Heat and Power: The Evolving Provision of Industrial Heat and Thermal Generation in a Decarbonizing World

Abstract

Climate change mitigation requires multisectoral response and analysis. The basis of the energy system is and has been fossil fuel for over a century. Efforts to transition away from emitting energy sources are often discussed but nascent due to the momentum of technical, social, and political systems. Here, I consider two elements of an energy transition: a) industrial heat decarbonization and b) power plant utilization in changing power systems. This is an effort to consider new technologies and/or new operating regimes of current technologies in a decarbonizing energy system. While my topics are wide ranging in specific technology and application, the energy system response must inherently be wide ranging to effectively address climate change. In the first component, we consider hard-to-decarbonize industrial process heat - a particular challenge for traditional renewables – by considering the techno-economic potential of small modular nuclear reactors, SMRs, at hundreds of US industrial facilities. In the first study, we address two research questions. First, can SMRs achieve economic viability serving industrial thermal demands? Second, how much does joint participation in industrial and wholesale power markets impact SMR viability? We answer these by finding the optimal SMR deployment at industrial sub-processes across the US and comparing these outcomes to counterfactual natural gas fueled heat. At realistic gas prices, over 4 million tons of CO2 emissions could be reduced annually, signaling potential for economical decarbonization of industrial processes. These industrial facilities do not operate in isolation or with ideal conditions, and therefore, we must include elements such as learning rates, cost changes, and feedback between individual facilities and the system. We ask what are technoeconomically viable deployment pathways given a range of uncertain conditions? We run a nation-scale profit-maximizing model to understand where SMR investment is more economically viable than continuing to use natural gas fuel for a range of policies, learning rates, and cost overruns at over 900 industrial facilities. Our results demonstrate that there is widespread potential for SMRs even when challenged by supply chains, escalating costs, and negative learning. We additionally evaluate and highlight policy measures such as an investment tax credit which provides significant support to decarbonization and those which do not such as direct subsidies. In the final component of the dissertation, we consider the changing landscape of the power system specifically relating to the evolving role of thermal generators progressively operating at low-capacity factors. In the traditional schema of the power system, power plants such as natural gas combustion turbines are considered ‘peaker plants’ providing necessary short duration generation at high load times. We ask how much and what type of generation will be used in this role in future systems? We combine the past, present, and future of thermal generation to evaluate potential peaking power plants, and the limitations for modeling a long-term power system evolution. The amount of peaking capacity is likely to be similar to all existing capacity and thermal generators previously designed for consistent usage could become the new peaking resource. Across topics, this dissertation seeks to situate itself within an ever-changing understanding of how to generate the most responsible and effective energy transition within the existing constructs. By finding areas where the system can be leveraged to minimize social and environmental harms, momentum can be built to oppose the weight of the fossil fueled system.