ABSTRACT

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 carbon-intensive fossil fuels of coal and gas to more environmental-friendly solar energy and hydropower in the process of generating electricity.

摘要

电力仍然是终端能源消费的最重要形式，也是经济增长和发展的重要因素。然而，由于化石燃料在世界大多数经济体的发电燃料组合中占主导地位，因此发电也构成了全球变暖和气候变化的一个重要问题，对可持续发展构成威胁。意大利的情况正是如此，过去几十年化石燃料在发电燃料组合中占主导地位。因此，有必要通过增加可再生能源在燃料组合中的份额来扭转这一趋势。因此，本研究调查了水电和太阳能等可再生能源在意大利发电中替代煤炭和天然气化石燃料的潜力。采用岭回归程序来获得参数估计值，结果证明在所有燃料中替代是可能的。虽然发现水电和太阳能都可以替代化石燃料，但发现太阳能比水电具有更多的可替代性。这意味着意大利有潜力在发电过程中逐步从煤炭和天然气等碳密集型化石燃料转向更环保的太阳能和水力发电。