Dynamic changes in CO2 emission performance of different types of Iranian fossil-fuel power plants

- We analyze the CO2 emission performance change of 58 Iranian fossil-fuel plants.
- Gas-fired and combined cycle plants have a constant trend and show little progress.
- There is no technological leadership among the fossil-fuel power plants.
- The level of CO2 emission can be reduced up to 25% in the current situation.

In this paper, the MNMCPI (metafrontier non-radial Malmquist CO2 emission performance index) is applied to study the CO2 emission performance of different types of Iranian fossil-fuel power plants during the period of 2007-2012. The MNMCPI has several advantages, including the ability to apply group heterogeneity as well as its decomposability to different components, which facilitates identifying the effective factors on performance. The results indicate that the gas-fired and combined cycle power plants have a constant trend and show little progression, while the steam power plants have the worst performance. This is due to the factors such as lack of specified regulations about the type of consumed fuels. Moreover, there does not exist any technological leadership among the fossil-fuel power plants. It was also found that even by considering these conditions, proper resource management and utilizing suitable benchmarks can reduce the current level of CO2 emissions in the power plants up to 25%.