Coal-fired Generation Research Articles

The impact of the Carbon Tax regime on the petroleum and gas industries

The Clean Energy Act (CEA) and its related legislation received royal assent on 18 November 2011, ushering in a new era for the Australian industry, and for those who deal with it. Building on the 2007 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS), which mandates the measurement and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and electricity production and consumption, the CEA imposes direct obligations on: individual industrial operations (facilities) that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or its other equivalent greenhouse gases, from particular sources, in a year; suppliers of natural gas (at the point of last supply before the gas is burnt or otherwise used), for the emissions that will be generated when the gas is burnt; and, operators of land-fill facilities, such as local councils. While the primary emissions targeted by the scheme are produced by burning fossil fuels, they also include emissions such as the methane released when coal is mined. The obligations include the option of surrendering carbon units for each tonne of emissions, however, if this optional step is not performed, the mandatory payment of a tax, which far exceeds the cost of a unit, is enforced. The Australian Government will sell carbon units at a fixed price for the first three years, starting at $23, after which units will be auctioned for between $15 and the expected international unit price, plus $20. The supply of domestic units will be unlimited for the three fixed price years, but will be subject to a reducing cap in following years, consistent with the Government policy of reducing Australia’s emissions. The Government has created a monopoly for the supply of units for the first three years by prohibiting the use of overseas-sourced carbon units, and by only allowing 5% of the unit surrender requirements to be comprised of Australian generated carbon credits. Thereafter, for the first five of the flexible-charge years, only half the units can be sourced from overseas, with any apparent saving likely to be offset by the various taxes and charges applicable to the use of those units. Certain fuels will also be separately taxed. Entities, however, which acquire, manufacture or import fuels and would otherwise be entitled to a fuel tax credit, may be able to assume direct liability thus enabling them to acquire or manufacture fuel, free of the carbon tax component. Where the imposts will cause competitive disadvantage to industries that compete with entities from other countries that do not have similar imposts, some assistance is provided in the form of allocated units provided at no charge. Assistance is also available to coal-fired electricity generators, producers of liquefied natural gas, operators of gassy coal mines, and the steel industry (not discussed in this paper). This paper also explains, in detail, how liability is created, how to determine which entities are liable, the means of assigning liability to other entities, and the assistance available to various industries to help deal with the financial impact of the scheme on their operations. It also outlines the key concepts that underpin the scheme.

Emergy Analysis of Energy-Saving and Emission Reduction of Coal-Fired Generation

Emergy Analysis of Energy-Saving and Emission Reduction of Coal-Fired Generation

Construction of the marginal abatement cost curve: Retrofitting carbon capture and storage in Australia

Marginal abatement cost curves are a principal tool used for measuring the relative economic impact of emissions abatement mechanisms. Abatement curves can be constructed using either a top-down approach based on aggregated microeconomic models or using a bottom-up approach based on an engineering assessment that analyses different technical potentials for emission reductions. While top-down models offer simplicity and ease of interpretation, they are not as robust as the bottom-up approach, particularly for assessing the implications of new technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS). Using a bottom-up approach and incorporating real options analysis, this study redefines the relative abatement costs for retrofitting post-combustion CCS technology to coal-fired generators and then reconstructs the Australian marginal emissions abatement curve. The revised curve provides power generators and other industry sectors with more accurate and stable abatement cost estimates for these technologies relative to alternate abatement options.

Emergy Analysis of Energy-Saving and Emission Reduction of Coal-Fired Generation

Coal-fired to generate electric power is the primary method in China and it occupies about 80% generation portions. Therefore, it is necessary to increase power generation efficiency and reduce related pollution in order to conserve energy and resources. In certain regions of China, energy saving oriented dispatch is under test, which only uses coal consumption rate for power supply as the indicator of energy saving. But coal consumption rate for power supply itself doesn’t show the whole picture of energy saving and emission reduction of coal combustion power plants. This paper selects the coal consumption for power supply, SO2 and NOx emission, EAF, net loss and water consumption as the energy-saving dispatching index, adopts emergy analysis method, carries the order integrate index, provides the reference for energy-saving dispatching.

