The drivers of power system emissions: an econometric analysis of load, wind and forecast errors

This research models the drivers of emissions historically to identify the factors most effective in reducing power system emissions. It estimates the average effects of wind and load on \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions from the Republic of Ireland’s electricity market. The findings suggest that wind generation and load reduction are not equally effective on average in terms of reducing emissions and that a 1 MW increase in wind is approximately 65% on average as effective at reducing emissions as a 1 MW load reduction, a result in line with existing literature. However, the results also show that a reduction in load and an increase in wind have a similar impact on emissions if wind forecast errors are explicitly modelled. Thus, the emissions reduction differentiation may not only be driven by the timing of load and wind output, the wind forecast error also has an important role. Positive and negative wind forecast errors are found to have opposite effects on emissions.