The cost of decarbonizing the Canadian electricity system

Brett Dolter and Nicholas Rivers

Energy Policy, 2018, vol. 113, issue C, 135-148

Abstract: Canada’s electricity sector is predominantly low-carbon, but includes coal, natural gas, and diesel fuelled power plants. We use a new linear programming optimization model to identify least-cost pathways to decarbonize Canada’s electricity sector. We co-optimize investments in new generation, storage and transmission capacity, and the hourly dispatch of available assets over the course of a year. Our model includes hourly wind speed data for 2281 locations in Canada, hourly solar irradiation data from 199 Canadian meteorological stations, hourly demand data for each province, and inter- and intra-provincial transmission line data. We model the capacity of hydropower plants to store potential energy and respond to variations in renewable energy output and demand. We find that new transmission connections between provinces and a substantial expansion of wind power in high wind locations such as southern Saskatchewan and Alberta would allow Canada to reduce electricity sector emissions at the lowest cost. We find that hydropower plants and inter-provincial trade can provide important balancing services that allow for greater integration of variable wind power. We test the impact of carbon pricing on Canada’s optimal electricity system and find that prices of $80/tonne CO2e render the majority of Canada’s coal-fired plants uneconomic.

Keywords: Electricity; Greenhouse gas emissions; Linear programming; Canada; Renewable energy; Transmission (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517307140
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:113:y:2018:i:c:p:135-148

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.10.040

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().