To reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and mitigate impacts of climate change, countries across the world have mandated quotas for renewable electricity. But a question has remained largely unexplored: would low-cost, firm, zero-carbon electricity generation technologies enhance—or would they displace—deployment of variable renewable electricity generation technologies, i.e., wind and solar photovoltaics, in a least-cost, fully reliable, and deeply decarbonized electricity system? To address this question, we modeled idealized electricity systems based on historical weather data and considered only technoeconomic factors. We did not apply a predetermined use model. We found that cost reductions in firm generation technologies (starting at current costs, ramping down to nearly zero) uniformly resulted in increased penetration of the firm technologies and decreased penetration of variable renewable electricity generation, in electricity systems where technology deployment is primarily driven by relative costs, and across a wide array of future technology cost assumptions. Similarly, reduced costs of variable renewable electricity (starting at current costs, ramping down to nearly zero) drove out firm generation technologies. Yet relative to deployment of “must-run” firm generation technologies, and when the studied firm technologies have high fixed costs relative to variable costs, the addition of flexibility to firm generation technologies had only limited impacts on the system cost, less than a 9% system cost reduction in our idealized model. These results reveal that policies and funding that support particular technologies for low- or zero-carbon electricity generation can inhibit the development of other low- or zero-carbon alternatives.

为了减少大气中的二氧化碳排放并减轻气候变化的影响，世界各地的国家已对可再生能源实行配额制。但是一个问题基本上还没有得到探讨：低成本，牢固，零碳的发电技术是否会以成本最低的方式充分利用或取代可变的可再生发电技术（例如风能和太阳能光伏发电）的部署？可靠且深度脱碳的电力系统？为了解决这个问题，我们根据历史天气数据对理想化的电力系统进行了建模，并且仅考虑了技术经济因素。我们没有应用预定的使用模型。我们发现企业发电技术的成本降低（从当前成本开始，降低到几乎为零），这会导致公司技术的普及率提高，可变可再生能源发电的普及率下降，在电力系统中，技术部署主要是由相对成本驱动的，并且涵盖了各种未来技术成本假设。同样，可变可再生电力成本的降低（从当前成本开始，下降到几乎为零）驱使了可靠的发电技术。但是相对于“必须运行”的公司发电技术的部署，当所研究的公司技术相对于可变成本具有较高的固定成本时，公司发电技术的灵活性增加对系统成本的影响有限，不到9在我们理想化的模型中，系统成本降低了％。