Determining consumer's carbon emission obligation through virtual emission tracing in power systems

Although a recent report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates that CO2 emissions from power generation have now fallen below emissions from the transportation sector, electricity use remains a significant part of human's environmental footprint since fossil fuels are the major energy resource for electricity generation worldwide. This explains the continual effort by policy makers to develop a remedy to mitigate carbon emissions. It is then critically important to properly account for the emissions associated with electricity generation, delivery, and consumption. In particular, it is critical to be able to allocate emissions to the relevant electricity consumers creating the demand that results in a polluting emission. Therefore, in this paper a virtual carbon emission tracing method in power systems is thoroughly presented to facilitate allotting carbon obligation. The method is developed based on the proportional sharing principle that has been used in power system operation. The proposed methodology is implemented on the IEEE 5-bus and 9-bus systems, two widely used and recognized power grid benchmarks.