Hourly-based greenhouse gas emissions of electricity - cases demonstrating possibilities for households and companies to decrease their emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity production are a crucial part of the environmental impact assessments of any kind of product, service or consumption. Usually, average annual emissions are used, but lately there has been increased interest in the daily-based and hourly-based emission coefficients for electricity. In such markets, where the technology mix in the production process includes technologies with different emission factors, there is potential for large variation in hourly based emission factors and consequently this offers potential for decreasing the emissions by real-time based demand management. However, in real life the timing of electricity use in households and companies has restrictions. In this paper, we show illustrative household and company cases with realistic shifts in the timing of electricity use. We determine hourly based emission factors and give examples of how emissions may be decreased in households and companies by changing usage patterns, and consequently the timing of electricity use, with the total amount of electricity consumed remaining unchanged. The examples show decreases of emissions in the range 3-8% due to optimised timing, indicating that there is important potential for managing hourly based demand loads and the resulting emissions even with realistic assumptions of the timing of consumption.