Embodied CO_2 emissions and cross-border electricity trade in Europe: Rebalancing burden sharing with energy storage

摘要

Stricter emissions control and the increasing pressure for a common European energy market have stimulated new comprehensive methods for the estimation of national CO_2 emissions that capture trade balances and introduce life-cycle implications for various sectors and products. In this study we adopt a new estimation framework for national electricity sector emissions which takes into account the cross-border electricity trade. Most importantly, we consider a novel aspect of how can utility-scale energy storage increase its value in its effort to serve the purpose of large-scale integration of renewables and system flexibility. For different levels of energy storage we assess the potential to prevent electricity trade flows from countries with higher CO_2 emission factor to countries with lower CO_2 emission factor. Optimum assessment of energy storage capacity in European countries is looked at from the viewpoint of maximum CO_2 emission savings and the technically realizable pumped hydro storage at the national level. This is associated with the break-even CO_2 price that can marginally support new investment in this domain. Our results show that the use of grid-scale energy storage could provide the framework for a fair burden sharing of emissions' allocation in Europe and support a flexible and resilient energy supply system.