Carbon emissions displaced by energy savings

Antoine Bonduelle, E&E Consultant and Faculté de Sciences Politiques, Université Lille 2, France
Damien Joliton, Energies Demain, France

Keywords

marginal, average carbon emissions, electricity, ELFIN model

Abstract

The economic and carbon impacts of several efficiency measures such as household appliance efficiency, insulation in homes using electric heating, or lighting have been tested against the electric system in France. This work uses the recognised Electricity Financing (ELFIN) model as well as detailed technical characteristics of electricity plants and the electric system. It reconstructs the economic merit order in the way the dispatcher would. Efficiency measures are modelled in the same way as production plants, using hourly shapes and energy gains.

This shows the power plants displaced, both at the short term and in the longer run in competition with new generation. Results include cost savings for the electric system, peak shavings and detailed impacts on carbon emissions.

The latter result, a “marginal carbon saving” is a useful analytical tool to compare efficiency measures in competition with supply-side power stations. This helps in the case such as France where the electric system has low carbon emissions on average, but may have wide hourly variations due to the use of carbon intensive plants during peaks.

The methods and results must be carefully discussed, because the results of such modelling cannot be used directly to credit carbon emissions limitations. This is because the sum of marginal calculations differs with the emissions saved for the whole portfolio. But this tool can benefit for example the regulator of an efficiency market instrument such as ‘White certificates’ or the Kyoto Mechanisms, to verify the claims of utilities, or to optimise the requests to the supply industries.