Combusting fossil fuels to produce electricity is the single largest contributor to sector-level, anthropogenic carbon pollution. Because sector-wide policies are often too unwieldy to implement, however, some researchers have recommended reducing electricity-based CO2emissions by targeting the most extreme emitters of each nation’s electricity industry. Here, we use a unique international data source to measure national disproportionalities in power plant CO2emissions and estimate the fraction of each country’s electricity-based CO2emissions that would be reduced if its most profligate polluters lowered their emission intensities, switched to gas fuels, and incorporated carbon capture and storage systems. We find that countries’ disproportionalities vary greatly and have mostly grown over time. We also find that 17%–49% of the world’s CO2emissions from electricity generation could be eliminated depending on the intensity standards, fuels, or carbon capture technologies adopted by hyper-emitting plants. This suggests that policies aimed at improving the environmental performance of ‘super polluters’ are effective strategies for transitioning to decarbonized energy systems.
Although a recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates that CO2emissions from power generation have now fallen below emissions from the transportation sector, electricity use remains a significant part of human's environmental footprint since fossil fuels are the major energy resource for electricity generation worldwide. This explains the continual effort by policy makers to develop a remedy to mitigate carbon emissions. It is then critically important to properly account for the emissions associated with electricity generation, delivery, and consumption. In particular, it is critical to be able to allocate emissions to the relevant electricity consumers creating the demand that results in a polluting emission. Therefore, in this paper a
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10458748
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy
- Volume:
- 39
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1944-7442
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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