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Long-Term Forecasts for Data Center Owners
A large electricity consumer and data center owner engaged TCR to perform long-term simulations of multiple electricity markets in the United States to inform data center siting on the basis of electricity costs and carbon emissions intensity.
Decarbonization Policy Analysis
A state governmental agency in the Mid-Atlantic region retained TCR to conduct analysis and market simulations of the PJM Interconnection to assist in the development of policy and strategies to achieve the state's decarbonization goals.
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Decarbonization StrategiesTCR staff are thought leaders in decarbonization strategies for a new era. We have pioneered the use of a carbon accounting methodology based on Locational Marginal Emission Rates and have applied it to develop decarbonization strategies for a range of electricity industry stakeholders, including large electricity consumers and state agencies.
TCR staff leverage deep expertise in energy market fundamentals to provide a rigorous, quantitative analyses. Our team has a comprehensive range of technical, economic, financial, and regulatory expertise. We apply state-of-the-art analytical tools and simulation models. TCR provides analyses with rigorous results that withstand peer review and litigation scrutiny. We present those analyses and results clearly and convincingly to both technical and non-technical audiences. Case StudyAnalysis of Voluntary Clean Energy Procurement Strategies
TCR was retained by a large electricity consumer to evaluate the effectiveness of various clean energy procurement strategies. Large electricity consumers, particularly companies in the technology sector, are pursuing several different strategies to reduce their Scope 2 emissions through voluntary clean energy procurement. A TCR study calculated the cost and effectiveness of four different clean energy procurement strategies: U.S.-wide annual energy matching, local annual energy matching, hourly energy matching, and carbon matching.
Carbon matching requires balancing emissions attributable to electricity load with avoided emissions from clean energy procurement (calculated using Locational Marginal Emission Rates), while energy matching requires balancing load and clean energy generation on an annual or hourly timescale. We evaluated these strategies as pursued by large electricity consumers with two different representative load profiles located in five different U.S. regions with varying regulatory structures. TCR's analysis found that carbon matching is the most cost-effective procurement strategy, with a cost between $4.7 and $7.6/MWh, and has the lowest carbon emissions abatement cost at $13/t CO2 displaced. The study also found that annual energy matching costs range from $10/MWh to $32/MWh, and that the procurement strategy does not guarantee carbon neutrality. Hourly energy matching costs are even higher, ranging from $68/MWh to $181/MWh, depending on the region and the load profile of the electricity consumer, and it is the least cost-effective strategy at carbon emissions reduction, with abatement costs ranging from $77/t CO2 to $161/t CO2. These results suggest that targeting clean energy investment in regions where current renewable energy penetration is low and marginal emissions rates are high is the most effective way for individual actors to reduce Scope 2 carbon emissions and reach carbon neutrality. |