The Constitutionality of Federal Climate Change Legislation

Over the last decade, the Canadian government has not managed to produce a comprehensive climate change statute and has failed to adequately consider the constitutional implications of doing so. The Clean Air Bill, an unsuccessful 2006 amendment to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), focused on carbon credit trading and a technology fund credit mechanism to permit certain emissions-heavy industries to mitigate their production of greenhouse gases. However, this bill would likely have infringed on provincial jurisdiction over electricity generation facilities, trumping any attempt to address greenhouse gas emissions beneath the rubric of criminal law. The present federal government’s proposed coal-fired electricity generation regulations are similarly flawed. This paper thoroughly analyzes both pieces of legislation from a constitutional standpoint, using a rich body of case law to offer policymakers invaluable guidance in properly framing legally sound emission reduction statutes.

Emissions Impacts of Wind and Energy Storage in a Market Environment

This study examines the emissions impacts of adding wind and energy storage to a market-based electric power system. Using Texas as a case study, we demonstrate that market power can greatly effect the emissions benefits of wind, due to most of the coal-fired generation being owned by the two dominant firms. Wind tends to have less emissions benefits when generators exercise market power, since coal-fired generation is withheld from the market and wind displaces natural gas-fired generators. We also show that storage can have greater negative emissions impacts in the presence of wind than if only storage is added to the system. This is due to wind increasing on- and off-peak electricity price differences, which increases the amount that storage and coal-fired generation are used. We demonstrate that this effect is exacerbated by market power.

A methodology for estimating health benefits of electricity generation using renewable technologies

At Copenhagen, the developed countries agreed to provide up to $100 bn per year to finance climate change mitigation and adaptation by developing countries. Projects aimed at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will need to be evaluated against dual criteria: from the viewpoint of the developed countries they must cut emissions of GHGs at reasonable cost, while host countries will assess their contribution to development, or simply their overall economic benefits. Co-benefits of some types of project will also be of interest to host countries: for example some projects will contribute to reducing air pollution, thus improving the health of the local population. This paper uses a simple damage function methodology to quantify some of the health co-benefits of replacing coal-fired generation with wind or small hydro in China. We estimate the monetary value of these co-benefits and find that it is probably small compared to the added costs. We have not made a full cost-benefit analysis of renewable energy in China as some likely co-benefits are omitted from our calculations. Our results are subject to considerable uncertainty however, after careful consideration of their likely accuracy and comparisons with other studies, we believe that they provide a good first cut estimate of co-benefits and are sufficiently robust to stand as a guide for policy makers. In addition to these empirical results, a key contribution made by the paper is to demonstrate a simple and reasonably accurate methodology for health benefits estimation that applies the most recent academic research in the field to the solution of an increasingly important problem.

The influence of generation mix on the wind integrating capability of North China power grids: A modeling interpretation and potential solutions

The large-scale wind power development in China has reached a bottleneck of grid integrating capability. As a result, excess wind electricity has to be rejected in the nighttime low demand hours, when the wind power is ramping up. To compensate for the fluctuation of wind power, new coal-fired power plants are being constructed along with the big wind projects in the North China grids. This study analyzed why adding coal-fired generation cannot remove the bottleneck of wind integration by modeling the operating problem of the wind integration. The peak-load adjusting factor of the regional grid is defined. Building more coal-fired power plants will not increase the adjusting factor of the current grid. Although it does help to increase the total integrated wind power in the short term, it will add difficulties to the long-term wind integration. Alternatively, the coordinated resource utilization is then suggested with the discussion of both the effective pumped hydro storage and the potential electric vehicle storage.

Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy

This study presents a framework to include environmental externalities into a system of national accounts. The paper estimates the air pollution damages for each industry in the United States. An integrated-assessment model quantifies the marginal damages of air pollution emissions for the US which are multiplied times the quantity of emissions by industry to compute gross damages. Solid waste combustion, sewage treatment, stone quarrying, marinas, and oil and coal-fired power plants have air pollution damages larger than their value added. The largest industrial contributor to external costs is coal-fired electric generation, whose damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added. (JEL E01, L94, Q53, Q56)

Modeling a Clean Energy Standard for Electricity: Policy Design Implications for Emissions, Supply, Prices, and Regions

The electricity sector is responsible for roughly 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and a shift away from conventional coal-fired generation is an important component of the U.S. strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Toward that goal, several proposals for a clean energy standard (CES) have been put forth, including one espoused by the Obama administration that calls for 80 percent clean electricity by 2035 phased in from current levels of roughly 40 percent. This paper looks at the effects of such a policy on CO2 emissions from the electricity sector, the mix of technologies used to supply electricity, electricity prices, and regional flows of clean energy credits. The CES leads to a 30 percent reduction in cumulative CO2 emissions between 2013 and 2035 and results in dramatic reductions in generation from conventional coal. The policy also results in fairly modest increases on national electricity prices, but this masks a wide variety of effects across regions.

Generation investment evaluation in emission trading environment

Generation investment decision-making is a very complicated problem in the electricity market environment because of various kinds of uncertainties. The enforcement of the emissions trading scheme will make the problem even more complicated, especially for coal-fired generation units. Given this background, a new approach is developed for evaluating the value of a generation investment project in the electricity market environment with emission trading enforced. A real option-based model for this purpose is proposed, and the project value and optimal investment timing are obtained by employing the least-square Monte-Carlo method. The impacts of market factors and the regulation policy upon generation investment decision-making are illustrated by numerical examples in different scenarios.

Towards a sustainable global energy supply infrastructure: Net energy balance and density considerations

This paper employs a framework of dynamic energy analysis to model the growth potential of alternative electricity supply infrastructures as constrained by innate physical energy balance and dynamic response limits. Coal-fired generation meets the criteria of longevity (abundance of energy source) and scalability (ability to expand to the multi-terawatt level) which are critical for a sustainable energy supply chain, but carries a very heavy carbon footprint. Renewables and nuclear power, on the other hand, meet both the longevity and environmental friendliness criteria. However, due to their substantially different energy densities and load factors, they vary in terms of their ability to deliver net excess energy and attain the scale needed for meeting the huge global energy demand. The low power density of renewable energy extraction and the intermittency of renewable flows limit their ability to achieve high rates of indigenous infrastructure growth. A significant global nuclear power deployment, on the other hand, could engender serious risks related to proliferation, safety, and waste disposal. Unlike renewable sources of energy, nuclear power is an unforgiving technology because human lapses and errors can have ecological and social impacts that are catastrophic and irreversible. Thus, the transition to a low carbon economy is likely to prove much more challenging than early optimists have claimed.

Impact of Relative Fuel Prices on CO2 Emission Policies

The multi-sector end-use energy model E3MC was used to analyze the energy and greenhouse gas emissions impact of adding a carbon tax to efficiency improvement standards for the residential sector in Canada and the USA. Compared to standards alone, the addition of the tax led to further residential emission reductions in Canada, but attenuated the residential emission reductions in the USA. Examination of the relative residential electricity:natural gas prices demonstrated that the different country impacts were due to an increase in relative prices in the USA, but a decrease in relative prices in Canada that led to opposite shifts in preference for electricity over natural gas in the residential sector. Markedly different impacts of the carbon tax on electricity prices was due to the predominance of hydroelectric power in Canada and coal-fired electric generation in the USA. doi: 10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol32-SI1-6

A short-run production function for electricity generation in China

Process industries, such as chemicals, aluminium, steel, pulp and paper, and thermal electricity generation, are important basic industries for economic growth in an economy such as the Chinese one. In order to promote improved efficiency and growth-inducing structural change, it is of paramount importance to model the development of such industries in a relevant way. It will then be necessary to go outside the smooth textbook production theory and turn to models incorporating typical features of process industries, such as embodied technical change, a sharp difference in substitution possibilities before and after investing, and a dynamic change at the industry level driven by entry and exit of plants and embodied technical change. The purpose of the paper is to give an introduction to the key production function concept of a short-run industry production function, and to show how this concept is the key to understanding industry dynamics. An empirical application is made on data for Chinese coal-fired electricity generation plants for one year. However, this will only be the first stage in a full-blown dynamic analysis. Combined cross-section and time-series data for plants are then required.

