Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez

Last Name

Nuñez-Jimenez

First Name

Alejandro

ORCID

0000-0002-1505-9772

Organisational unit

03695 - Hoffmann, Volker / Hoffmann, Volker

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Publications 1 - 10 of 17

The TAPIR framework: A new tool to assess climate and energy demonstration projects
Bouallou, Rita; Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Aklin, Michaël (2025)
Addressing the climate and energy crises is an urgent priority. As emissions rise and energy supplies become less secure, governments and industries seek new solutions that can be deployed quickly and at scale. Synthetic fuels stand out as promising substitutes for fossil fuels that need minimal infrastructure changes and solve storage issues often raised by intermittent energy sources. However, their current production levels fall far short of the volumes required to achieve net-zero emissions. Additional efforts to speed up the development of synthetic fuels and of other climate and energy technologies are needed. As a central part of these efforts, demonstration projects provide practical proof of a new process or device's impact and viability, and help launch innovation ecosystems that eventually lead to the technlogy's commercialization. The Coalition for Green Energy and Storage (CGES) brings together stakeholders focused on accelerating the development of a climate-neutral and secure energy system in Switzerland by building several demonstration projects across Switzerland.
Can designs inspired by control theory keep deployment policies effective and cost-efficient as technology prices fall?
Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Knoeri, Christof; Hoppmann, Joern; et al. (2020)
Environmental Research Letters
Deployment policies based on economic incentives are among the most effective tools for speeding up the diffusion of clean energy technologies. Policy instruments such as feed-in tariffs have played a critical role in driving the growth of solar photovoltaics, and could accelerate the uptake of other technologies that are key to the decarbonization of energy systems. Historical experiences, however, show that failing to adjust economic incentives to falling technology prices can fundamentally undermine these policies' effectiveness and cost-efficiency. This paper addresses this challenge by assessing three novel policy designs. Based on control-theory principles, the proposed mechanisms modify incentives in response to changes in deployment, policy costs, or profitability for adopters. We assess the outcomes that each policy design would have achieved when applied to Germany's feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaics between 2000 and 2016. For this purpose, we developed an agent-based model that allows us to simulate the adoption decisions of individual households and medium-sized and large firms, as well as the evolution of technology prices. Our results show that responsive designs inspired by control theory might produce policies that follow their targets more closely, and at a lower cost. In addition, our analysis suggests that the studied designs could greatly reduce uncertainty over policy outcomes and windfall profits. This research also highlights the role of the temporal distribution of policy targets, and identifies policy design tradeoffs, drawing relevant implications for the design of future deployment policies.
The role of responsiveness in deployment policies: A quantitative, cross-country assessment using agent-based modelling
Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Knoeri, Christof; Rottmann, Fabian; et al. (2020)
Applied Energy
A rapid, global diffusion of clean energy technologies is central to the efforts to curb global carbon dioxide emissions. Deployment policies based on economic incentives have proved effective in accelerating the uptake of renewable technologies, such as solar photovoltaics, and could quicken the adoption of others. However, their outcomes were often uncertain and costly as many countries struggled to adjust incentives while technology prices fell rapidly. This study addresses this challenge by investigating the role of responsiveness – the policy’s ability to react to changes in the context in which it operates – in the design of mechanisms for adjusting incentives over time. This paper employs an agent-based model to evaluate quantitatively six policy designs with varying degrees of responsiveness for adjusting a feed-in tariff for solar photovoltaics in three countries – Germany, Spain, and Switzerland – for over a decade. Our first finding confirms that more responsive policy designs tended to produce policies that meet their goals more accurately and certainly. Between the least and the most responsive designs, deviation from policy goals was reduced by 60% and uncertainty was reduced by more than 50%. Our results also suggest that policy responsiveness could have diminishing returns: improvements in the policy’s accuracy and certainty tended to become smaller while policy costs per capita tended to become larger as design responsiveness increased. Finally, simulation results show how country-specific attributes influence the diffusion pattern of the technology. These findings have major implications for the design of future deployment policies supporting the diffusion of clean energy technologies.
The Impact of self-consumption regulation on individual and community solar PV adoption in Switzerland: An agent-based model
Mehta, Prakhar; Griego, Danielle; Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; et al. (2019)
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
The new Energy Act in Switzerland came into force in January 2018 with very encouraging provisions for community solar PV systems – clearer financial and legal structures under the ZEV (Zusammenschluss zum Eigenverbrauch). However, there is no ex-ante scientific research as to how this new policy will fare, especially with changing electricity prices and falling solar PV costs. Agent-based modelling is a useful technique to simulate the adoption of new technologies and is used for community solar PV adoption in this work. The agent-based model developed in this research uses energy data generated from a district model of nearly 2000 building blocks in the city of Zürich using the City Energy Analyst (CEA). This approach is used to analyse the dynamic levels of adoption of individual and community solar PV systems when modelling factors such as geographical location of agents, environmental attitudes and peer effects, electricity and solar PV prices as well as legal regulations. A scenario without any such regulation is also modelled for comparison. The current work indicates that adoption levels are exceeded with the large building blocks considered, and the ZEV regulations do incentivize community PV system adoption for greater adoption levels at better system economics.
Competitive and secure renewable hydrogen markets: Three strategic scenarios for the European Union
Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; De Blasio, Nicola (2022)
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy
