track CO₂ emissions from electricity use for a specific process

[xiao.li8@mcgill.ca]

Hi all,

I need to calculate the CO₂ emissions associated with the electricity consumed by one specific process in my TIMES model. Since electricity comes from a mixed grid, I cannot use a fixed or marginal emission factor.
What is the recommended way in VEDA/TIMES to obtain the electricity-related CO₂ emissions of a single consuming process?
Is there a built-in report for this, or should I multiply the process’s electricity input by the average grid CO₂ intensity (total CO₂ from power generation / total electricity generated) derived from results?
Thanks in advance.

Best,

[Antti-L]

There is no built-in report for that in TIMES, and I am not aware of any such in VEDA either.
If the process has been modeled to consume a generic electricity commodity (and not e.g. "green electricity"), using the average CO2 intensity for that electricity would I guess be the standard approach.  But when calculating the average CO2 intensity, I think you should take into account also transmission losses, and if there are any CHP processes involved, allocate the CO2 of CHP appropriately to electricity and heat, using either the so-called energy method or the exergy method.

However, if you have also modeled "green" electricity, such that certain processes are explicitly modeled to consume green electricity, you should probably also make sure that those amounts of "green" electricity that have explicitly been allocated to certain processes are excluded from the calculation of the average CO2 intensity of the generic "grey" electricity.

[xiao.li8@mcgill.ca]

There is no built-in report for that in TIMES, and I am not aware of any such in VEDA either.
If the process has been modeled to consume a generic electricity commodity (and not e.g. "green electricity"), using the average CO2 intensity for that electricity would I guess be the standard approach.  But when calculating the average CO2 intensity, I think you should take into account also transmission losses, and if there are any CHP processes involved, allocate the CO2 of CHP appropriately to electricity and heat, using either the so-called energy method or the exergy method.

However, if you have also modeled "green" electricity, such that certain processes are explicitly modeled to consume green electricity, you should probably also make sure that those amounts of "green" electricity that have explicitly been allocated to certain processes are excluded from the calculation of the average CO2 intensity of the generic "grey" electricity.

Thank you Antti. Because electricity in the model is generated from a mix of renewable and fossil resources and not tracked as separate commodities, we will use the average grid CO₂ intensity (total CO₂ from electricity generation divided by total electricity supplied). This implicitly accounts for the contribution of renewable electricity, as renewables add to total supply but do not add CO₂ emissions to the numerator.

Thank you!