Assessment of cleaner electricity generation technologies for net CO2 mitigation in Thailand

The choice of electricity generation technologies not only directly affects the amount of CO2 emission from the power sector, but also indirectly affects the economy-wide CO2 emission. It is because electricity is the basic requirement of economic sectors and final consumptions within the economy. In Thailand, although the power development plan (PDP) has been planned for the committed capacity to meet the future electricity demand, there are some undecided electricity generation technologies that will be studied for technological options. The economy-wide CO2 mitigations between selecting cleaner power generation options instead of pulverized coal-thermal technology of the undecided capacity are assessed by energy input–output analysis (IOA). The decomposition of IOA presents the fuel-mix effect, input structural effect, and final demand effect by the change in technology of the undecided capacity. The cleaner technologies include biomass power generation, hydroelectricity and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). Results of the analyses show that if the conventional pulverized coal technology is selected in the undecided capacity, the economy-wide CO2 emission would be increased from 223 million ton in 2006 to 406 million ton in 2016. Renewable technology presents better mitigation option for replacement of conventional pulverized coal technology than the cleaner coal technology. The major contributor of CO2 mitigation in cleaner coal technology is the fuel mix effect due to higher conversion efficiency. The demand effect is the major contributor of CO2 mitigation in the biomass and hydro cases. The embedded emission in construction of power plant contributes to higher CO2 emission.