A QUALITATIVE APPROACH TO ECONOMIC-ENVIRONMENTAL DISPATCH - TREATMENT OF MULTIPLE POLLUTANTS

This paper describes the principles, and suggests a methodology for expanding the dispatch of electrical power production systems from involving a pure minimum cost dispatch, to also include environmental objectives. The approach is qualitative in that no attempt is made as to assign a specific monetary value to environmental impacts, but rather maintaining the physical value of the impact through the decision process. However, the initial relative weights assigned to environmental impacts in the methodology are based on the many recent attempts to monetize environmental damages. The main contribution of the approach is to analyze how dispatch changes as a function of the total environmental weight, and as a function of the relative weighing of individual environmental insults, e.g., SO2, NO(x), and CO2. The methodology is illustrated with a sample production system involving environmental cost estimates from major US studies.