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Register a new userHistorical Costs of Coal-Fired Electricity and Implications for the Future
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We study the costs of coal-fired electricity in the United States between 1882 and 2006 by decomposing it in terms of the price of coal, transportation costs, energy density, thermal efficiency, plant construction cost, interest rate, capacity factor, and operations and maintenance cost. The dominant determinants of costs have been the price of coal and plant construction cost. The price of coal appears to fluctuate more or less randomly while the construction cost follows long-term trends, decreasing from 1902 - 1970, increasing from 1970 - 1990, and leveling off since then. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of using long time series and comparing electricity generation technologies using decomposed total costs, rather than costs of single components like capital. By taking this approach we find that the history of coal-fired electricity costs suggests there is a fluctuating floor to its future costs, which is determined by coal prices. Even if construction costs resumed a decreasing trend, the cost of coal-based electricity would drop for a while but eventually be determined by the price of coal, which fluctuates while showing no long-term trend.
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China has implemented retrofitting measures in coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) to reduce air pollution through small unit shutdown (SUS), the installation of air pollution control devices (APCDs) and power generation efficiency (PGE) improvement. The reductions in highly toxic Hg emissions and their related health impacts by these measures have not been well studied. To refine mitigation options, we evaluated the health benefits of reduced Hg emissions via retrofitting measures during Chinas 12th Five-Year Plan by combining plant-level Hg emission inventories with the China Hg Risk Source-Tracking Model. We found that the measures reduced Hg emissions by 23.5 tons (approximately 1/5 of that from CFPPs in 2010), preventing 0.0021 points of per-foetus intelligence quotient (IQ) decrements and 114 deaths from fatal heart attacks. These benefits were dominated by CFPP shutdowns and APCD installations. Provincial health benefits were largely attributable to Hg reductions in other regions. We also demonstrated the necessity of considering human health impacts, rather than just Hg emission reductions, in selecting Hg control devices. This study also suggests that Hg control strategies should consider various factors, such as CFPP locations, population densities and trade-offs between reductions of total Hg (THg) and Hg2+.
The transition to a future electricity system based primarily on wind and solar PV is examined for all regions in the contiguous US. We present optimized pathways for the build-up of wind and solar power for least backup energy needs as well as for least cost obtained with a simplified, lightweight model based on long-term high resolution weather-determined generation data. In the absence of storage, the pathway which achieves the best match of generation and load, thus resulting in the least backup energy requirements, generally favors a combination of both technologies, with a wind/solar PV energy mix of about 80/20 in a fully renewable scenario. The least cost development is seen to start with 100% of the technology with the lowest average generation costs first, but with increasing renewable installations, economically unfavorable excess generation pushes it toward the minimal backup pathway. Surplus generation and the entailed costs can be reduced significantly by combining wind and solar power, and/or absorbing excess generation, for example with storage or transmission, or by coupling the electricity system to other energy sectors.
A change from a high-carbon emitting electricity power system to one based on renewables would aid in the mitigation of climate change. Decarbonization of the electricity grid would allow for low-carbon heating, cooling and transport. Investments in renewable energy must be made over a long time horizon to maximise return of investment of these long life power generators. Over these long time horizons, there exist multiple uncertainties, for example in future electricity demand and costs to consumers and investors. To mitigate for imperfect information of the future, we use the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) deep reinforcement learning approach to optimize for a low-cost, low-carbon electricity supply using a modified version of the FTT:Power model. In this work, we model the UK and Ireland electricity markets. The DDPG algorithm is able to learn the optimum electricity mix through experience and achieves this between the years of 2017 and 2050. We find that a change from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewables, based upon wind, solar and wave would provide a cheap and low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.
Electricity accounts for 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing emissions related to electricity consumption requires accurate measurements readily available to consumers, regulators and investors. In this case study, we propose a new real-time consumption-based accounting approach based on flow tracing. This method traces power flows from producer to consumer thereby representing the underlying physics of the electricity system, in contrast to the traditional input-output models of carbon accounting. With this method we explore the hourly structure of electricity trade across Europe in 2017, and find substantial differences between production and consumption intensities. This emphasizes the importance of considering cross-border flows for increased transparency regarding carbon emission accounting of electricity.
The contradiction between physical and economical sciences concerning the growth of the production/consumption mechanism is analyzed. It is then shown that if one wishes to keep the security level stable or to enhance it in a growing economy the cost of security grows faster than the gross wealth. The result is a typical evolution in which the net wealth increases up to a maximum, then abruptly collapses. Besides this, any system of relations based on a growing volume of exchanges is bound to go progressively out of control. The voluntary blindness of the ruling classes toward these facts is leading our societies to a disaster. This fate is not inescapable provided we learn to dismantle the myth of perpetual growth.
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