More Like this

1. Accelerating China’s power sector decarbonization can save lives: integrating public health goals into power sector planning decisions

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf84b  

   Luo, Qian; Garcia-Menendez, Fernando; Lin, Jiang; He, Gang; Johnson, Jeremiah X. (September 2023, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2022, aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The power sector will play a major role in this decarbonization process due to its current reliance on coal. Prior studies have quantified air quality co-benefits from decarbonization or investigated pathways to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. However, few have jointly assessed the potential impacts of accelerating decarbonization on electric power systems and public health. Additionally, most analyses have treated air quality improvements as co-benefits of decarbonization, rather than a target during decarbonization. Here, we explore future energy technology pathways in China under accelerated decarbonization scenarios with a power system planning model that integrates carbon, pollutant, and health impacts. We integrate the health effects of power plant emissions into the power system decision-making process, quantifying the public health impacts of decarbonization under each scenario. We find that compared with a reference decarbonization pathway, a stricter cap (20% lower emissions than the reference pathway in each period) on carbon emissions would yield significant co-benefits to public health, leading to a 22% reduction in power sector health impacts. Although extra capital investment is required to achieve this low emission target, the value of climate and health benefits would exceed the additional costs, leading to $824 billion net benefits from 2021 to 2050. Another accelerated decarbonization pathway that achieves zero emissions five years earlier than the reference case would result in lower net benefits due to higher capital costs during earlier decarbonization periods. Treating air pollution impacts as a target in decarbonization can further mitigate both CO₂emissions and negative health effects. Alternative low-cost solutions also show that small variations in system costs can result in significantly different future energy portfolios, suggesting that diverse decarbonization pathways are viable. 

   more » « less
2. Quantifying the electricity, CO ₂ emissions, and economic tradeoffs of precooling strategies for a single-family home in Southern California*

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ac5d60  

   Mayes, Stepp; Sanders, Kelly (May 2022, Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability)

   Abstract High fractions of variable renewable electricity generation have challenged grid management within the balancing authority overseen by the California’s Independent System Operator (CAISO). In the early evening, solar resources tend to diminish as the system approaches peak demand, putting pressure on fast-responding, emissions-intensive natural gas generators. While residential precooling, a strategy intended to shift the timing of air-conditioning usage from peak-demand periods to cheaper off-peak periods, has been touted in the literature as being effective for reducing peak electricity usage and costs, we explore its impact on CO₂emissions in regional grids like CAISO that have large disparities in their daytime versus nighttime emissions intensities. Here we use EnergyPlus to simulate precooling in a typical U.S. single-family home in California climate zone 9 to quantify the impact of precooling on peak electricity usage, CO₂emissions, and residential utility costs. We find that replacing a constant-setpoint cooling schedule with a precooling schedule can reduce peak period electricity consumption by 57% and residential electricity costs by nearly 13%, while also reducing CO₂emissions by 3.5%. These results suggest the traditional benefits of precooling can be achieved with an additional benefit of reducing CO₂emissions in grids with high daytime renewable energy penetrations. 

   more » « less
3. Provincial-scale assessment of direct air capture to meet China’s climate neutrality goal under limited bioenergy supply

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad77e7  

   Kim, Hanwoong; Qiu, Yang; McJeon, Haewon; Clarens, Andres; Javadi, Parisa; Wang, Can; Wang, Rui; Wang, Jiachen; Jiang, Hanying; Miller, Andy; et al (October 2024, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract China has large, estimated potential for direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) but its deployment locations and impacts at the subnational scale remain unclear. This is largely because higher spatial resolution studies on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in China have focused mainly on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. This study uses a spatially detailed integrated energy-economy-climate model to evaluate DACCS for 31 provinces in China as the country pursues its goal of climate neutrality by 2060. We find that DACCS could expand China’s negative emissions capacity, particularly under sustainability-minded limits on bioenergy supply that are informed by bottom-up studies. But providing low-carbon electricity for multiple GtCO₂yr⁻¹DACCS may require over 600 GW of additional wind and solar capacity nationwide and comprise up to 30% of electricity demand in China’s northern provinces. Investment requirements for DACCS range from $330 to $530 billion by 2060 but could be repaid manyfold in the form of avoided mitigation costs, which DACCS deployment could reduce by up to $6 trillion over the same period. Enhanced efforts to lower residual CO₂emissions that must be offset with CDR under a net-zero paradigm reduce but do not eliminate the use of DACCS for mitigation. For decision-makers and the energy-economy models guiding them, our results highlight the value of expanding beyond the current reliance on biomass for negative emissions in China. 

