Measuring the Impact of Renewable Energy Technologies on Energy Security: A Multi-level Assessment of the German Heating Sector

Abstract: This thesis has been written as input for a publicly funded research project on the economic evaluation of the implications of renewable energy expansion in the German electricity and heating sector. So far, the project has only qualitatively assessed the impact of renewable energy deployment on energy security. This thesis presents the first approach of its kind to quantitatively assess the influence of renewable energy deployment on energy security. The German heating sector is taken as a case-study to carry out this assessment. The political, societal, and academic discourse on energy security in Germany is focussing on supply-based price and quantity risks and discusses energy security mainly as security of supply. Based on this narrow definition, the overall impact of renewable energy deployment is assumed to be beneficial to energy security. This thesis scrutinises this hypothesis in developing a methodological approach aiming at appropriately assessing the complexity and heterogeneity of energy security and at broadening the currently narrow discourse on energy security in Germany. This thesis highlights that the complexity and heterogeneity of energy security can be delineated with the help of dimensions (i.e. different stakeholders’ views on and perceptions of energy security) and characteristics (i.e. more or less pronounced requirements of energy systems and their subcomponents necessary to meet energy security). Within these dimensions and characteristics, indicators allow to measure the impact of the deployment of renewable energy technologies to energy security. This thesis further reveals that the deployment of renewable energy technologies in the German heating sector could be beneficial, harmful, or neutral to energy security depending on the deployed technology and the regarded subsector or end-use of thermal energy.