气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): A retrospective study of the 2012-2016 California drought and its impacts on the power sector

CCPortal

DOI	10.1088/1748-9326/ab9db1
	A retrospective study of the 2012-2016 California drought and its impacts on the power sector
	Kern J.D.; Su Y.; Hill J.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	17489318
卷号	15 期号:9
英文摘要	Over the period 2012-2016, the state of California in the United States (U.S.) experienced a drought considered to be one of the worst in state history. Drought's direct impacts on California's electric power sector are understood. Extremely low streamflow manifests as reduced hydropower availability, and if drought is also marked by elevated temperatures, these can increase building electricity demands for cooling. Collectively, these impacts force system operators to increase reliance on natural gas power plants, increasing market prices and emissions. However, previous investigations have relied mostly on ex post analysis of observational data to develop estimates of increases in costs and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to the 2012-2016 drought. This has made it difficult to control for confounding variables (e.g. growing renewable energy capacity, volatile natural gas prices) in assessing the drought's impacts. In this study, we use a power system simulation model to isolate the direct impacts of several hydrometeorological phenomena observed during the 2012-2016 drought on system wide CO2 emissions and wholesale electricity prices in the California market. We find that the impacts of drought conditions on wholesale electricity prices were modest (annual prices increased by $0-3 MWh-1, although much larger within-year increases are also observed). Instead, it was an increase in natural gas prices, punctuated by the 2014 polar vortex event that affected much of the Eastern U.S., which caused wholesale electricity prices to increase during the drought. Costs from the drought were very different for the state's three investor owned utilities. Overall, we find that increased cooling demands (electricity demand) during the drought may have represented a larger economic cost ($3.8 billion) than lost hydropower generation ($1.9 billion). We also find the potential for renewable energy to mitigate drought-cased increases in CO2 emissions to be negligible, standing in contrast to some previous studies. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
英文关键词	drought; electricity markets; greenhouse gases; prices; renewable energy
语种	英语
scopus关键词	Carbon dioxide; Commerce; Cost benefit analysis; Drought; Electric power utilization; Fossil fuel power plants; Gas emissions; Hydroelectric power; Hydroelectric power plants; Investments; Natural gas; Natural gasoline plants; Carbon dioxide emissions; Electric power sector; Elevated temperature; Hydro-power generation; Natural gas power plants; Power system simulations; Renewable energy capacity; Wholesale electricity; Costs
来源期刊	Environmental Research Letters
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/153703
作者单位	Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States; Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Kern J.D.,Su Y.,Hill J.. A retrospective study of the 2012-2016 California drought and its impacts on the power sector[J],2020,15(9).
APA	Kern J.D.,Su Y.,&Hill J..(2020).A retrospective study of the 2012-2016 California drought and its impacts on the power sector.Environmental Research Letters,15(9).
MLA	Kern J.D.,et al."A retrospective study of the 2012-2016 California drought and its impacts on the power sector".Environmental Research Letters 15.9(2020).