SAFIRE integrated with the RIOT renewable input-output table model. SAFIRE was used in two ways. Firstly, its database was used to assess the history of RES in Europe, and secondly, SAFIRE run every 6 months to assess the changing potential for renewables in comparison to the White Paper targets. The SAFIRE-RIOT link was used to perform detailed employment and economic analysis of the benefits of renewable energy development. The consortia for this project was co-ordinated by ESD—Energy for Sustainable Development, Ltd, and formed by Ecotec, NTUA - RENES, EUFORES, DITEC - Politecnico di Milano.

 

Click here to enter the project homepage.

Click here to get the final report.

Additional information April 2009

Recently, EUFORES received requests for a paper titled: "The Impact of Renewables on Employment and Economic Growth" from 1999. This paper was published within an ALTENERII Project coordinated by a consortium led by ECOTEC Consulting, in which EUFORES participated.

Since the original link seemed to have been deleted you can download the report here.