Tag: ZEROgrid

Carbon Impact of Intra-Regional Transmission Congestion

Posted on October 28, 2024 by - Blog, Resources, White Paper

Solar Energy Power Grid

Authored by: Sarah Sofia, REsurety, and Yury Dvorkin, Johns Hopkins University with contributions from Devon Lukas, REsurety


Derived from the scientific paper: Carbon Impact of Intra-Regional Transmission Congestion, which received unanimous support from the ZEROgrid Independent Advisory Initiative advisors (MIT Energy Initiative, Princeton, WattTime, and REsurety). To access the study, please scan the QR code.

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Overview

The emissions intensity of electricity can vary greatly within grid regions at any given time due to transmission congestion, yet current environmental policies and carbon accounting frameworks typically ignore these differences. By overlooking transmission constraints, these policies risk increasing system-wide emissions and worsening grid congestion, even when consumption and carbon-free energy are matched hourly. A notable portion of new wind and solar capacity proposed for ERCOT and PJM is planned in areas with substantial congestion (Fig. 1), but without significant transmission expansion, these projects will exacerbate congestion and limit emissions reduction. Through several case studies, we find that congestion-aware emissions metrics, such as Locational Marginal Emissions (LMEs), can more accurately measure the carbon impact of clean energy procurement and enhance market signals to support better grid planning and procurement strategies.

Key takeaways:

  1. Transmission congestion has a significant impact on price and emissions for the power grid.
    a. For example, in 2022, transmission congestion in ERCOT increased system cost by $2.8 billion and system emissions by 13 million tonnes CO2e, which is 8.7% and 7.5% of the system total respectively.

  2. In the same grid at the same hour, different locations frequently observe a difference in emission intensity of hundreds of tonnes of CO2e due to transmission constraints.
    a. Even 100% hourly matched consumption with clean energy is often not carbon-free and, in many instances, hourly matching can actually increase operational emissions relative to annual matching (Fig. 2).
    b. Hydrogen production that complies with the current proposed 45V criteria will often significantly increase real-world emissions.

  3. Current carbon accounting methods overestimate emissions reductions by overlooking intra-regional transmission congestion.
    a. Granular emission data, such as Locational Marginal Emissions rates, incorporate transmission impact, providing a more accurate measurement of the real-world carbon impact of grid connected projects.

  4. Transmission planning and infrastructure expansion must be accelerated to achieve the decarbonization potential of renewable energy development.
    a. Clean energy procurement that utilizes marginal emissions rates to inform citing will better incentivize the development of projects in areas of uncongested transmission.
Figure 1:  Contour map of 2023 average LME by county across ERCOT and PJM, with the combined wind and solar interconnection queue for each county (gray circles) overlaid.

Figure 1:  Contour map of 2023 average LME by county across ERCOT and PJM, with the combined wind and solar interconnection queue for each county (gray circles) overlaid.

Scope 

This work uses nodal LME data for the past five years in ERCOT and PJM to quantify the effects of congestion on carbon emissions and the efficacy of annual- and hourly- matching carbon accounting frameworks. The impact of intra-regional congestion is shown to be a vital component of effective carbon accounting methods and complementary policies, and policy proposals that frequently overlook this impact risk significantly increasing real-world emissions despite the operational and cost burdens of compliance with hourly matching.

Figure 2: Map of load and procured power from four different renewable project options in PJM; 2023 net emissions from matching scenarios where both rigorously hourly-matched load through load-shifting and 100% annually-matched flat load have significant net emissions.
Figure 2: Map of load and procured power from four different renewable project options in PJM; 2023 net emissions from matching scenarios where both rigorously hourly-matched load through load-shifting and 100% annually-matched flat load have significant net emissions.

Figure 2: Map of load and procured power from four different renewable project options in PJM; 2023 net emissions from matching scenarios where both rigorously hourly-matched load through load-shifting and 100% annually-matched flat load have significant net emissions.

