Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E
In our recently published work, we incorporated planetary boundaries in the optimization of the United States (US) power sector in 2030. Yang claims there is a double-counting error in our results and encourages us to minimize direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions in our model. Here, we a...
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ftimperialcol:oai:spiral.imperial.ac.uk:10044/1/86795 2023-05-15T17:51:25+02:00 Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E Algunaibet, IM Pozo, C Galan-Martin, A Huijbregts, MAJ Mac Dowell, N Guillen-Gosalbez, G Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) 2019-11-22 http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/86795 https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee03146d English eng Royal Society of Chemistry Energy and Environmental Science 1754-5692 http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/86795 doi:10.1039/c9ee03146d NE/P019900/1 © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ CC-BY 316 313 Science & Technology Physical Sciences Technology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Chemistry Multidisciplinary Energy & Fuels Engineering Chemical Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences & Ecology LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT Energy Journal Article 2019 ftimperialcol https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee03146d 2021-03-18T23:38:59Z In our recently published work, we incorporated planetary boundaries in the optimization of the United States (US) power sector in 2030. Yang claims there is a double-counting error in our results and encourages us to minimize direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions in our model. Here, we argue that Yang's main criticism based on the risk of double-counting emissions when multiple sectors are simultaneously optimized does not apply to our case study, in which only one sector – the power sector – is analyzed. To assess the implications of Yang's suggestion to minimize direct emissions, we repeated the calculations optimizing direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions. We found that this approach is unable to discriminate effectively between electricity production technologies and, consequently, leads to a suboptimal mix with impacts on climate change, ocean acidification and freshwater use 102, 33 and 1.5 times the limits, respectively, whereas our original solution meets all planetary boundaries concurrently. Our findings imply that Yang's suggestion of optimizing direct emissions in energy systems models might not the best way forward in single-sector studies like ours. Article in Journal/Newspaper Ocean acidification Imperial College London: Spiral Energy & Environmental Science 13 1 313 316 |
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Imperial College London: Spiral |
op_collection_id |
ftimperialcol |
language |
English |
topic |
Science & Technology Physical Sciences Technology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Chemistry Multidisciplinary Energy & Fuels Engineering Chemical Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences & Ecology LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT Energy |
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Science & Technology Physical Sciences Technology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Chemistry Multidisciplinary Energy & Fuels Engineering Chemical Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences & Ecology LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT Energy Algunaibet, IM Pozo, C Galan-Martin, A Huijbregts, MAJ Mac Dowell, N Guillen-Gosalbez, G Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
topic_facet |
Science & Technology Physical Sciences Technology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Chemistry Multidisciplinary Energy & Fuels Engineering Chemical Environmental Sciences Environmental Sciences & Ecology LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT Energy |
description |
In our recently published work, we incorporated planetary boundaries in the optimization of the United States (US) power sector in 2030. Yang claims there is a double-counting error in our results and encourages us to minimize direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions in our model. Here, we argue that Yang's main criticism based on the risk of double-counting emissions when multiple sectors are simultaneously optimized does not apply to our case study, in which only one sector – the power sector – is analyzed. To assess the implications of Yang's suggestion to minimize direct emissions, we repeated the calculations optimizing direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions. We found that this approach is unable to discriminate effectively between electricity production technologies and, consequently, leads to a suboptimal mix with impacts on climate change, ocean acidification and freshwater use 102, 33 and 1.5 times the limits, respectively, whereas our original solution meets all planetary boundaries concurrently. Our findings imply that Yang's suggestion of optimizing direct emissions in energy systems models might not the best way forward in single-sector studies like ours. |
author2 |
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Algunaibet, IM Pozo, C Galan-Martin, A Huijbregts, MAJ Mac Dowell, N Guillen-Gosalbez, G |
author_facet |
Algunaibet, IM Pozo, C Galan-Martin, A Huijbregts, MAJ Mac Dowell, N Guillen-Gosalbez, G |
author_sort |
Algunaibet, IM |
title |
Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
title_short |
Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
title_full |
Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
title_fullStr |
Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
title_full_unstemmed |
Reply to the 'Comment on "Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI:10.1039/C9EE01176E |
title_sort |
reply to the 'comment on "powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries"' by y. yang, energy environ. sci., 2020, 13, doi:10.1039/c9ee01176e |
publisher |
Royal Society of Chemistry |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/86795 https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee03146d |
genre |
Ocean acidification |
genre_facet |
Ocean acidification |
op_source |
316 313 |
op_relation |
Energy and Environmental Science 1754-5692 http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/86795 doi:10.1039/c9ee03146d NE/P019900/1 |
op_rights |
© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ee03146d |
container_title |
Energy & Environmental Science |
container_volume |
13 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
313 |
op_container_end_page |
316 |
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1766158547473661952 |