As an input to the MIT study of The Future of Coal, the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model was applied to an assessment of the fate of the coal industry under various scenarios of greenhouse gas mitigation and alternative assumptions about nuclear power growth and the future price of natural gas. A main determinant of the future of coal is the crucial role in climate policy of the application of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to coal-electric generation. Early applications of the EPPA model to studies of coal under climate policy revealed the need for an improved representation of load dispatch in the representation of the electric sector. In this paper we discuss the method applied to represent load dispatch in the electric sector of this model, and present several scenarios of coal use developed for The Future of Coal study but expanding the national coverage beyond the U.S. and China. We focus on the role of CSS technologies and explore an expansion of the time horizon to 2100.
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Supersedes Report 158