Future cost-competitive electricity systems and their impact on US CO2 emissions

Alexander E. MacDonald (), Christopher T. M. Clack (), Anneliese Alexander, Adam Dunbar, James Wilczak and Yuanfu Xie
Additional contact information
Alexander E. MacDonald: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA
Christopher T. M. Clack: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA
Anneliese Alexander: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA
Adam Dunbar: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA
James Wilczak: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA
Yuanfu Xie: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA

Nature Climate Change, 2016, vol. 6, issue 5, 526-531

Abstract: Abstract Carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation are a major cause of anthropogenic climate change. The deployment of wind and solar power reduces these emissions, but is subject to the variability of the weather. In the present study, we calculate the cost-optimized configuration of variable electrical power generators using weather data with high spatial (13-km) and temporal (60-min) resolution over the contiguous US. Our results show that when using future anticipated costs for wind and solar, carbon dioxide emissions from the US electricity sector can be reduced by up to 80% relative to 1990 levels, without an increase in the levelized cost of electricity. The reductions are possible with current technologies and without electrical storage. Wind and solar power increase their share of electricity production as the system grows to encompass large-scale weather patterns. This reduction in carbon emissions is achieved by moving away from a regionally divided electricity sector to a national system enabled by high-voltage direct-current transmission.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (80)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2921 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natcli:v:6:y:2016:i:5:d:10.1038_nclimate2921

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2921

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().