Coal-Fired Power Plants in the United States: Examination of the Costs of Retrofitting with CO2 Capture Technology, Revision 3

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Nichols ◽  
Jeffrey Eppink ◽  
Michael Marquis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
The United States

scholarly journals Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy

2011 ◽  
Vol 101 (5) ◽  
pp. 1649-1675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Z Muller ◽  
Robert Mendelsohn ◽  
William Nordhaus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Sewage Treatment ◽  
Value Added ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Accounting ◽  
Integrated Assessment Model ◽  
Assessment Model ◽  
National Accounts

This study presents a framework to include environmental externalities into a system of national accounts. The paper estimates the air pollution damages for each industry in the United States. An integrated-assessment model quantifies the marginal damages of air pollution emissions for the US which are multiplied times the quantity of emissions by industry to compute gross damages. Solid waste combustion, sewage treatment, stone quarrying, marinas, and oil and coal-fired power plants have air pollution damages larger than their value added. The largest industrial contributor to external costs is coal-fired electric generation, whose damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added. (JEL E01, L94, Q53, Q56)

Fingerprints of a New Normal Urban Air Quality in S5P TROPOMI Tropospheric NO2 Observations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shobha Kondragunta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Unemployment Rate ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Air Quality ◽  
Urban Air ◽  
Nox Emissions ◽  
Percentage Increase ◽  
New Normal

<p>Most countries around the world took actions to control COVID-19 spread that included social distancing, limiting air and ground travel, closing schools, suspending sports leagues, closing factories etc., leading to  economic shutdown. The reduced traffic and human movement compared to Business as Usual (BAU) scenario was tracked by Apple and Android cellphone use; the data showed substantial reductions in mobility in most metropolitan areas.  We analyzed reductions in on-road mobile NOx emissions from light and heavy duty vehicles in four major metropolitan and one rural areas in the United States that showed a reduction in NOx mobile emissions from 9% to 19% between February and March at the onset of lockdown in the middle of March; between March and April, the mobile NOx emissions dropped further by 8% to 31% when lockdown measures were the most stringiest.  These precipitous drops in NOx emissions correlated well with tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> column amount observed by Sentinel 5 Precursor TROPospheric Ozone Monitoring Instrument (S5P TROPOMI).  Further, the changes in TROPOMI tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> across the continental U.S. between 2020 and 2019 correlated well with changes in on-road NOx emissions (r=0.78) but correlated weakly with changes in emissions from the power plants (r=0.44). These findings confirm that power plants are no longer the major source of NO<sub>2</sub> in the United States. We also examined correlation between increase in unemployment rate between 2020 and 2019 to decrease in tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> amount.  The negative correlation indicates that with increased unemployment rate combined with telework policies across the nation for non-essential workers, the NO<sub>2</sub> values decreased at the rate of 0.8 µmoles/m<sup>2</sup> decrease per unit percentage increase in unemployment rate.  There is a substantial amount of scatter in the data with some cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston showing no noticeable trend in tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> changes during the time period when unemployment rate increased from 6% to 12%.   We examined the trends in on-road and power plant emissions for five different locations (four urban areas and one rural area) and show that the changes in NOx emissions during the lockdown are detectable in TROPOMI tropNO2 data, the economic indicators are consistent with emissions changes, and the trends reversing with the removal of lockdown measures in the major metro areas have not come back to pre-pandemic levels.  The COVID-19 pandemic experience has provided the scientific community an opportunity to identify emissions reductions scenarios that created a new normal for urban air quality and if the environmental protection agencies should look at this new normal as a guidance for instituting new policies. </p>

Baseload power potential from optimally-configured wind, solar and storage power plants across the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua D Rhodes ◽  
Aditya Choukulkar ◽  
Brianna Cote ◽  
Sarah A McKee ◽  
Christopher T M Clack
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Energy Storage ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Cost Optimization ◽  
The United States ◽  
Solar Pv ◽  
Wholesale Market ◽  
Optimal Technology ◽  
Current Price ◽  
The Cost

Abstract In the present paper, we assessed the potential for local wind, solar PV, and energy storage to provide baseload (constant, uninterrupted) power in every county of the contiguous United States. The amount of available capacity between 2020 and 2050 was determined via a least-cost optimization model that took into account changing costs of constituent technologies and local meteorological conditions. We found that, by 2050, the potential exists for about 6.8 TW of renewable baseload power at an average cost of approximately $50 / MWh, which is competitive with current wholesale market rates for electricity. The optimal technology configurations constructed always resulted in over two hours of emergency energy reserves, with the amount increasing as the price of energy storage falls. We also found that, given current price decline trajectories, the model has a tendency to select more solar capacity than wind over time. A second part of the study performed three million simulations followed by a regression analysis to generate an online map-based tool that allows users to change input costs assumptions and compute the cost of renewable baseload electricity in every contiguous US county.

Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems Upgrades in Current Generation Nuclear Power Plants

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Arndt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cyber Security ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Nuclear Power Plants ◽  
Plant Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regulatory Compliance ◽  
Digital Systems

Over the past 20 years, the nuclear power industry in the United States (U.S.) has been slowly replacing old, obsolete, and difficult-to-maintain analog technology for its nuclear power plant protection, control, and instrumentation systems with digital systems. The advantages of digital technology, including more accurate and stable measurements and the ability to improve diagnostics capability and system reliability, have led to an ever increasing move to complete these upgrades. Because of the difficulties with establishing digital systems safety based on analysis or tests, the safety demonstration for these systems relies heavily on establishing the quality of the design and development of the hardware and software. In the United States, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has established detailed guidelines for establishing and documenting an appropriate safety demonstration for digital systems in NUREG-0800, “Standard Review Plan for the Review of Safety Analysis Reports for Nuclear Power Plants: LWR Edition,” Chapter 7, “Instrumentation and Controls,” Revision 5, issued March 2007 [1], and in a number of regulatory guides and interim staff guidance documents. However, despite the fact that the United States has a well-defined review process, a number of significant challenges associated with the design, licensing, and implementation of upgrades to digital systems for U.S. plants have emerged. Among these challenges have been problems with the quality of the systems and the supporting software verification and validation (V&V) processes, challenges with determining the optimum balance between the enhanced capabilities for the new systems and the desire to maintain system simplicity, challenges with cyber security, and challenges with developing the information needed to support the review of new systems for regulatory compliance.

scholarly journals Trends in OMI NO<sub>2</sub> observations over the United States: effects of emission control technology and the economic recession

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 12197-12209 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Russell ◽  
L. C. Valin ◽  
R. C. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
The United States ◽  
Retrieval Algorithm ◽  
Vertical Column ◽  
Large Power ◽  
Mobile Sources ◽  
Light Duty Vehicle ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Observations of tropospheric NO2 vertical column densities over the United States (US) for 2005–2011 are evaluated using the OMI Berkeley High Resolution (BEHR) retrieval algorithm. We assess changes in NO2 on day-of-week and interannual timescales to assess the impact of changes in emissions from mobile and non-mobile sources on the observed trends. We observe consistent decreases in cities across the US, with an average total reduction of 32 ± 7% across the 7 yr. Changes for large power plants have been more variable (−26 ± 12%) due to regionally-specific regulation policies. An increasing trend of 10–20% in background NO2 columns in the northwestern US is observed. We examine the impact of the economic recession on emissions and find that decreases in NO2 column densities over cities were moderate prior to the recession (−6 ± 5% yr−1), larger during the recession (−8 ± 5% yr−1), and then smaller after the recession (−3 ± 4% yr−1). Differences in the trends observed on weekdays and weekends indicate that prior to the economic recession, NO2 reductions were dominated by technological improvements to the light-duty vehicle fleet but that a decrease in diesel truck activity has contributed to emission reductions since the recession. We use the satellite observations to estimate a 34% decrease in NO2 from mobile sources in cities for 2005–2011 and use that value to infer changes in non-mobile sources. We find that reductions in NO2 from non-mobile sources in cities have been both more modest and more variable than NO2 reductions from mobile sources (−10 ± 13%).

scholarly journals Az atomerőművek üzemidejének meghosszabbítása az Egyesült Államokban és Magyarországon

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (28) ◽  
pp. 344-375
Author(s):  
Anita Paulovics
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Nuclear Power Plants ◽  
Operation Time ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Time Limit ◽  
Energy Strategy ◽  
The Usa

This paper is about the legal regulation of the extension of the operation time of nuclear power plants.  In Hungary the most important document in this respect has been the National Energy Strategy analyzed in the paper. In Hungary, the legal regulation of the extension of the time limit of the operation-permit of nuclear power plants is modelled on that of the United States. For this reason, the paper examines the rules in force in the USA on the extension of the operation time.  It could be of interest for several European countries considering to extend the operation time of their nuclear power plants.

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