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Emissions concept

General information:

  • Emission types considered: CO2, methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), based on data from Germany's National Inventory Report.
  • Global warming potentials (GWP) over a 100-year time horizon, relative to CO2, are adopted from the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5): CH4: 28, N2O: 265.
  • Energy sources are categorized as fossil, synthetic, or biogenic, with the assumption that only carbon-capture-based synthetic imports are considered.
  • No positive balancing is applied to electricity imports, constrained by country-specific limitations.
  • Negative offsets are applied to imported biogenic and synthetically produced energy sources that carry CO2.
  • Negative offsets also account for the growth of biogenic resources within Germany and for processes involving carbon capture (CC) or direct air carbon capture (DACC).
  • Sector-specific emission targets are not defined, due to sector coupling and the multiple potential conversions of energy sources before final consumption.
  • Exogenous demand and carbon-carrying by-products are allowed, with limited CO2 sinks; the system boundary is set at the product demand level.
  • Emissions are differentiated globally (CO2): a foreign key links to the global table of emission factors per energy source.
  • Sector- and process-specific emission factors are used for CH4 and N2O, as they are more dependent on specific process conditions (e.g., firing temperature for N2O, material moisture for CH4).
  • Negative emissions are implemented within the model structure
  • The emission variables as indicated in the depict the flow sums over all considered timesteps (not the remaining commodities at the last timestep).

The following graphic visualizes the SEDOS emission concept:

emission_concept

Summarized, this means:

  • Fossil: CO2 emissions from combustion
  • Biogen: CO2 emissions from combustion & negative emissions from production/source processes of biogenic energy sources.
  • Synthetic: CO2 emissions from combustion & model-endogenous negative emissions for import and production with carbon captured CO2.