Bruce Biewald

Full-cost dispatch: Incorporating environmental externalities in electric system operation

Abstract Not just power system planning, but operations as well, should reflect the full cost of alternatives. This practice is now feasible and would reduce total costs of power supply, while increasing rates only slightly.

Environmentally targeted objectives for reducing acidification in Europe

Abstract Integrated assessment modelling has been employed as a tool for deriving cost-effective strategies based on critical loads for the reduction of acidifying pollutants in Europe. Current negotiations towards a second European Sulphur Protocol, coordinated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, have identified the need for additional deposition targets as an intermediate step to achieving critical loads. Different applications of integrated modelling techniques are described, with particular emphasis on the definition of intermediate targets. These may be fixed externally to the model, or may be variable and incorporated within the optimization model. A dynamic approach to deposition targeting was shown to offer the greatest level of overall environmental protection for a given cost. However, differences between the various targeted approaches are small relative to the alternative of following an untargeted approach, a result which illustrates the flexibility of integrated assessment modelling as a useful policy tool.

Environmental Externalities Measurement: Quantification, Valuation and Monetization

Energy Resources impose a variety of costs on society. Some of these costs, such as the direct costs of facility construction, operation and fuel consumption or the cost of end-use equipment, are borne directly by the producers and consumers of energy. Other costs, however, are borne by society and the environment at large, not just by the producers and consumers of energy. Most notable among these external costs are the damages to the environment and human health that result from the construction of energy facilities and from the extraction, processing, transport, combustion and disposal of waste and spent fuels. Some of these impacts can become reflected (or “internalized”) in direct costs, to the extent that regulations and engineering practice respond, however belatedly, to scientific research and public concern. Others, however, remain as the deleterious consequences of satisfying society’s identified energy needs. Taking account of these impacts in energy policy, planning and operation could alter the magnitude and mix of resources used to meet our energy demands, with salutary effects for the environment, public health and long-term economic and ecological sustainability.

Modelling renewable electric resources: A case study of wind

The central issue facing renewables in the integrated resource planning process is the appropriate assessment of the value of renewables to utility systems. This includes their impact on both energy and capacity costs (avoided costs), and on emissions and environmental impacts, taking account of the reliability, system characteristics, interactions (in dispatch), seasonality, and other characteristics and costs of the technologies. These are system-specific considerations whose relationships may have some generic implications. In this report, we focus on the reliability contribution of wind electric generating systems, measured as the amount of fossil capacity they can displace while meeting the system reliability criterion. We examine this issue for a case study system at different wind characteristics and penetration, for different years, with different system characteristics, and with different modelling techniques. In an accompanying analysis we also examine the economics of wind electric generation, as well as its emissions and social costs, for the case study system. This report was undertaken for the {open_quotes}Innovative IRP{close_quotes} program of the U.S. Department of Energy, and is based on work by both Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Tellus Institute, including America`s Energy Choices and the UCS Midwest Renewables Project.

Efficiency, renewables and gas: restructuring as if climate mattered

Abstract Energy efficiency and renewable technologies are the only viable electricity resources that do not release greenhouse gases, and therefore will be an essential component of any climate change effort. Regulators and legislators should seize the opportunity created by restructuring to promote these zero carbon resources.

Developing optimal abatement strategies for the effects of sulphur and nitrogen deposition at European scale

Integrated Assessment Models were successfully used to provide input to the negotiations for the Oslo Protocol on Further Reductions of Sulphur Emissions, finalized within the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution in Oslo in June 1994. The techniques developed within this framework will be extended now to the simultaneous analysis of sulphur and nitrogen deposition. In addition to acidification, atmospheric deposition of nitrogen contributes to eutrophication of certain ecosystems, through a nutrient effect, and originates from the long-range transport of emissions of both oxidised and reduced nitrogen (NOx and NH3). Modelling reductions in nitrogen deposition thus introduces a need to establish multi-pollutant multi-effect modelling techniques. This paper investigates the development of a model set up to examine reductions of these pollutants in an economically and environmentally efficient manner. The control of nitrogen deposition encompasses action across several economic sectors, particularly the power, transport and agricultural sectors. Combining sulphur and nitrogen deposition limits on a European scale will require a flexible modelling approach and the issues governing possible approaches are presented.

From Social Costing to Sustainable Development: Beyond the Economic Paradigm

We are witnessing a major transition in public policy regarding economics, the environment and human well-being. Appropriately enough, it has come at the onset of a new century, indeed millennium. Despite the groundwork laid before us, and that being laid today, we expect that our counterparts and the world’s citizens decades from now will recognize some but not all of the methods and approaches developed today, and hope they will look back with some kindness upon our modest beginnings.

Counting the Costs: Scientific Uncertainty and Valuation Perspective in EXMOD

The computer model, EXMOD, quantifies externalities associated with electric generating facilities using the damage function approach. EXMOD uses data for facilities sited in New York State and for impacts in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. EXMOD is able to address some of the limitations and uncertainties inherent in the damage function approach by providing the user with access to the model’s fundamental assumptions used to calculate physical impacts and the monetary estimates of those impacts. In this paper, a set of alternative default facility, impact, and valuation assumptions has been developed. The effect of these alternative assumptions on the external costs computed by EXMOD has been tested in a case study of a coal plant situated near New York City. Results show that central estimates of the external costs are about 7 mills per kWh for a new facility with EXMOD’s default assumptions, and about 70 mills per kWh for an existing facility using alternative impact and valuation assumptions. Because of its strengths and flexibility, if carefully applied and interpreted, EXMOD can be a valuable tool in electricity resource assessment and policy, complementing other tools and approaches, in a wide range of contexts and locations.

Competition and clean air: the operating economics of electricity generation

Abstract Competition alone cannot be counted on to produce environmental improvement in the electricity industry. Given the different duty factors of baseload, intermediate and peaking plants, specific environmental policies such as air emissions caps will be needed to continue improvement as the industry restructures.

Avoided cost contracts can undermine least-cost planning

Abstract Utilities and regulatory agencies are increasingly turning to non-utility sources of electric power. In the USA, many contracts with independent power producers (IPPs) contain indexing terms under which an IPPs energy rates vary in response to energy cost changes on the purchasing utility system. Such indexing is often used to ensure that IPP rates track utility avoided costs. Unfortunately, such indexing can undermine least-cost planning if utility decisions can alter established IPP rates. Such indexing can also cause ratepayer interests to conflict with those of society. The use of regional cost indices can solve the utility planning problem. Preventing the conflict between ratepayers and society, however, may require some use of cost-based, rather than value-based, ratemaking for IPPs.