Neat new paper by Christine Shearer, @DanTong12, @SteveDavisUCI, and others looking at committed emissions from gas-to-coal transition. If gas plants run at high capacity over their lifetime the benefits from coal switching are minimal. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… 1/3
However, unlike coal, gas plants have relatively low capital costs, and few employees. They can easily have low capacity factors and serve to mostly run during high-price periods where renewable generation is low while being economically viable. 2/3
If we transition to future where gas fills in the gap between clean energy generation – rather than replacing coal's baseload – the committed emissions would likely be much smaller. But this requires policy interventions (carbon price or clean energy standard) to an extent 3/3
*coal to gas transition, that is.
