Study of the electricity transition for Western Europe : a comparison between EROI and ROI

Driven by concerns about global warming and limited energy resources, the European Union has set ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The electricity sector is projected to play a key role in this decarbonisation. For analysing possible transition pathways for the decarbonisation of the energy system, long-term planning and careful research is required. Energy system optimisation models are often used to model power systems and plan future investments. Frequently, these models minimises the Levelised Cost Of Energy (LCOE). In 2018, a model that maximises the Energy Return On Investment (EROI) was developed at UCLouvain to simulate the energetic transition of Western-Europe. This model is compared to a state-of-the-art commercial model, PLEXOS by Energy Exemplar. Thanks to this comparison between an LCOE based energy system optimisation model and an EROI based model, this study was able to highlights notable results. The impact of not having a cheap storage solution in a system with a 100% renewable energy sources penetration has been shown. The optimal energy systems from both models have been compared to the European Commission's Reference Scenario. Finally, the LCOE has been shown to increase with an increasing share of renewables.