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

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

In the near future people will face challenge of 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 struggle 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 the CO₂ emission.

Introduction

In both Austria and the Czech Republic energy consumption is increasing. However, 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. The electricity production is highly influenced by geographical conditions that prevail in each country. The other factors that influence 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 be changed also in the Czech Republic when civil society and media make bigger efforts.

Energy production in the Czech Republic and Austria

In the Czech Republic more than half of electricity is generated in thermal power plants[[[1]]], whereas in Austria it is only 17 %. This huge disproportion can be explained with several factors. Firstly, in the Czech Republic, there are sufficient supplies of coal and uranium. Secondly, there are historical causes. During the communist era, there were only little concerns about the negative impacts of coal burning on the environment in Czech and the mentality of people is changing slowly. In 1990s when the solar era in Austria kickstarted, in Czech the main concern was to start nuclear power plant Temelín. The Czech energy concept for 2011-2060 counts with enormous reduction share of coal in energy mix in favour of nuclear energy.

In Austria 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 one is a risk 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 other option than to use nuclear energy. We cannot burn coal, solar and wind power would not be sufficient to meet the energy needs of our country and in contrary to Austria, we have almost no opportunity to use hydro energy.

The possibility to use energy from renewable resources is highly influenced by geography. The hydro potential in Austria is huge, more than 60 % of electric energy is made out of 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 in almost fulfilled. 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 period of sufficient sun light, which is mainly from October to March. Those energy resources can be used as side resources for households or small networks of consumers, not for big cities, industry or even whole country. As we could hear during our excursion in solar factory, the energy also cannot be used for the whole year without a storage system. Disadvantages of the chargers are that they are very expensive and have quite short lifespan. On the other hand, very positive from the sustainability point of view is that 100 % of parts of certain types of PV panels are recyclable. Moreover, average lifespan of panels is 25 years, but they could work even longer with reduced efficiency. On top of that, the 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 supplemental source of energy and only in 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 concern specific climatic and other conditions and to combine the most suitable types of energy resources. Applied to 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.