Thomas Bruckner, born in 1966, completed his doctoral studies in theoretical physics at the University of Würzburg, Germany. After four years at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), he led the research group on Energy System Optimization and Climate Protection at the Institute for Energy Engineering at the Technical University of Berlin (2000 – 2008). Currently, he holds the...

Decarbonizing economies is an enormous task. Public debate often focuses on the job loss of workers in fossil industries. Why costly? Who most affected? Can delaying transition reduce welfare costs? What other policy instruments may be available? We present a simple search framework that calculates life-time costs loss. apply model to archetypical industry - coal mining. Based universe German e...

The study concerns promising coal-fired power plants that can gain an advantage over traditional options in the context of decarbonization. calculations show combined-cycle with integrated coal gasification and carbon dioxide recirculation may have better technical economic characteristics compared to existing processes (one- two-stage). improves efficiency process (the combustible gases yield ...

Since 1990, Spain has undergone a rapid decarbonization process focused on closing carbon-intensive facilities such as coal mines and coal-fired power plants promoting renewable energy sources. These have been the main source of income employment in regions where they were located, addition to being major carbon emissions. Their closure can huge impact socioeconomic demographic composition thes...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations will require reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by as much as 80% by 2050. Subnational efforts to cut emissions will inform policy development nationally and globally. We projected GHG mitigation strategies for Minnesota, which has adopted a strategic goal of 80% emiss...

Humanity is a fossil-fueled civilization with large influence on the environment. The World Health Organization (WHO) has pointed out that air pollution now single biggest environmental threat to human health. quality in Petroșani, traditional mining region from Jiu Valley bituminous coal basin, Romania, rarely debated; however, it not often investigated. In this paper, main sources of Petroșan...

The issue of electricity-natural gas interdependence is becoming a major energy policy and regulatory issue in all jurisdictions around the world. In this paper, we develop a model that looks at natural gas and electricity simultaneously, and apply it to the scenarios for European decarbonization at the horizon 2030/2050. The increased role of gas fired plants in RES dominated electricity marke...

The economics of decarbonization have become an important topic over the last decade, as many research groups have explored the costs and technologies of decarbonization. These scenarios have been widely used by institutions like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many national advisory bodies across the globe. However, most of these scenarios and cost estimates have been ...

Mitigating the global warming greenhouse effect while maintaining a fossil fuel economy, requires improving efficiency of utilization of fossil fuels, use of high hydrogen content fossil fuels, decarbonization of fossil fuels, and sequestering of carbon and CO2 applied to all the sectors of the economy, electric power generation, transportation, and industrial, and domestic power and heat gener...