Analysis of Indirect Emissions Benefits of Wind, Landfill Gas, and Municipal Solid Waste Generation

摘要

A number of techniques are introduced to calculate the hourly indirect emissions benefits of three types of renewable resources: wind energy, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) combustion, and Landfill Gas (LFG) combustion. These techniques are applied to each of the EPA's eGRID subregions in the continental United States in order to derive hourly, seasonal, or annual (as appropriate) coefficients for use in evaluating the indirect emissions benefits of such projects in each region. For wind power impacts, simulated wind project power profiles are derived using publicly available wind data scaled to a typical turbine height for new wind projects and transformed through a power curve for a proxy turbine. The results for one region are compared to the output of an existing project, although the limitations of this type of comparison, as well as the limitations of representing large areas of the country with single proxy curves, are discussed. LFG and MSW are found to have flat, always on profiles based on the limited data available. The regional, hourly power profiles for each type of resource are combined with the hourly indirect emissions coefficients to yield annual indirect emissions benefits for each type of resource for each eGRID subregion.