Investigations in emissions-constrained, integrated gas-electric energy systems
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- To mitigate risk of climate disaster, net atmospheric release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from energy systems must decline to zero by mid-century. Electricity and natural gas are the most widely used end-use energy carriers in existing infrastructure systems that serve hundreds of millions of consumers in the United States and billions globally. Electricity and natural gas suppliers are also subject to unique regulatory oversight given their status as a public utility. While the electric power system has a reasonably clear path towards net-zero emissions, the natural gas system lacks a diverse set of low-carbon supply options. As energy utilities implement climate change mitigation policies, system planners require strategies for achieving affordable emissions reductions. Coordinated planning of electric power and natural gas delivery systems will allow synergistic investment plans to address cross-sector operational constraints, competing uses for net-zero emissions fuels, and shifts in final energy demands across energy carriers. The industrial sector accounts for a large share of natural gas demands and nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. These energy demands can be difficult to transition to electric-powered alternatives. Methane pyrolysis could be used to produce low-carbon hydrogen for industrial processes while generating a solid carbon product that can be permanently sequestered or sold as a manufacturing feedstock. Accurate quantification and attribution of GHG emissions liabilities is essential for climate policy but challenging in the case of energy transfers across regulatory jurisdictions. Regulating emissions associated with delivered electricity is further complicated by contractual arrangements for dynamic electricity transfer that confound emissions accounting approaches rooted in the physics of grid operations. As such, the transition to net-zero emissions natural gas and electric power systems must accommodate three parallel trends: increasing integration across gas and electric energy systems, the challenge of difficult-to-decarbonize industrial energy demands, and the regulatory and accounting structures which track and assess their emissions liabilities or promote the development of low-carbon resources. Here, we present new modeling frameworks that help elucidate features of cost-effective transitions to deeply-decarbonized, integrated gas-electric energy systems. We develop and implement three model formulations that enable design and simulation of low-carbon energy systems, providing insight for the policy and economic decisions that will shape the transition.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Von Wald, Gregory Alan |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Brandt, Adam (Adam R.) |
| Thesis advisor | Brandt, Adam (Adam R.) |
| Thesis advisor | Azevedo, Inês M.L |
| Thesis advisor | Benson, Sally |
| Degree committee member | Azevedo, Inês M.L |
| Degree committee member | Benson, Sally |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Energy Resources Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Gregory Von Wald. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Energy Resources Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/cd864ww6546 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Gregory Alan Von Wald
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
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