Stochastic modeling and multi-objective optimization for the APECS system

The Advanced Process Engineering Co-Simulator (APECS), developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory, is an integrated software suite that enables the process and energy industries to optimize overall plant performance with respect to complex thermal and fluid flow phenomena. The APECS system uses the process-industry standard CAPE-OPEN (CO) interfaces to combine equipment models and commercial process simulation software with powerful analysis and virtual engineering tools. The focus of this paper is the CO-compliant stochastic modeling and multi-objective optimization capabilities provided in the APECS system for process optimization under uncertainty and multiple and sometimes conflicting objectives. The usefulness of these advanced analysis capabilities is illustrated using a simulation and multi-objective optimization of an advanced coal-fired, gasification-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen generation facility with carbon capture.

Access arrangements for resources projects: anticipating the issues

Increased international and domestic demand for onshore Australian resources is creating a range of issues around the competing demands for access to land for the purposes of agriculture, residential use, and resources development. Furthermore, global demand for gas has significantly increased during the past decade. This has resulted in the development of Australia’s role as a soon-to-be major international supplier of LNG. On the other side of the energy equation, our growing population will begin to demand more stationary energy than our present capacity—now based predominantly on coal-fired generation—will be able to provide. In this way, a significant increase in gas-fired electricity generation is imminent for most states. These factors—together with vast improvements in exploration and production technologies, such as fraccing—have resulted, and will continue to result in increased investment in the development of onshore coal seam gas (CSG). CSG was once considered nothing more than a waste product of coal mining. To date, the development of onshore CSG has encountered numerous obstacles related to land access. It has been subject to complex indigenous and native title claims, the landscape of which has changed and is continuing to evolve. More frequently, however, it has been met with significant resistance from the public, by way of media campaigns, lobbying, and litigation—particularly from farmers (and other interest holders in farm land) concerned by the significant impacts development may have on the quality of their agricultural areas. This is partly due to the deficiencies of regulatory regimes in accounting for the complexities associated with the relatively new concept of CSG development, as well in providing appropriate mechanisms to balance the interests of landholders and proponents. In this regard, new land access laws have been effected in Queensland that account for these issues. Industry needs to understand the present regulatory landscape, as well as which techniques are working with landholders and which are not. This understanding needs to be gained with the view of formulating strategies to efficiently and equitably deal with landholders, and to avoid unnecessary, unhelpful disputes.

Technical Note: Vetiver Can Grow on Coal Fly Ash Without DNA Damage

Fly ash is a by-product of coal-fired electricity generation plants. The prevalent practice of disposal is as slurry of ash and water to open lands or ash ponds located near power plants and this has lain to waste thousands of hectares all over the world. Wind and leaching are often the causes of off-site contamination from fly ash dumpsites. Vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides) grown on fly ash for three months showed massive, mesh-like growth of roots which could have a phytostabilizing effect. The plant achieved this without any damage to its nuclear DNA as shown by comet assay done on the root nuclei, which implies the long-term survival of the plant on the remediation site. Also, when Vetiver is used for phytoremediation of coal fly ash, its shoots can be safely grazed by animals as very little of heavy metals in fly ash were found to be translocated to the shoots. These features make planting of Vetiver a practical and environmentally compatible method for restoration of fly ash dumpsites. Lack of DNA damage in Vetiver has been compared to that in a sensitive plant i.e. Allium cepa. Our results suggested that apart from traditional end-points viz. growth parameters like root length, shoot length and dry weight, comet assay could also be included in a battery of tests for initial, rapid and effective selection of plants for restoration and phytoremediation of polluted sites.

