A perspective on South African coal fired power station emissions
Date
2015Author
Pretorius, Ilze
Piketh, Stuart
Burger, Roelof
Neomagus, Hein
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper investigates trends of historical and projected
future South African coal-fired power station
criteria (total primary Particulate Matter (PM),
Sulphur Dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx))
and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions. It was found
that an energy restricted environment has an
increasing effect on emissions, as emissions per
energy unit increased from the onset of the South
African energy crisis. PM emissions particularly,
increased during the energy crisis period, due to
increased pressure on PM abatement and lowered
maintenance opportunity. Projections of future coalfired
power station criteria and CO2 emissions are
made for four different future scenarios for the period
2015 to 2030. Three of the four scenarios are
based on the lower projected energy demand baseline
case as published in the updated Integrated
Development Plan (IRP). The difference between
these three scenarios is different retrofit rates of
power stations with emissions abatement technologies.
The fourth scenario is a worst case scenario
and assumes high energy demand (and therefore no
decommissioning of power stations), high emission
rates (similar to worst past emission rates during the
period 1999-2012) and no further abatement of
emissions above and beyond current mitigation
efforts. This scenario gives an indication of what
South African coal-fired power station emissions
could look like if the energy crisis persists. There is
a marked difference between projected best and
worst case PM emissions during the entire projected
period, but especially during 2030 when worst case
PM emissions compared to a 2015 baseline value
are expected to rise by 40% and best case PM emissions
are projected to decline by 40%. Worst case
NOx emissions are expected to increase by 40% in
2030 from a 2015 baseline value whereas best case
emissions are expected to decline 10% from the
same level in 2030. Worst case SO2 emissions are
predicted to increase by around 38% in 2030 and
best case emissions are expected to decrease by
around 20% in 2030 from a 2015 baseline value.
Relative emissions used in the projection of future
CO2 emissions in this paper differ from that used in
the energy demand and energy mix modelling done
for the updated IRP baseline case. The reason for
this is that the modelling for the updated IRP
assumed relative CO2 emission factors for supercritical
boilers, whereas only Kusile and Medupi fall in
this category and relative emissions from all other
stations are, in fact, between 5% and 16% higher.
For this reason, it seems unlikely that the South
African climate commitment target for 2030 will be
made
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10394/18566http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1021-447X2015000300004&lng=en&nrm=iso