Suchergebnisse

California's low-carbon fuel market is growing.Regulated parties in the State's LCFS exceeded the requirements for 2011 and Q1 of 2012 by a substantial margin.Based on available data, average compliance cost in August 2012 is $13/MT CO2e, adding about 0.1 cents per gallon to the production cost of gasoline. Summer drought increased costs of corn ethanol, but the full impact of the drought on CA-LCFS compliance and compliance costs will not be known for some time.We find that regulated parties in the California LCFS (CA-LCFS) exceeded the standard in 2011 and the first quarter (Q1) of 2012 by a substantial margin. Companies achieve compliance when credits equal deficits. Regulated parties generated 1.58 million credits (metric tonnes CO2e reduction) in the first 15 months, nearly double the amount of deficits (0.78 million), for a net surplus of 0.80 million credits to exceed the required reduction level by about 0.8 million metric tonnes CO2e. Companies relied on ethanol to generate 86% of the credits. The CI of ethanol fuels used to generate CA-LCFS credits in 2011 and first quarter of 2012 averaged around 84 gCO2e/MJ, compared to baseline values of 95.6 for gasoline.Because no central trading mechanism exists, we used available information on actual trades, bids, and offers in August 2012 to estimate that CA-LCFS carbon credits were valued at $10-18/metric tonne (MT) CO2e, with an average of $13/MT CO2e. At this price ($13/MT CO2e) and given the 2012 requirement of 0.5% CI reduction, companies who choose to meet their obligation purely by purchasing CA-LCFS credits for compliance would incur an added cost of about 0.1 cents per gallon of gasoline produced.The special topic addressed in this review is the effect of the 2012 U.S. summer drought. We find that poor yields due to extreme drought in the Midwestern U.S. raised corn prices about 60% from mid-June through August, causing ethanol prices to rise about 60 cents per gallon. The actual impacts of the drought on this year's CA-LCFS compliance and on other food/fuel prices are not yet clear. Even with current higher corn prices, corn ethanol is still less expensive than gasoline on a per gallon basis and considerable amounts are being exported. Given that companies have until March 31, 2013 to acquire additional credits to meet 2012 compliance requirements, and corn and sugarcane ethanol markets are still adjusting to the drought's effects, it is too soon to gauge the drought's overall impact on CA-LCFS compliance and compliance cost.We will continue periodic publication of the LCFS Status Review and provide in-depth analysis on critical issues associated with the performance of the CA-LCFS as more data become available.

This paper reviews the regulatory history for nitrogen oxides (NOx) pollutant emissions from stationary sources,primarily in coal-fired power plants. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is one of the six criteria pollutants regulated by the 1970 Clean Air Act where National Ambient Air Quality Standards were established to protect public health and welfare. We use patent data to show that in the cases of Japan, Germany, and the United States, innovations in NOx control technologies did not occur until stringent government regulations were in place, thus "forcing" innovation. We also demonstrate that reductions in the capital and operation and maintenance (O&M) costs of new generations of high-efficiency NOx control technologies, selective catalytic reduction (SCR), are consistently associated with the increasing adoption of the control technology: the so-called learning-by-doing phenomena. The results show that as cumulative world coal-fired SCR capacity doubles, capital costs decline to 86% and O&M costs to 58% of their original values. The observed changes in SCR technology reflect the impact of technological advance as well as other factors, such as market competition and economies of scale.

California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on April 23, 2009 requires a 10% reduction in the average greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of the state's transportation fuels by 2020. This regulation is expected to reduce lifecycle GHG emissions per year by 20–25 million metric tons by 2020. Given available technology options, biofuels are expected to play a major role toward achieving the target. However, the rapid expansion of biofuel production may have environmental and social impacts at local, regional, and international levels. In response, many governments and national consortia have adopted sustainability requirements for their biofuel programs. The CARB is to propose a strategic plan for addressing overall sustainability provisions for the LCFS, for consideration by the Board for adoption by the end of 2011.

This publication provides methodological detail on the new GCAM Transportation Module and contains the following: (1) Descriptions of the new transportation module in GCAM (2) Details about the data sources and methodology adopted to estimate the exogeneous input parameters (3) A summary of the region-specific transportation data for base year (2005) (4) Comparisons of these estimates across regions and modes. (5) Highlights of the uncertainty and shortcomings in our estimates The project broadly encompasses the following four refinements to the transportation sector of GCAM: 1) Increased resolution to include the full spectrum of sub-modes and technologies available in passenger and frieght transport; 2) Refined estimates of input parameters so as to better represent real-world heterogeneity in a way consistent with the latest literature on transportation; 3) Refined estimates of base year (2005) estimates of transportation demand, and disaggregation of IEA energy estimates between modes and size classes; 4) Included the non-motorized modes of walking and biking. The above refinements will not only allow us to develop better estimates of transportation energy demand and emissions, but will also enable modeling of the impact of policies that induce behavioral change and switching to different size classes within a single fuel type. Existing literature on long-term forecasts of transportation energy demand and emissions have focused on the role of advanced low-emission vehicle technologies and low-carbon energy carriers in achieving climate change goals. In GCAM, modeling the impact of policies in the form of varying levels of carbon prices has, to date, been restricted to consumer choices for different modes (e.g. rail versus personal car) and different vehicle technologies (e.g. internal combustion engine vehicles versus electric vehicle). A more detailed representation of the transportation sector – including various size classes of vehicles -- will allow us to estimate the potential for downsizing in the case of private modes (large LDV to midsize or compact LDVs), transfer to public modes (rail and bus) or to non-motorized transport (walking and biking), and adoption of energy efficient "new" modes like the electric-bikes, which have seen rapid adoption in China and other developing countries. This project aims to better represent the heterogeneity and flexibility in the transport system to allow the modeling of a broader range of transport policy intruments including subsidies to public transit, government incentives for alternative technology, transportation fuel taxes, and public investments to increase the speed, service frequency/availability, and comfort of public and nonmotorized modes.