The European Union (EU) considers renewable hydrogen a key priority for achieving climate neutrality and therefore needs to develop competitive and secure renewable hydrogen supplies. International trade could play a major role in meeting EU hydrogen needs and will require the creation of highly integrated markets between member states. This article analyzes three strategic scenarios in which the EU prioritizes energy independence, cost optimization, or energy security using an optimization model of international hydrogen trade based on production potentials and cost curves in EU countries and potential trade partners. The results show that, while the EU could become hydrogen independent, imports from neighboring countries could minimize overall costs despite higher transportation costs. However, imports from neighboring countries may reproduce past energy dependence patterns. Our results show that to limit reliance on a single supplier without increasing overall costs, the EU could leverage long-distance imports.
COVID-19 and the academy: It is time for going digital
Schwarz, Marius; Scherrer, Aline; Hohmann, Claudia; et al. (2020)
Energy Research & Social Science
In many countries, the lock-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic triggered discussions on the use of digital interaction formats for academic exchange. The pace with which researchers adopted digital formats for conferences, lectures, and meetings revealed that currently available tools can substitute many of the physical interactions in the workplace. It also showed that academics are willing to use digital tools for scientific exchange. This article sheds light on scholars' experiences with digital formats and tools during the pandemic. We argue that digital interaction formats increase the inclusivity of knowledge exchange, reduce time and costs of organizing academic interactions, and enable more diverse workspaces with geographical and temporal flexibility. However, we also observe that digital interaction formats struggle to reproduce social interactions such as informal discussions, raise new concerns on data security, and can induce higher stress levels due to the blurring of the boundaries between work and private spaces. We argue that digital formats are not meant to substitute physical interactions entirely, but rather reshape how research communities operate and how academics socialize. We expect hybrid formats to emerge, which combine digital and physical interaction formats, and an increase in digital interactions between geographically distant working groups. We conclude that the time has come for digital interaction formats to be part of a new regime in the field of academic exchange.
Beyond innovation and deployment: Modeling the impact of technology-push and demand-pull policies in Germany's solar policy mix
Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Knoeri, Christof; Hoppmann, Joern; et al. (2022)
Research Policy
Governments around the world try to accelerate sociotechnical change toward sustainability by introducing policy mixes that combine technology-push and demand-pull instruments. Beyond innovation and deployment, other objectives, such as domestic job and industry creation, are usually part of these policy mixes. However, little is known about how policy mixes should be designed and interactions between policy instruments considered when governments try to achieve multiple objectives simultaneously. We address these questions using an agent-based model of the sociotechnical system for solar photovoltaics in Germany that simulates technology adoption, industry dynamics, international spillovers and trade. By changing public spending on research and development and the solar feed-in tariff, forty-five variations of the historical policy mix in Germany are systematically evaluated. The results show that a narrow focus on innovation and deployment outcomes by academic researchers can lead to recommendations for the design of policy mixes that compromise key dimensions of sociotechnical change, such as job creation. Moreover, the simulations reveal that, because of path-dependent interactions between policy instruments, minor changes in the design of policy instruments can lead to vastly different policy outcomes. These findings have important implications for the literature on policy mixes, technology-push and demand-pull instruments, and sociotechnical transitions.
Support for climate policy researchers
Hanna, Ryan; Dugoua, Eugenie; Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; et al. (2022)
Science
Let it grow: How community solar policy can increase PV adoption in cities
Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Mehta, Prakhar; Griego, Danielle (2023)
Energy Policy
Decarbonizing urban energy consumption is critical for addressing climate change, yet renewable power installations in cities are rare due to limited space and economic unattractiveness. Community solar, where multiple electricity users share the electricity generated by their rooftop PV systems, could help overcome these barriers and accelerate PV adoption in cities. Using an agent-based model, we simulated the decision-making of nearly 5000 building owners in a city district in Zurich, Switzerland, and assessed three locally relevant policy scenarios: no community solar, community solar with adjacent buildings, and community solar with buildings within a 100-meter radius. The results show that allowing community solar with adjacent buildings increases the installed PV capacity in 2035 by 1%, as greater economies of scale and higher self-consumption make PV adoption more economically attractive. A more permissive policy, allowing community solar with buildings within a 100-meter radius, provides more opportunities to communities to grow over time and results in 21% more PV installed capacity in 2035 than without community solar. These findings demonstrate the potential of community solar to accelerate PV adoption in cities and underscore the significant role of policy design in achieving this goal.
Decline processes in technological innovation systems: Lessons from energy technologies
Bento, Nuno; Nuñez-Jimenez, Alejandro; Kittner, Noah (2025)
Research Policy
Technology decline is gaining attention in sustainability transitions because it can accelerate the adoption of sustainable alternatives and mitigate the lingering impacts of polluting technologies. However, a systematic analysis of the processes driving the decline of established technologies remains absent. This paper addresses this gap by introducing the concept of “decline functions,” inspired by the functional analysis of technological innovation systems (TIS). While traditional TIS functions make emerging systems thrive, decline functions contribute to the unravelling of faltering systems. Four decline functions are suggested: delegitimation, guidance toward exit, market decline, and resource demobilization. These functions are applied to four energy-technology cases: incandescent light bulbs, oil-based heating, nuclear power and internal combustion engine cars. Data were collected through a directed literature review. Our analysis reveals that all four decline functions were present and played important roles across the cases. These functions offer a systematic framework for analyzing and comparing cases of declining TIS and can provide actionable insights for policymakers to accelerate sustainability transitions.

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Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez

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