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Relative costs of NOx emissions reduction by physical controls and environmental dispatch

Panel: Panel 4. The Energy-Environment Link

Authors:
Chris Marnay, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, USA
Terje Gjengedal, Norwegian Institute of Technology, University of Trondheim
Ståle E. Johansen, SRC International

Abstract

Like most mrtjor industrial areas worldwide, the San Francisco Bay Area, suffers from periodic poor air quality episodes, notably unhealthy concentrations of photochemical smog. Current local regulations require installation of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) emissions control equipment on most electric utility Stacy over the next decade.

SCR effectively reduces emissions of NOX, the major photochemical smog precursor polhrtan~ however, since the fixed cost of SCR is high, since poor air quality episodes are rare, and since many generators are infrequently used, the cost of improving air quality using SCR is high. This paper compares the cost of the current regulatory approach to one that relies on biasing the dispatch of power generation away from the more polluting and towards the less polluting generators available during episodes.

The dispatch is biased by the imposition of an intermittent NOX tax , operations bemg simulated using a Lagrangian relaxation unit commitment and dispatch model under a Monte Carlo random drawing of outage states. Results show that the taxed dispatch delivers modest levels of NOX emissions reductions for increased fuel costs lower than the cost of SCR.

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