Black into green: A BIG opportunity for North Dakota’s oil and gas producers
Name
1-s2.0-S0306261919305665-main.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.83 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8088977f9cc5c53fe893965f280f19ee
Author(s)
Taylor, David Donald James
Layurova, Mariya
Vogel, David S.
Slocum, Alexander H
Date Issued
May 2019
Journal
Applied Energy
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Taylor, David D. J. et al. "Black into green: A BIG opportunity for North Dakota’s oil and gas producers." Applied Energy 242 (May 2019): 1189-1197 © 2019 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
A new perspective on carbon economics is developed and applied to demonstrate that oil and natural gas producers in North Dakota (ND) have an opportunity to make a profitable transition to wind energy producers. ND's oil and gas producers can fund this black into green (BIG) transition by: first, investing a fraction of their revenues into wind energy farms; and second, reinvesting a portion of revenues from the wind-generated electricity. Over a period of 40 years, 100% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and consumption of ND's oil and gas could be offset with an investment of 10% of both hydrocarbons’ value and a reinvestment of three cents per kilowatt-hour of wind-generated electricity. At the end of the 40-year period, the resultant 155-gigawatt wind farm would have offset 13.4 × 109 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and cost $9.90/ton of offset carbon dioxide equivalent. This BIG example demonstrates the financial and environmental benefits of ND's oil and gas producers transforming into renewable energy producers; hence regulators, hydrocarbon producers, and utilities should take note and think BIG. The reconfigurable, Excel-based model used herein is provided to allow readers to extend this example from ND to other regions, hydrocarbons, and green energy sources.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.03.158
