Sustainable electricity generation: the possibility of substituting fossil fuels for hydropower and solar energy in Italy
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.
Cilt
28Sayı
5Bağlantı
https://hdl.handle.net/11363/5678Koleksiyonlar
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