THE FUTURE OF COAL CONSUMPTION IN A CARBON CONSTRAINED WORLD

摘要

Coal accounts for nearly 30% of all global fossil fuel consumption and 37% of fossil fuel emissions of carbon dioxide. It is used primarily in the electric power sector where it provides over half of the primary energy input. In the absence of penalties or restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, coal use for electricity generation is expected to grow over the course of this century due to its relative abundance. However, policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions have the potential to threaten coal's dominance in the electric power sector in favor of less carbon-intensive natural gas. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies hold promise in offsetting this switch. To understand these tradeoffs in a carbon dioxide constrained world, we examine the influence of four factors on future of coal consumption in the electric power sector: the price of carbon emissions, the price of natural gas, costs of CCS technologies, and the dispatch between coal and natural gas generation technologies. In this paper, we develop plausible, yet wide-ranging, scenarios for the variables mentioned above. We assess their effect on coal consumption using a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. The results illustrate how competing technologies, changing input prices, and general equilibrium effects influence the adoption of CCS technologies. Our results for the United States and Europe suggest that carbon price and dispatch have the most significant effect on future coal consumption. Improvements in CCS technology costs make coal consumption less dependent on gas price, but do not mitigate the carbon price effects on consumption through 2050.