Abstract
Environmental consequences of electricity generation are often determined using average emission factors. However, as different interventions are incrementally pursued in electricity systems, the resulting marginal change in emissions may differ from what one would predict based on system-average conditions. Here, we estimate average emission factors and marginal emission factors for CO2, SO2, and NOx from fossil and nonfossil generators in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) region during years 2007-2016. We analyze multiple spatial scales (all MISO; each of the 11 MISO states; each utility; each generator) and use MISO data to characterize differences between the two emission factors (average; marginal). We also explore temporal trends in emissions factors by hour, day, month, and year, as well as the differences that arise from including only fossil generators versus total generation. We find, for example, that marginal emission factors are generally higher during late-night and early morning compared to afternoons. Overall, in MISO, average emission factors are generally higher than marginal estimates (typical difference: ∼20%). This means that the true environmental benefit of an energy efficiency program may be ∼20% smaller than anticipated if one were to use average emissions factors. Our analysis can usefully be extended to other regions to support effective near-term technical, policy and investment decisions based on marginal rather than only average emission factors.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 14445-14452 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Environmental Science and Technology |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 24 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 19 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Jeremy Schreifels at the EPA for his support, including supplying data and sharing thoughts on our methods and results. We appreciate John Wachtler and Louise Segroves from the Minnesota Department of Commerce, Bruce Browers from the Barr Engineering Company and Aditya JayamPrabha-kar from MISO for helpful discussions. This article was developed under Assistance Agreement No. RD83587301 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication. This research was also supported by an Initiative for Renewable Energy & the Environment (IREE) Grant (RL-0011-13) at the University of Minnesota, and by the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making (CEDM) through a cooperative agreement between the National Science Foundation and Carnegie Mellon University (SES-0949710 and SES-1463492).
