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Abstract
Existing literature on Zero Emission Neighborhoods (ZENs) and Buildings (ZEBs) only allow for reaching the zero emission target locally. This paper evaluates the impact of allowing to buy CO2 compensation to reach that target in the design of ZENs. This is motivated by questions regarding the relevance of investing in local renewable production (mainly from PV) in a power system dominated by renewable hydropower. Further, it contributes to the existing literature regarding ZENs and ZEBs by highlighting the importance of the choice of the CO2 factor of electricity for the design of ZENs’ energy system.A case study illustrates the impact of those choices on the resulting energy system design using the existing ZENIT model. Three CO2 factors for electricity are used in the case study: a yearly average CO2 factor for Norway (18 gCO2∕kWh), an hourly average CO2 factor for Norway and a yearly average European factor (at 132 gCO2∕kWh). The energy system design of the ZEN is little affected when using hourly CO2-factors compared to yearly average factors, while the European factor leads to less investment in PV. Hourly marginal CO2 emission factors are also investigated using three accounting methods. There large differences in energy system design and emissions depending on where the factor is applied. The price of external compensation is varied between 0–2000 €/tonCO2. A lower price of external CO2 compensations mainly reduces the amount of PV investment. Allowing the purchase of CO2 compensations at 250 €/tonCO2 could reduce the total costs by more than 10%.
Highlights
Zero Emission Neighborhoods (ZEN) are gaining attention as a solution to the sustainability problem of current buildings and cities
We discuss in particular the purchase of emission allowances on the European Emission Trading System (ETS), the compensation mechanism offered by carbon offsetting companies and carbon capture and storage (CCS)
Starting with the case using yearly average Norwegian CO2 factors, YearlyNO, and no possibility of external CO2 compensation we find that the energy system of the neighborhood (Fig. 4) is comprised of around 1 200 kW PV, 350 kW air–water heat pumps and 70 kW biomethane boiler with 200 kWh Space Heating (SH) storage and 120 kWh Domestic Hot Water (DHW) storage
Summary
Zero Emission Neighborhoods (ZEN) are gaining attention as a solution to the sustainability problem of current buildings and cities. It is necessary to make assumptions on the CO2 factors, in particular for electricity, and on the compensation mechanism that allows to reach net zero emissions. In order to guide the design of the energy system of such neighborhoods, a tool called ZENIT, which has been previously developed, is used in a case study. It uses a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) optimization to minimize the cost of investing in and operating the energy system of a ZEN. We discuss in particular the purchase of emission allowances on the European Emission Trading System (ETS), the compensation mechanism offered by carbon offsetting companies and carbon capture and storage (CCS). The impact on the design of the energy system of a ZEN is investigated analyzing the change in the results from variations of the price of carbon offsetting options
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