Deep Decarbonization of Multi-Energy Systems: A Carbon-Oriented Framework with Cross Disciplinary Technologies

Abstract: The retirement of unabated coal power plants, the plummeting cost of renewable energy technologies, along with more aggressive public policies and regulatory reforms, are occurring at an unprecedented speed to decarbonize the power and energy systems towards the 2030 and 2050 climate goals. This article aims to establish a carbon-oriented framework to examine the role carbon emission is playing within a power grid that is rapidly transitioning to an integrated multi-energy system. We divide the carbon flows in the multi-energy systems into three stages: carbon allowances initialization/allocation, exchanging/pricing, and circulation. Then, we discuss how cross-disciplinary technologies, such as game theory, optimization, and machine learning can facilitate the modeling and analysis of the proposed framework.