Reimagining the Electricity Sector in Island Nations with Virtual Power Plants

Distributed virtual power plants (VPPs) can revolutionize the Caribbean’s energy landscape. These networks of decentralized and distributed energy sources (DERs) are aggregated and actively controlled by a VPP aggregator, enabling hundreds or thousands of devices to operate as a unified system offering an innovative solution to the region’s energy challenges. Many island nations remain heavily dependent on expensive, imported and polluting fossil fuels for electricity generation, leaving them vulnerable to volatile global fuel prices and frequent power outages due to aging grid infrastructure. Climate change further exacerbates these challenges, with hurricanes posing a constant threat to power systems and economic …

Supporting a Reliable Grid: The Opportunity for Virtual Power Plants in Michigan

Michigan has an aging distribution grid with high incidents of blackouts. It also suffers from narrowing capacity availability for resources to meet peak demand. Virtual power plants (VPPs) — aggregations of distributed energy resources (DERs) that can provide utility-scale and utility-grade grid services — can help address those challenges while supporting the state in reaching its ambitious clean energy standard of 80% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.

According to the Department of Energy, VPPs can be configured to provide a range of benefits, including reliability and resilience, affordability, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, resource adequacy, and more.

This brief outlines …

Energy Transition Outlook: China 2025

No one who has visited China regularly over the past decade or so will have failed to notice the skies above the cities becoming clearer and the streets increasingly filled with electric cars and buses. These are the visible signs of a vast decarbonization effort taking place in China. From a position where, in 2023, China was responsible for a third of the world’s energy-related CO2 emissions, by 2050 that share will have reduced to a fifth. In absolute terms, China’s emissions will reduce by a staggering 70%. As they show in this Outlook, this is related mainly to the …

Energy Transition Outlook: Norway 2025

Just as Oslo’s electricity consumption has expanded unimaginably from the perspective of 1900, the whole of Norway’s power consumption has grown enormously, and now extends to the electrification of parts of offshore oil and gas production on the Norwegian continental shelf. Ninety percent of this electricity is still supplied by Norway’s hydropower systems, which have become the envy of nations. However, as shown in this forecast, Norway’s electricity consumption is going to grow in the next 25 years by almost as much as it has over the past 100.

The reason for accelerated electrification in Norway — beyond what can …

Energy Transition Outlook: Spain 2025

When DNV began in Spain in 1999, their market activities were centred on the early development of renewable energy. Wind and solar power are now the dominant energy sources, and they forecast they will grow 4-fold and 6-fold, respectively, by 2050. The new challenges lie in electrifying more of Spain’s energy use and upgrading grid integration to handle all the renewable electricity.

Hydrogen generation and infrastructure will also be part of the future in an energy system that has already significantly decarbonized the power sector and aims to reduce carbon emissions further. DNV foresees hydrogen playing a key role in …

Energy Transition Outlook: UK 2025

As we enter 2025, the energy industry stands at a pivotal moment in its history. Despite global economic headwinds and geopolitical uncertainties, we’ve witnessed unprecedented momentum in clean energy deployment and DNV forecasts that the world will hit peak emissions this year.

The UK’s energy landscape is transforming rapidly, with record-breaking renewable energy generation and falling costs of clean technologies setting new benchmarks for what is possible. The past year has demonstrated the UK’s potential on this transition journey. We’ve seen wind power generation reach historic highs, battery storage capacity expand significantly and Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption showing signs of …

Energy Transition Outlook: Germany 2025

Germany has long been a front runner in the energy transition and has established a national target to achieve a net zero energy economy by 2045. This investigation finds that Germany will miss this target — but by a narrow margin. We forecast that emissions will fall by 95% by 2050. That is a very big step towards decarbonization and is largely facilitated by a more than doubling of electricity use across the country in the next 25 years. Electrification brings efficiency benefits, which can be seen in the energy intensity of the economy (i.e. energy use per unit of …

2023 Year in Review: Climate-driven Global Renewable Energy Potential Resources and Energy Demand

This collaboration involving the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), highlights how climate conditions impact energy supply and demand in the context of sources such as solar, wind and hydropower.

The report underscores the importance of integrating climate insights into energy planning to improve reliability, anticipate demand peaks, and strengthen infrastructure resilience. It advocates diversified energy portfolios, new market structures, and better data sharing to optimise resource allocation and enhance energy security. The report stresses the need for cross-sector …

Energy Transition Outlook 2025

Emissions peaking is, of course, good news, and a milestone for humanity. However, since emissions are cumulative, we must now focus on how quickly emissions decline. Worryingly, this forecast decline is very far from the trajectory required to meet the Paris Agreement targets. The ‘most likely’ energy transition described in the pages that follow is one that leads to warming of 2.2°C by the close of this century. If we want a faster transition, we must understand what is working and what is not.

This Outlook quantifies the many efficiencies gained from a doubling of electrification globally in the next …

Flexible, Clean Industry And Sustainable Energy Power Strong Economies: A Case Study in Pueblo, Colorado

The Comanche 3 coal plant in Pueblo, Colorado is scheduled to retire in 2031. Pueblo community leaders, utility Xcel Energy, and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission are debating plans for replacing the plant. The energy parks concept offers a win-win-win solution that would diversify Pueblo’s economy by keeping cheap energy in the community to power local industry instead of sending it to other parts of the state, generating property tax payments that peak at $40 million annually, and creating hundreds of permanent jobs in engineering, business operations, and industrial plant operation. This “energy park” combines solar and wind to generate …