An Energy Cost Assessment of Future Energy Scenarios: A Case Study on San Pietro Island

The need for a clean and affordable energy supply is a major challenge of the current century. The tough shift toward a sustainable energy mix becomes even more problematic when facing realities that lack infrastructures and financing, such as small islands. Energy modeling and planning is crucial at this early stage of the ecological transition. For this reason, this article aims to improve an established long-run energy model framework, known as OSeMOSYS, with an add-on tool able to estimate different types of Levelized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE): a real and theoretical LCOE of each technology and a real and theoretical system LCOE. This tool fills a gap in most modeling frameworks characterized by a lack of information when evaluating energy costs and aims at guiding policymakers to the most appropriate solution. The model is then used to predict future energy scenarios for the island of San Pietro, in Sardinia, which was chosen as a case study. Four energy scenarios with a time horizon from 2020 to 2050-the Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario, the Current Policy Projection (CPP) scenario, the Sustainable Growth (SG) scenario, and the Self-Sufficient-Renewable (SSR) scenario-are explored and ranked according to the efforts made in them to achieve an energy transition. Results demonstrates the validity of the tool, showing that, in the long run, the average LCOE of the system benefits from the installation of RES plants, passing from 49.1 euro/MWh in 2050 in the BAU scenario to 48.8 euro/MWh in the ambitious SG scenario. On the other hand, achieving carbon neutrality and the island's energy independence brings the LCOE to 531.5 euro/MWh, questioning the convenience of large storage infrastructures in San Pietro and opening up future work on the exploration of different storage systems.

Automated summary

The need for a clean and affordable energy supply is a major challenge of the current century, especially for small islands with limited infrastructure and financing. This study focuses on improving an established energy model framework by adding a tool that estimates the cost of electricity for different technologies and systems. The model is used to predict future energy scenarios for San Pietro island in Sardinia and rank them based on their efforts in achieving an energy transition. The results demonstrate the importance of renewable energy in reducing costs and raise questions about the convenience of large storage infrastructures.