Stephen R. Connors
AGREA - Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives
MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment
Room E19-341P • tel: 001_617_253_7985 • firstname.lastname@example.org
Below is a selection of papers from over the years. Larger, and more detailed, reports appear on the AGREA webite. Included in this selection are paper that address key issues from the past fifteen year, and how scenario analysis can be used to identify robust solutions, and inform and elevate policy debates.
Current Issues in Evaluating Future Energy Pathways
Future Electricity Supplies: Redefining
This paper presents some of key insights from the EPA Avoided Emissions from Solar Photovoltaics Project. It focuses not on solar energy, but the operational (load level) dynamcis of BOTH renewables and fossil generators. Only by looking at hourly generator loading—determined by market conditions, electricity demand and ramp rates for fossil, and renewable resource availability for solar and wind—can the actual units being "backed off" by renewables and energy efficiency be indentified, and accurate assessments of avoided emissions calculated.
CMI Centre for Energy Security
This paper, submitted to the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as part of its Energy Review, identifies the elements of a robust strategy that will allow the UK to simultaneously address its long-term energy security, environmental and social objectives. While there are may aspects of "energy security," such as the security of energy supplies (oil and natural gas geopolitics), and the security of nuclear materials associated with nuclear power and the fuel cycle, this paper focuses on how we can evolve the energy infrastructure over time to reduce consumers's exposure to energy security risks, lower greenhouse gases, and reduce market volatility.
Using Tradeoff Analysis to Identify Robust Strategies
Informing decision makers and identifying
Drawing from scenarios of the New England AREA (Analyzing Regional Electricity Alternatives) project, this paper provides a brief overview of the tradeoff analysis approach, and the demonstates its application to the New England power system. Scenarios with and without windpower, energy efficiency, and varying degree existing fossil unit NOx retrofits are evaluated across a range natural gas costs.
Electric Sector Simulation: A Tradeoff
This is a final draft version of the Chapter that appears in the AGS Series book. It gives a detailed description of the tradeoff analysis approach, with a full implementation of the methodology to the Shandong electric sector. Options targeting new generation technology choices and mixes, options aimed at reducing emissions from existing coal-fired power plant, and demand-management options are combined into 1,009 unique strategies. These are then evaluated across three levels of electricity demand growth, and numerous fuel cost uncertainties.
Integrating Long-Term Factors into Competitive Electricity Markets
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
This paper presents scenarios for the New England electric power sector that move beyond diverse investment portfolios to include a "cap and trade" system for NOx. The scenarios impose a summertime NOx emissions cap for Southern New England, and then evaluate the cost and emissions performance for all of New England across a broader range of emissions.
Competition, Coordination and Compliance:
This paper discusses the role of planning in a competitive electricity industry. Well functioning competitive markets are highly coordinated. Written on the eve of electricity competition, it discusses the value of having a long-term industry vision as a way to inform market actors, and design policies which attain long-term balance within the industry.
Select Papers from the "Externality Wars" of the Early 1990s
Externality Adders and
Cost-Effective Emissions Reductions:
The inclusion of "environmental externalities" in utility-decision making was a very hot topic in the late 1980s and early 1990s, especially since so little scientific information regarding damage costs after environmental regulations were met was available. (That bit hasn't changed much.) This paper blends the externality debate with "no regrets" concepts, using scenario analysis to look at blended strategies and multiple costs and benefits.
Side-Stepping the Adder:
This mainly non-technical (or at least non-numeric) paper describes key concepts of "least cost planning" from direct cost and social cost perspectives. By combining the concepts with the pareto-like tradeoff frontiers used by AGREA, an alternative approach to incorporating environmental externalities into electricity planning is put forward.
Energy and Sustainable Development
Issues in Energy
This paper focuses on the broader issues of sustainable development, and how these issues map to the long-term management and performance of regional energy systems. Transitions (or Pathways) to a sustainable energy system are then discussed, including the role of policies and how they effect the development, deployment and use of cleaner energy technologies.
|03 Aug 06|
|web.mit.edu/agrea||© 2006 S.R. Connors|