Impacts of Renewable Portfolio Standards

Lyon, Thomas P.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2719354

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…Generation from natural gas surpassed that of coal in 2016, and wind now generates nearly as much electricity as conventional hydroelectric sources (US EIA 2017b). There is also evidence that state policies encouraging renewable generation have lowered CO 2 emissions (Lyon 2016, Prasad and Munch 2012, Shrimali and Kniefel 2011.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the evolution of power sector carbon intensity in the United States

Schivley

Azevedo

Samaras

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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In the United States, the electricity sector is a major focus for implementing policies to meet national, state, or local mandatory or voluntary CO 2 emissions reductions goals. Thus, it is important to have timely and available information on greenhouse gas emissions generated by the power sector to ensure that the policies implemented achieve intended emissions reductions. This work is the first to develop a transparent method to compute the emissions intensity for the US electricity section from 2001 through 2017 at different temporal (annual, quarterly, monthly) and regional (US, NERC, and state) levels. We find that between 2001 and 2017 the average annual CO 2 emissions intensity of electricity production in the United States decreased by 30%, from 630 g CO 2 kWh −1 to 439 g CO 2 kWh −1 . This change in CO 2 intensity is attributable to an increase in generation from natural gas and wind accompanied by a reduction in coal-fired power generation. The decline in carbon intensity varies across regions, with the largest reduction between 2001 and 2017 from power plants in the Northeast (58%) and the smallest reduction from power plants in the Texas region (27%). In absolute terms the South-central region saw the largest decrease in emissions intensity (358 g CO 2 kWh −1 ) and Texas saw the smallest (164 g CO 2 kWh −1 ). We also find that replacing coal generation with natural gas or renewables has increased the monthly correlation of CO 2 intensity between regions. At the state level, Delaware saw the largest decrease in CO 2 intensity (466 g CO 2 kWh −1 ), and Idaho is the only state that has not decreased CO 2 intensity since 2001.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the evolution of power sector carbon intensity in the United States

Schivley

Azevedo

Samaras

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…There is a large and growing literature on intensity instruments, that is, caps imposed on emission intensities of individual firms, similar to firm level emission taxes and standards (see, for example, Ebert (1998), Fischer (2003, Quirion (2005), Fischer and Fox (2007), Jotzo and Pezzey (2007), Newell and Pizer (2008), Webster, Wing and Jakobovits (2010), Fischer and Springborn (2011), Holland (2012), Branger and Quirion (2014), and Caparros, Just and Zilberman (2015)). 2 Intensity instruments are a special form of performance standards and have been adopted to regulate firm emission, such as in the lead phase-out program of the United States during the 1980s and in cases of state level renewable portfolio standards that require utilities to have certain percentages of total electricity generated from renewable sources (Lyon (2016)). Most of the literature on intensity instruments builds on the seminal work of Weitzman (1974) and studies the effects of uncertainty and information asymmetry about abatement costs on instrument rankings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggregate Emission Intensity Targets: Applications to the Paris Agreement

Zhao

2018

SSRN Journal

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We develop the concept of aggregate emission targets, which are goals for national emissions but do not dictate the forms of regulation used to achieve the goals. We compare aggregate emission intensity, quantity, and price targets adopted at the national level but implemented cost effectively at the firm level. We obtain simple ranking conditions that depend on the slope ratio of marginal emission damage and marginal abatement cost curves, and threshold parameters determined by the variance and covariance of GDP and business-as-usual emission. We apply the ranking conditions to the top 12 CO2 emitters with specific GHG targets in the Paris Agreement, and obtain a robust result that intensity targets dominate quantity targets for most of these nations. JEL: Q58

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“…When considering NPV, we do not employ an electricity system model and simply assume that average electricity retail prices increase by 5% per year. This is based on a general practice in most studies evaluating technology profitability, such as Braun et al (2009); Kaldellis et al (2009); (Lyon, 2016;Ross, 2018;Schwarz et al, 2018). Hence, the main difference between SNPV and NPV in our analysis is that the price of electricity for SNPV is endogenous, i.e.…”

Section: Npv and System Npvmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating consumer investments in distributed energy technologies

et al. 2021

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The adoption of key sustainable technologies by end-users, mainly solar photovoltaic or electrical energy storage, strongly depends on their economic attractiveness, which is typically assessed with metrics of future cash flow, especially Net Present Value (NPV). Yet analyses using NPV typically do not consider the time-dependent evolution of electricity systems in the short-and long-terms. We show this to be of critical importance toward accurately calculating the profitability of these technologies. By linking an energy system model with a power system model, we observe substantial differences between NPV estimates calculated with and without representing potential evolutions of the electricity system. Our results suggest that not accounting for short-and long-run changes in the electricity system could underestimate the NPV of an investment in photovoltaic and storage by around 20%, especially in scenarios with high levels of renewables, moderate flexibility, and high electrification in the system. Using system-dependent cash flow metrics can have a major impact on end-users' understanding of energy technology profitability.

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Impacts of Renewable Portfolio Standards

Cited by 5 publications

References 41 publications

Assessing the evolution of power sector carbon intensity in the United States

Assessing the evolution of power sector carbon intensity in the United States

Aggregate Emission Intensity Targets: Applications to the Paris Agreement

Evaluating consumer investments in distributed energy technologies

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