Authors

Argonne National Laboratory
John Molburg, Jeff Camp, Prakash Thimmapuram

Carnegie Mellon University
Jayant Kalagnaman and Stuart Siegel

Resources for the Future
Erin Mansur

The Emissions Projections Module forecasts annual emissions of SO2 and nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the utility, industrial, residential, commercial, and transportation sectors in the continental United States through 2030. The emissions projections reflect control policy options (e.g., emissions trading and banking) and assumptions regarding key uncertainties in areas that include retirement patterns, fuel costs, and demand growth. The model focuses on utility sector emissions and policies. Emissions in other sectors are included primarily to provide a context for the scale of utility emissions. Annual emissions are calulated for individual utility units on the basis of fuel use and emission factors. For SOx, the emission factors are calculated from the fuel sulfur content and the effectiveness of boiler processes and controls in removing SO2 from the flue gas stream. For NOx, the emission factors are based on empirical data and regulatory performance requirements.

A generating unit inventory stores the data required to estimate emissions from the utility sector. The unit inventory changes over time in response to (1) regulatory policy, (2) demand growth, (3) technical developments, and (4) economic factors. These influences are reflected in unit retirements, new unit additions, retrofit controls, fuel switching , and plant use adjustments. The Emissions Projections Module includes a set of algorithms that adjust the unit inventory corresponding to user-defined values for the four influences. The module has been designed to be simple yet capture the effcts of these most important determinants of emissions. The emission projections for each state serve as input to the Atmospheric Pathways Module.

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