Scenarios for Evaluating Future Process Integration Measures in Large Energy Systems

Report, 2003

The goal of this project is to transfer knowledge from the field of energy market and energy systems forecasting to the area of process integration, so as to gain a better understanding of the long term economic and environmental implications of specific process integration projects at a given site. Energy systems forecasting models build upon large databases of input data and assumptions which are then used to forecast the plausible evolution of key output variables over time. Sensitivity analysis to the major input variables is a fundamental aspect of such forecasting work. Such models are clearly unable to accurately predict the future, therefore gaining a better understanding of how the system can be expected to react to different input conditions is fundamental to this type of work. The approach in this project is similar: the goal of this project is to define several scenarios (4 was the final number adopted) that cover a wide range of possible evolutions of the reference energy system conditions. The scenarios can then be used to gain a better understanding of the economic and environmental consequences of different process integration projects. A scenario is defined in this project as the evolution over time of the following parameters to be used for evaluating process integration projects: • Fuel prices and availability • Reference electric power prices • Reference alternative electric power production technology (marginal power production technology) and associated CO2 emissions • Combined costs associated with CO2 emissions.