Estimating the Greenhouse Gas Balance of Individual Gas-Fired and Oil-Fired Electricity Plants on a Global Scale

Summary Life cycle greenhouse gas (LC-GHG) emissions from electricity generated by a specific resource, such as gas and oil, are commonly reported on a country-by-country basis. Estimation of variability in LC-GHG emissions of individual power plants can, however, be particularly useful to evaluate or identify appropriate environmental policy measures. Here, we developed a regression model to predict LC-GHG emissions per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity produced by individual gas- and oil-fired power plants across the world. The regression model uses power plant characteristics as predictors, including capacity, age, fuel type (fuel oil or natural gas), and technology type (single or combined cycle) of the plant. The predictive power of the model was relatively high (R2 = 81% for predictions). Fuel and technology type were identified as the most important predictors. Estimated emission factors ranged from 0.45 to 1.16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalents per kilowatt-hour (kg CO2-eq/kWh) and were clearly different between natural gas combined cycle (0.45 to 0.57 kg CO2-eq/kWh), natural gas single cycle (0.66 to 0.85 kg CO2-eq/kWh), oil combined cycle power plants (0.63 to 0.79 kg CO2-eq/kWh), and oil single cycle (0.94 to 1.16 kg CO2-eq/kWh). Our results thus indicate that emission data averaged by fuel and technology type can be profitably used to estimate the emissions of individual plants.