Assuming equal emissions and perfect generation deliverability within a grid region misses a major factor in determining the induced and avoided carbon emissions, respectively, of load and renewable generation. The induced emissions of a newly built load could be reduced by hundreds of kgCO2e/MWh just by siting it in Eastern Pennsylvania instead of Virginia, for example, and a Virginian wind farm could avoid 50% more carbon than an equivalent farm in Northern Illinois. Prioritizing and incentivizing the development of new renewable projects in less congested regions could meaningfully expedite grid decarbonization, and avoid the exacerbation of already existent congestion-driven deliverability issues.

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Paper: Carbon Impact of Transmission Constraints

Posted on October 14, 2024 by - Blog, Report

This paper is authored by REsurety’s Sarah Sofia and Johns Hopkins University’s Yury Dvorkin. Read the abstract and download the full paper below.

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Abstract

Carbon accounting frameworks guide policy and decision-making around investments in renewable energy, making them critical to understand in the context of real-world grid operations. In the absence of empirical work assessing the effects of intra-regional congestion on carbon emissions, ongoing policy design assumes that transmission congestion within grid boundaries can be ignored. In this work, we aim to test this assumption by quantifying the frequency and severity of intra-regional congestion and its impacts on carbon emissions and prominent carbon accounting frameworks. This analysis is done in both PJM and ERCOT using nodal locational marginal emissions data. Through several case studies, we find that load that is 100% hourly-matched through load-shifting will often result in significant net operational emissions, and sometimes even increase net emissions relative to annual-matching. This work demonstrates that, in the absence of robust transmission expansion, grid-region boundaries are insufficient to ensure hourly-matching is effective. Impacts of intra-regional transmission congestion are shown to be vital components of effective carbon accounting frameworks, calling into question frequently made assumptions ignoring intra-regional congestion in studies and policy proposals.

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Policy Brief: Assessing the Impact of Voluntary Actions on the Grid

Posted on May 22, 2024 by - Blog, White Paper

A Consensus Paper from ZEROgrid’s Impact Advisory Initiative, published by RMI and ZEROgrid

Assessing the Impact of Voluntary Actions on the Grid
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Executive Summary

Over the past 10 years, voluntary procurement of clean energy by corporations has been a tremendous driver of renewable energy development. Since 2014, large companies have signed procurement contracts supporting the development of over 70 gigawatts of renewable energy in the United States,1 in addition to purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs), providing tax equity financing, and advocating regionally and nationally for more clean energy deployment. These voluntary procurement trends are continuing to scale and expand into other markets such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.2

The urgency of the climate crisis is prompting many large energy consumers to consider how they can assess the impact of various actions on grid decarbonization and reliability. Such an assessment can be best made using consequential emissions impact analysis, which employs various approaches to estimate the difference between total global emissions in different possible states of the world.

Although many authors have published on consequential emissions impact analysis, there have been different views and until now no joint statement from differing authors on areas of consensus and how to resolve discrepant conclusions.

To provide greater clarity to corporate actors, ZEROgrid created the Impact Advisory Initiative, or IAI. The IAI comprises a group of expert practitioners from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Princeton University, REsurety, RMI, and WattTime who collectively identified key points of consensus as well as areas requiring further research.i

This paper provides an overview of the IAI’s findings regarding emerging areas of consensus about consequential emissions impact analysis, its implications, and areas where further research is required.

Areas of Consensus:

  1. Defining Impact. The true impact of any voluntary corporate action (or any action) is the difference in total emissions between a world where the action was taken versus one in which it was not taken.
  2. Components of impact. This impact is the sum of several different contributing effects, which must include the effects over the lifetime of the intervention — how an intervention changes the short-run operations of power plants, and structural change, i.e., how it changes the total supply of different power plants in the long run — to fully capture the impact of an action.
  3. Estimates versus true values. The field has a number of ways to produce estimates of total emissions impact and its components. Although there is agreement regarding how changes to short-run operations can be quantified, the field currently lacks — and indeed may always lack — any generally accepted way to empirically verify estimates of structural change. Therefore, any approach that seeks to measure total impact has (potentially significant levels of) uncertainty.

i The ZEROgrid initiative brings together a group of corporate actors, including Akamai, General Motors, HASI, Meta, Prologis, Salesforce, and Walmart, seeking to drive deep decarbonization alongside increased power grid reliability and affordability, working in collaboration with emissions and reliability experts. Additional information is available at https://zerogrid.org/.

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