Possible Pathways toward Carbon Neutrality in Thailand’s Electricity Sector by 2050 through the Introduction of H2 Blending in Natural Gas and Solar PV with BESS

Abstract

To avoid the potential adverse impacts of climate change from global warming, it is suggested that the target of net zero emissions should be reached by this mid-century. Thailand is aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Since electricity generation is one of the largest producers of carbon dioxide emission, the associated emissions must be greatly reduced to achieve the targets mentioned above. Thus, new generation expansion plans must be well developed. This paper discusses the development of generation expansion plans considering Thailand’s latest policies along with enhancement of the existing multi-period linear programming model, allowing new electricity generation technologies having low emissions, e.g., solar PV with battery and hydrogen blending in natural gas, to be integrated into generation expansion planning. Then, four generation expansion plans with different levels of hydrogen blending in natural gas are proposed and discussed. It is found that Thailand can achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 by promoting more use of renewable energy altogether with trade-off between land for solar PV installation and amount of hydrogen blended in natural gas. The lesson learned from this study provides crucial information about possible pathways to achieve carbon neutrality in the electricity sector for policy makers in other countries.

Enhancing Generation Expansion Planning With Integration of Variable Renewable Energy and Full-Year Hourly Multiple Load Levels Balance Constraints

“…These constraints ensure that the capacity of generation units in each level is sufficient to meet their corresponding rapid changes in demand due to VRES, with a particular focus on balancing fast-response generation units and their corresponding demand. The methodology for GEP used in this paper is a linear programming model, as proposed in [15] and [47], which approximates the dynamic programming of GEP to a sequence of UC problems. The UC problem is then solved using the priority list method.…”

“…The proposed load classification and GEP methods are tested with the latest power development plan of Thailand [48]. With the fast computational time obtained from the GEP technique proposed in [15] and [47], the proposed approach can account for input data uncertainty by solving multiple GEP problems with varying input data and distinct individual probabilities.…”

“…The models of these generation units are introduced in this subsection. These models were initially introduced in [15] as an economic dispatch model and were further improved in [47] by incorporating a reliability evaluation model. In this paper, these models are slightly modified and are revisited for more clarity.…”

Strategic energy flows in input‐output relations: A temporal multilayer approach

“…Renewable energy is indeed a sector that is developing in Thailand. With its current level of carbon emissions, the Thai government is following neighbourhood countries by promoting renewable energy to cut the dependency on fossil fuel imports, especially natural gas, and reduce the environmental impact from traditional energy sources (see, e.g., Reference 50). The depletion of natural gas reserves and the increasing fuel import bills are becoming major challenges for this country.…”

Regulatory challenge of the license and permission for energy industry operation on renewable energy growth in Thailand

“…Thailand pledged at COP26 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and net zero carbon dioxide by 2065 (Diewvilai and Audomvongseree, 2022). It means that, after the year 2030, the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) must fall by 6% each year, which is a challenge and a race against time.…”