Electricity system sustainability transitions: An integrated methodology

The electricity system transition into a sustainable state depends on several factors-energy resource and technology choices, economic and environmental targets, human and social development needs. To achieve such a transition, the policy makers need to know how sustainability of the electricity system is affected by these factors and to make optimal choices of technology, resource, size, location, etc. There are synergies and tradeoffs amongst these choices. We first discuss a multi-dimensional and hierarchical framework to assess the sustainability of electricity system. Secondly, we propose an optimization-based modelling framework to integrate the macro model of national electricity system sustainability with the bottom-up reference electricity system. This is being done with multi-attribute technology characterization across entire electricity supply chain. We elaborate how our approach explicitly captures the synergies and the tradeoffs among investment decisions, and can be used to prioritize optimal technology solutions for electricity system sustainability transition.