Abstract View
Estimating Criteria Pollutant Emissions from Six Future Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Energy Scenarios in California
YIN LI, Christopher Yang, Michael Kleeman, University of California, Davis
Abstract Number: 448
Working Group: Control and Mitigation Technology
Abstract
California plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050 to a level 80% below emissions in the year 1990. This aspirational goal requires large scale adoption of low carbon fuel and new technologies in multiple economic sectors. The California Times model (CA-TIMES) was developed to explore economically optimized pathways to achieve the GHG mitigation, taking into consideration future activity, fuel, technology and any externally specified constraints.
Here we develop six different future energy scenarios using CA-TIMES to study the range of possible future energy systems in California. 1) “BAU”: A ‘business-as-usual’ scenario; 2) “GHG”: A climate friendly strict GHG reduction; 3) “2030CAP”: A loose GHG reduction scenario that only achieve 40% GHG reduction by year 2030; 4) “CCS”: A scenario focused on carbon capture & sequestration; 5) “NGB”: A scenario that allows more residential and commercial natural gas appliances; 6) “NGT”: A scenario that allows more natural gas combustion for electricity generation. Each scenario was then translated into criteria pollutant emission inventories using the California Regional Multisector Air Quality Emissions (CA-REMARQUE) model v2.0 which projected 2010 emission inventory to 2050 by accounting future changes in activity, fuel, technology and regulations.
Overall, the estimated emissions of criteria pollutants (PM2.5, CO, NOX, SOX) increased in the CCS scenario relative to the BAU. The 2030CAP scenario revealed a small emission decrease while the GHG scenario saw a large emission decrease due to the deep electrification and adoption of renewable fuels. The NGB and NGT scenarios were close to the GHG scenario with some variations observed in the residential and commercial building sector as well as the electricity generation sector. Notably, the emission did not consistently decrease across all economic sectors, demonstrating the complexity relationship between criteria pollutant emissions and future energy scenarios.