A framework to assess the economic and uncertainty implications for technologies for use in decarbonization

The accumulation of greenhouse gasses is causing climate change on a global scale. From simulations of warming scenarios, it appears that complete replacements of fossil fuels within the global energy economy must occur within about 60 years if warming is to be limited to 2°C (Prinn et al., 2011). This means that the discussion about which pathways to decarbonization to pursue will need to occur soon, and will likely be difficult to correct later. This thesis developed and demonstrated two frameworks that can be used to guide discussions on decarbonization pathway choices. The first framework determines the economic usefulness of a technology by finding the difference in total system cost with and without that technology (the opportunity cost of not utilizing the technology).

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Dawson, Karen Margaret.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael Golay.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124576

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124576