6 Future Grid Emissions and Climate Ben Taube and Alison Maguire Technology Overview As the generation mix of electricity in the ISONE region and future demands for electricity change, so will the carbon emission rate of electricity. While changes to the regional grid are outside of MIT’s direct control, it is necessary for MIT to consider regional grid emissions in choosing a path toward decarbonization due to the limited options for MIT to generate carbonfree electricity on campus. At the same time, we know that the climate in Boston is going to warm over the coming three decades independent near and long-term actions. This warming will naturally shift our building conditioning loads from heating to cooling dominated. Risk and Innovation Since it is unclear how fast the New England grid will decarbonize, there is a risk for MIT to rely on overly optimistic future emissions numbers. Another risk is that a near fully decarbonized grid may become less stable, introducing additional resiliency concerns. Grid Emission Scenarios To consider a range of plausible future grid emissions scenarios, we picked three hourly marginal emissions rates come from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s 2023 Cambium data set (Gagnon et al, 2023) which provides simulated grid emissions in the ISO New England region every 5 years. Cambium also provides hourly electricity prices for each scenario. We used gas prices from 2023 EIA Annual Energy Outlook. The reference case was for business as usual and 95% decarbonization while the low natural gas prices scenario was matched to the same scenario between Cambium and EIA AEO. Table 1: Selected Cambium grid emission scenarios Scenario name Description Business as usual (Mid case) Central estimates for inputs such as technology costs, fuel prices, and demand growth. No nascent technologies. Electric sector policies as they existed in September 2023. Low natural gas prices The same set of base assumptions as the first scenario, but where natural gas prices are assumed to be lower. 95% decarbonization by 2050 The same set of base assumptions as the first scenario, but nascent technologies are included and there is a national electricity sector decarbonization constraint that linearly declines to 5% of 2005 emissions on net by 2050.
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