Comparison of Czech and Austrian approaches to the production of electricity from renewable resources

Comparison of Czech and Austrian approaches to the production of electricity from renewable resources

In the near future, people will face the challenge of an emerging energy crisis and will have to solve this problem. We will deplete the resources of fossil fuels, but our energy consumption will be increasing. There are two options how to deal with this situation after that. We can use either nuclear energy or energy from renewable resources. In both ways, our fossil fuels consumption will decrease and so will the CO₂ emissions.

Introduction

In both Austria and the Czech Republic, energy consumption is increasing. However, the energy mix of the Czech Republic and Austria is very different. Austria is on a good path to be sustainable, whereas the situation in the Czech Republic is rather controversial. Electricity production is highly influenced by geographical conditions that prevail in each country. The other factors that influence the energy mix are the decisions of policy makers and the mentality of citizens. In Austria, there are more generous subsidies for renewable resources, better marketing and public awareness. These are the factors that can also be changed in the Czech Republic if civil society and the media make greater efforts.

Energy production in the Czech Republic and Austria

In the Czech Republic, more than half of electricity is generated in coal-fired power plants, whereas in Austria it is only 17 %. This huge disproportion can be explained by several factors. Firstly, in the Czech Republic, there are large supplies of coal. Secondly, there are historical causes. During the communist era, there were few concerns about the negative impacts of coal burning on the environment in Czech, and the mentality of people is changing only slowly. In the 1990s, when the solar era in Austria kick-started, the main concern in the Czech Republic was to construct the nuclear power plant at Temelín. The Czech energy concept for 2011-2060 counts on an enormous reduction in the amount of coal in the energy mix in favour of nuclear energy.

In Austria, the majority of people disagree with using nuclear energy. There are two main reasons. The first one is the issue of unsolved nuclear waste disposal, and the second is the risk of radioactive leakage. These concerns are well-founded. However, in the Czech Republic, if we want to be energetically self-sufficient and environmentally friendly we have no option other than to use nuclear energy. We cannot burn coal, and solar and wind power would not be sufficient to meet the energy needs of our country, and in contrast to Austria, we have almost no opportunity to use hydro energy.

The possibility of using energy from renewable resources is highly influenced by geography. The hydro potential in Austria is huge: more than 60 % of electricity is produced from hydroelectric power plants. On the other hand, in the Czech Republic, only 3 % of electricity is produced in hydroelectric power plants. The potential of Czech rivers is almost fully tapped. Further expansion is very limited due to unfavourable conditions. If the Czech Republic started to build new hydroelectric power plants, it would be feasible only with huge investments and even then the amount of electricity generated by those power plants would be very small.

As for other renewable resources, solar and photovoltaic panels can be used for electricity production only during periods of sufficient sun light, which is mainly from October to March. Those energy resources can be used as additional resources for households or small networks of consumers, not for big cities, industry or even a whole country. As we could hear during our excursion to a solar factory, the energy also cannot be used for the whole year without a storage system. The disadvantages of the battery storage units are that they are very expensive and have quite a short lifespan. On the other hand, what is very positive from the sustainability point of view is that 100 % of parts of certain types of PV panels are recyclable. Moreover, the average guarantee of panels is 25 years, but they could work even longer with reduced efficiency. On top of that, development is moving forward rapidly and solar energy is becoming more profitable and cheaper.

Conclusion

It is not a solution to install solar panels or wind mills everywhere just to have energy, especially given the current technologies. Even in Austria, solar power is only a supplementary source of energy and only on a local scale. It is impossible to meet the growing energy demand only with solar and wind power, as they are not stable and available all the time. In addition to energy savings, it is important to take into account specific climatic and other conditions and to combine the most suitable types of energy resources. Applied to the Austrian and Czech context, this means that in Austria energy production will be more or less based on renewable resources, whereas in the Czech Republic we will depend on nuclear energy.