Amela Ajanovic

F. M. Andersen

Göran Andersson

Atle Rygg Årdal

Hans Auer

Ricardo Bessa

Marilyn A. Brown

Daniel Burke

Alexander Buttler

John Byrne

Luis Carr

Gianni Celli

Debora Coil‐Mayor

Nicolaos A. Cutululis

Lewis Dale

Salvatore D'Arco

Jan Dobschinski

Robert Entriken

Peter B. Eriksen

Ana Estanqueiro

Hossein Farahmand

Sebastian Fendt

Damian Flynn

Alain Forcione

Bethany Frew

Matthias Gaderer

Matthias D. Galus

Andrew Garnett

Emilio Ghiani

Madeline Gibescu

Emilio Gómez‐Lázaro

Chris Greig

Reinhard Haas

Anca D. Hansen

Ove Hoegh‐Guldberg

Hannele Holttinen

Daniel Huertas‐Hernando

Eduardo Ibanez

Shin‐ichi Inage

Kenneth B. Karlsson

Jonas Katz

Ben Kaun

Sila Kiliccote

Kyung N. Kim

Lena Kitzing

Juha Kiviluoma

Magnus Korpas

Thilo Krause

Joe L. Lane

H. V. Larsen

Warren Lasher

Joohee Lee

Chen‐Ching Liu

Joao A. P. Lopes

Peter D. Lund

Andre G. Madureira

Sergio M. Martinez

Manuel Matos

Nickie Menemenlis

Eric McFarland

Lutz Mez

Michael Milligan

Carlos Moreira

P. E. Morthorst

Carlo Obersteiner

Daniel Olsen

Mark O'Malley

Antje Orths

Dale Osborn

Paul Parker

Mary A. Piette

Fabrizio Pilo

Amalia Pizarro

Zakir Rather

Barry Rawn

Tobi Reid

Jenny Riesz

Erkka Rinne

Luis Rodrigues

Serafin van Roon

Ian H. Rowlands

Lisa Ruttledge

Diego Schmeda‐Lopez

Jürgen Schmid

Sascha T. Schröder

Jeongseok Seo

Naoki Shinohara

Bernardo Silva

Klaus Skytte

Simon Smart

Charles Smith

Lennart Söder

Michael D. Sohn

Gian G. Soma

Poul Sorensen

Benjamin K. Sovacool

Hartmut Spliethoff

Alexandru Stefanov

Morten Stryg

Job Taminiau

John Tande

Thomas Trotscher

Aidan Tuohy

Frans Van Hulle

Marina González Vayá

Ye Wang

Simon Watson

Jing Xie

Karl A. Zach

Robert Zavadil

Shan Zhou

The global energy system confronts huge challenges in the coming decades. The present‐day fossil‐fuel‐based energy production, which dominates the energy scenery, needs to be replaced by clean energy options to meet the climate change mitigation targets set in Paris in December 2015. At the same time, the demand for energy continues to grow, mainly due to growing prosperity in the less developed world. One of the main challenges will indeed be to secure a clean energy path to the future in the emerging economies, unlike the industrialized countries in the past.

Although global carbon dioxide emissions have increased almost by half since the days when the first climate agreement, under the UN auspice, was established in the 1990s, positive news is starting to emerge. In recent years global CO₂ emissions have been stabilized, but these now need to be sent on a declining trajectory. Much of the positive development can be contributed to the rapid market share of renewable energy sources, notably solar and wind power. The cost of these technologies is becoming competitive with their fossil counterparts. More importantly, future prospects for renewable energy technologies are bright: there still remains potential for major technology developments, efficiency improvements, and cost reductions, which together could make renewable energy the mainstream energy solution.

Indeed, respected energy scenarios, for example those developed by the International Energy Agency (IEA), indicate that in the power (electricity) sector, which is of upmost importance with respect to emissions, a significant share of future generation capacity investments will be concentrated in solar and wind power by the middle of this century. We are already witnessing that these variable renewable electricity forms deliver a major share of the national electricity supply in some countries, such as Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the United Kingdom. In the long‐term, more countries are envisioned to satisfy their clean energy demands through renewable energy.

Although renewable energy may play an important role across the entire energy system, it is particularly in the electricity sector where the new technologies will play a dominant role. Moreover, electricity demand is growing much faster than primary energy demand, due to electrification within our societies and everyday life, which stresses the role of electricity in the future energy system. Inherently, most new renewable power production technologies, such as solar and wind, but also marine power, do not rely on a supply of fuel, meaning that their instantaneous power production depends on the prevailing and time‐varying weather conditions. Thus, when transitioning to large‐scale deployment of renewable energy from variable sources, a key challenge will be matching supply of power against demand, on a range of time scales from seconds to hours, days, and weeks.

Large‐scale renewable electricity schemes in conjunction with existing energy systems can cause a range of different systemic issues, which need to be solved to make the best use of clean energy. Bridging the “new” and “old” energy is necessary, and both will need to coexist for some time, although the share from renewable sources will increase. An energy transition cannot be an on–off change, where we switch from old to new overnight! Integration of renewables into the energy system will thus be a critical issue, and of growing importance, in the coming years. We claim here that integration, in broad terms, will actually be the new hot topic in energy, if it is not already, which is not only linked to innovative technology solutions but which will also reshape energy markets, challenge existing business models for companies, and even integrate the consumer in a pivotal role.

Energy system integration of renewable energy is a wide field which covers themes ranging from modifying existing energy systems to better match renewables characteristics, introducing new flexibility measures and the evolution of energy‐limited technologies, exploiting communications and IT advancements within a smarter grid, and reforming markets, incentives, regulation and policy frameworks to obtain an operational, robust and economically viable energy resource portfolio.

The energy transition ahead is a huge challenge to all market actors. No one will be left untouched: policy makers, energy planners, businesses, developers, academia, and even end users need to be re‐educated to understand the new rules of the game. This book aims to provide timely guidance on how to prepare for the turbulence, which rushes toward us, presenting implementable solutions and proposing successful pathways moving forward.

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and EnvironmentAdvances in Bioenergy – The Sustainability ChallengeAdvances in Energy Systems – The Large‐scale Renewable Energy Integration Challenge

The editors wish to thank Sandra Grayson, Louis Manoharan, Adalfin Jayasingh, Shalisha Sukanya and Peter Mitchell from Wiley for their great help and assistance during the process of finalizing this book.