   more » « less
4. Exploring equality and sustainability trade-offs of energy transition outcomes in the United States in 2050

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.123376  

   Goforth, Teagan; Nock, Destenie; Brown, Maxwell; Ghosh, Tapajyoti; Lamers, Patrick (August 2024, Applied Energy)

   With increasing focus on equitable and just energy transition, it is critical to understand the trade-offs of different decarbonization outcomes across economic, environmental, and social sustainability criteria. In this analysis, we use a multi-criteria decision analysis to quantify sustainability outcomes across 32 decarbonization outcomes in 2050 in the U.S. The economic sustainability criteria we use are system cost, national average retail rate, and electricity system employment. The environmental sustainability criteria we use are life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, life cycle water depletion, life cycle land transformation, and air pollution fatalities. The social sustainability (distributional impacts) criteria we use are retail rate equality across states, electricity employment equality across low-income households, and air pollution disparities across census tracts. We evaluate performance across these criteria under eleven different stakeholder preference scenarios. We find that decarbonization policies with indefinitely extended tax credits have the highest sustainability score under equal criteria weighting, with greater investments in renewable energy technologies, and result in better environmental, system cost, job, and air pollution disparities compared to mid-case scenarios, that only include current policies and CO2 reduction targets. We also see that our multi-criteria decision analysis identifies decarbonization outcomes that would not have been identified as optimal under a single objective, which highlights the importance of trade-off analyses to understand decarbonization outcomes more holistically. 

   more » « less
5. Mitigation and adaptation emissions embedded in the broader climate transition

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2123486119  

   Lesk, Corey; Csala, Denes; Hasse, Robin; Sgouridis, Sgouris; Levesque, Antoine; Mach, Katharine J.; Horen Greenford, Daniel; Matthews, H. Damon; Horton, Radley M. (November 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Climate change necessitates a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to increased climate risks. This broader climate transition will involve large-scale global interventions including renewable energy deployment, coastal protection and retreat, and enhanced space cooling, all of which will result in CO 2 emissions from energy and materials use. Yet, the magnitude of the emissions embedded in these interventions remains unconstrained, opening the potential for underaccounting of emissions and conflicts or synergies between mitigation and adaptation goals. Here, we use a suite of models to estimate the CO 2 emissions embedded in the broader climate transition. For a gradual decarbonization pathway limiting warming to 2 °C, selected adaptation-related interventions will emit ∼1.3 GtCO 2 through 2100, while emissions from energy used to deploy renewable capacity are much larger at ∼95 GtCO 2 . Together, these emissions are equivalent to over 2 y of current global emissions and 8.3% of the remaining carbon budget for 2 °C. Total embedded transition emissions are reduced by ∼80% to 21.2 GtCO 2 under a rapid pathway limiting warming to 1.5 °C. However, they roughly double to 185 GtCO 2 under a delayed pathway consistent with current policies (2.7 °C warming by 2100), mainly because a slower transition relies more on fossil fuel energy. Our results provide a holistic assessment of carbon emissions from the transition itself and suggest that these emissions can be minimized through more ambitious energy decarbonization. We argue that the emissions from mitigation, but likely much less so from adaptation, are of sufficient magnitude to merit greater consideration in climate science and policy. 

   more » « less