Case Study: Research Policy Interface Thematic Group

EU Renewable Energy Directive 2018

The revised EU Renewable Energy Directive of 2018 increased the target for renewable energy share of overall energy use from 27% to 32% underpinned by UCC research.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32018L2001

Academics and Institutional Affiliation:

Paul Deane, Sean Collins, Brian Ó Gallachóir

University College Cork

Dolf Gielen, Asami Miketa, Deger Saygin and Laura Guiterrez

IRENA (international Renewable Energy Association)

Evidence of policy outcome referencing the role of the research:

Yes. The new EU Renewable Energy Directive referenced an EU-IRENA report (available from https://www.irena.org/publications/2018/Feb/Renewable-energy-prospects-for-the-EU) called Renewable Energy Prospects for the EU, which stated in the Executive Summary that “A dispatch model based on Plexos software and developed in co-operation with University College Cork”

Research undertaken that informed or underpinned the policy outcome:

The authors modelled the EU power system and undertook a number of scenarios with different levels of renewable generated electricity. The results showed that the EU could integrate a 50% share of renewable electricity by 2030. This was published in the journal Energy Strategy Reviews (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X18300798). This research then underpinned the above mentioned collaborative EU IRENA report and the increase in RE target.

Key learnings for you from this research-policy bridging process:

Collaboration and partnership with organisations is more impactful than individual research. The partnership between UCC and IRENA was hugely beneficial both from a research perspective and in terms of impact. IRENA hosted one of UCC’s PhD researchers for six months, which enabled this collaboration.

SDGs impacted:

SDG 7 & SDG 13