DC-MUSE reposted this
I can't underestimate the importance of carrying out this work, especially in the context of AI & data center growth, a topic of great interest at Ralph O'Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) and of great importance to the State of Maryland & PJM (just today it was brought up in two calls with reps from both communities). Plus, it was a great pleasure to work with Sarah Sofia, Lee Taylor and other people at REsurety. Our main conclusion: Without accounting for intra-regional congestion, matching policies severely underestimate the net induced carbon emissions on the grid. And we provide numerical estimates for ERCOT and PJM Interconnection. More to be done, but for now you're invited to read the brief linked below and the full paper linked here: https://lnkd.in/e3RXzcAx
The whole REsurety team and I are super proud of the recently published work by our own Sarah Sofia along with her co-author Uzi (Yury) Dvorkin from The Johns Hopkins University. This work illustrates the complexities of modern grid transmission systems and their impact on the efficacy of carbon policy under real-world conditions. Specifically, this paper provides data-driven support for the realities that: • Transmission congestion is a large and growing contributor to the operational emissions of the grid - and must be prioritized as a critical factor in the energy transition. • The assumption that grid regions can serve as a viable proxy for "deliverability" is invalid for many if not most locations - and will likely remain invalid until and unless we find a way to develop transmission much more quickly than history suggests we are capable of. • Where you locate consumption and carbon-free energy (CFE) generation within a grid region is often dramatically more impactful on real-world carbon emissions than whether or not you hourly match that consumption and generation, and as such effective carbon policies must incentivize consumption and CFE generation siting that is aware of the carbon impacts of transmission congestion. We very much appreciate the support from the ZEROgrid Independent Advisory Initiative whose advisors unanimously supported this research (Wilson Ricks from Princeton University, Ruaridh Macdonald from MIT Energy Initiative, and Gavin McCormick from WattTime.org. Special thanks to RMI's Stephen Abbott, among others, who have helped coordinate the expert consensus-building efforts of the ZEROgrid initiative). Access the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/en4ingzi Abbreviated summary available here: https://lnkd.in/eiS4Y9QU
