Headlines: U.S. Announces New Carbon Emission Limits for Power Plants

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 14:37:22 +0000

September 20, 2013 – Today Gina McCarthy (seen below), the administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing CO2 emission limits for new gas-fired and coal-fired power plants. The new limits are 453 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of CO2 per Megawatt hour for the former and 499 kilograms (1,100 pounds) per Megawatt hour for the latter. In 2012 the EPA measured the average CO2 output from all electricity sources at 593 kilograms (1,307 pounds) per Megawatt hour. In setting these new targets for gas and coal power plants the EPA is establishing a threshold below current average emissions. How do the targets compare with current emissions from advanced coal-fired power plants? A CO2 reduction of about 45% for gas-burning and 39% for coal-burning utilities.

An average home in the United States consumes about 12.25 Megawatt hours of electricity per year. In 2011 the United States had 116.17 million homes. In total they consumed 1,424 billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity. In announcing these reduction targets McCarthy, therefore, is setting the bar for an average American home to reduce its carbon footprint from 7,262 kilograms (16,010 pounds) to 6,112 kilograms (13,475 pounds) of CO2 per year, a drop of 16%. When you put it that way the announced reductions are not as significant as they need to be to really tackle the problem of overall greenhouse gas emissions. But at least with the multiplier effect of all those homes, the targets will reduce total emissions coming from residential sources.

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Urban Landscapes Update: How One City is Changing the Power Mix and its Carbon Footprint

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:31:58 +0000

The proposal is called “trigeneration.” The city is Sydney, Australia. The plan is to use city roofs and basements to become local sources of power generation to supplement and eventually replace coal-fired power responsible for 80% of Sydney’s greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to generate 70% of the electrical requirement for the city by 2030 and dramatically reduce dependence on more polluting power generation sources. The balance of energy will be generated by renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and energy from waste.

Sydney is not unlike many other large urban centres on the planet. Although cities occupy 2% of the Earth’s land mass, they are the users of 66% of all the energy we generate and contribute 70% of total carbon emissions.

Trigeneration is a technology that uses natural gas to generate electricity, heating and air conditioning for building clusters. It is better than twice as efficient as the coal-fired power plants it will replace. And with a reduced carbon footprint will improve the city’s air quality dramatically. The city is also switching to LED street lighting throughout to reduce its energy footprint.

The alternative that Sydney faced was one that would have involved building new power stations and a major upgrade to the power grid. By producing power locally the city will avoid the cost of remote energy generation and the transporting of it over power lines.

Sydney hopes through its trigeneration strategy to avoid cost upgrades to its power network and aims for a 70% reduction in its carbon emissions by 2030. Source: City of Sydney, Australia

The Trigeneration plan includes local building projects that not only will generate their own power but will also recycle water from storm-water runoff to flush toilets and irrigate gardens and parks reducing the city’s water usage. In Australia which increasingly faces drought conditions water is as large an issue as air pollution and energy conservation.

The city hopes to save more than $1.5 billion Australian through implementing trigeneration.

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gas-fired power generation – Techso Mogro

Headlines: U.S. Announces New Carbon Emission Limits for Power Plants

Urban Landscapes Update: How One City is Changing the Power Mix and its Carbon Footprint