The sustainability of clean coal technology: IGCC with/without CCS

Integrated gasification combined cycle power generation (IGCC) is one of the emerging clean coal technologies for reducing greenhouse emissions in coal-fired electricity generation. IGCC technology, both with and without CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) is compared with conventional super-critical power generation based on pulverized coal. The comparison is based on an equal consumption rate of Queensland black coal. The sustainability parameters being investigated are: thermal efficiency, environmental performance, inherent safety and economics. The IGCC processes have been modeled using commercial steady-state mass and energy balance software. Both the gross and net thermal efficiencies of the IGCC power station are reduced when the plant is configured for CCS. The net efficiency is reduced from 32.1% to 26.1%, when 81% of the CO 2 is captured. This delivers an overall reduction in CO 2 emissions per unit of electrical energy output of 73.2% compared to the reference plant. However, environmental performance in other areas suffers as a result of switching to IGCC-CCS, particularly fresh water consumption is increased by 2.5 tonne/MWh for both coastal and inland locations. Inherent safety risks associated with IGCC are also greater with the gasifier being the highest risk unit in the facility with a Dow fire and explosion index of 168 compared with an index of 107 for a conventional boiler. Toxicity hazard also increases with carbon monoxide present at concentrations several thousand times higher than the TWA limit. The minimum viable selling price of electricity for a 7% IRR is calculated to increase from USD80 MWh −1 for a conventional power station to USD101 MWh −1 for IGCC and to USD145 MWh −1 for IGCC-CCS. It is concluded that the application of IGCC-CCS is highly effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the highest-profile problem associated with coal-fired electricity. There is an economic penalty which has been previously documented. However, there are also drawbacks concerning inherent safety and other environmental factors apart from CO 2 emissions, which until now have been under emphasized.

Estimation of potential savings from reducing unburned combustible losses in coal-fired systems

A potentially significant loss emanates from the combustion of coal fuels is usually called as the unburned carbon loss. All coal-fired steam generators and coal-fired vessels inherently suffer from efficiency debit attributable to unburnt carbon. The aim of this study is to develop a simple-to-use predictive tool which is easier than existing approaches, less complicated with fewer computations and suitable for engineers to determine the approximate potential savings resulting from reducing unburned coal fuel loss. The proposed method determines the benefits of reducing the combustible losses in terms of annual fuel savings for coal-fired units as a function of percent combustibles in ash, achievable percent combustibles in ash, unit design heat output and average fuel cost. Results show that the proposed predictive tool has a very good agreement with the reported data with average absolute deviation percent being around 1.77%. The proposed method is superior owing to its accuracy and clear numerical background, wherein the relevant coefficients can be retuned quickly for various cases. The developed tool can be of immense practical value for the utility engineers to have a quick check on the benefits of reducing the combustible losses in terms of annual fuel savings for a coal-fired unit for wide range of operating conditions without the necessity of any pilot plant set up and experimental/plant trials. In particular, practice engineers would find the methodology to be user friendly involving transparent calculations with no complex expressions for the design and operation of coal-fired systems such as furnaces and boilers.

THE CURRENT SITUATION OF APPLICATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERALLOYS IN THE FIELDS OF ENERGY INDUSTRY

Superalloys are extensively applied in the fields of energy industry. In the high parameter ultra-supercritical boiler used for coal-fired generation, superheater/reheater tubes must be made of superalloys which meet the requirement of good creep resistant, good fire-side corrosion resistant and steam-side oxidation resistant properties. In gas turbine engine used for gas power, turbine blades and guide vanes should be made of hot-corrosion resistant superalloys which must meet the requirements with respect to excellent high temperature corrosion resistance and long-term microstructural stability. In the field of nuclear power, heat exchange tubes used for steam generator require superalloys with excellent solution corrosion resistance. In the field of coal gasification and energy conservation and pollution reduction, the superalloys with excellent hot corrosion resistant and high temperature wear resistant properties are widely applied. In petroleum exploitation, especially in deep mining, drilling tools must be made of corrosion resistant and wear resistant superalloys because of the sour environment, the temperature of 4—150 and the existences of CO2 ,H 2S, sand and so on. This paper makes a brief introduction on the current situation of application and development of the superalloys at home and abroad in these fields.