Calculating Wind Power's Environmental Benefits

摘要

It's commonly believed that new wind power generation will displace coal and natural gas-fueled power plants and thereby avoid all their associated greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide. The benefits of these avoided emissions have become a major factor in wind developers gaining public support for their plans to site wind farms. Until a US carbon cap and trade program and/or national RPS is adopted by Congress, only a few select areas remain in which wind could even compete in an open power market and create potential avoided CO2 emission benefits. In these few areas, new wind generation will displace highest incremental cost generation on the regional power pool margin. While wind energy may be able to displace some fossil fuel emissions in an open power market, integrating it into a generation mix poses additional problems that offset a portion of any projected benefits.