ECED 6190: Energy Systems Analysis

Course Outline
Winter 2022
Instructor
Dr. Larry Hughes
MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Room C-369, Sexton Campus
Voice: +1.902.240.0245
Email: larry.hughes@dal.ca
URL: http://lh.ece.dal.ca/enen

Introduction
According to the WMO, events in 2021 were growing evidence of the impact of terrestrial global heating:
• Record high temperatures recorded in British Columbia and California, and parts of Europe (Italy,
Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Georgia) and North Africa (Tunisia). The resulting heatwaves resulted in
wildfires and heat-related deaths in many of these locations.
• Extreme precipitation in Henan province in China, and western Germany and eastern Belgium, causing
flash floods killing hundreds and resulting in billions of dollars of economic losses. Flooding also
occurred in East Africa and South Sudan.
• Drought in South America led to agricultural losses and affected hydroelectric supply in Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina. Western Canadian wheat and canola production was also affected
by this summer’s drought.
• In addition to the above, the WMO found that greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise; long-term
ocean acidification from carbon dioxide increased; sea-level continued to rise due to thermal
expansion and glacial and icesheet melt; and the influence of a moderate La Niña cooled
temperatures slightly, meaning that 2021 will not be the hottest year on record.
Anyone who followed the news from last November’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow understands if average
global temperature rise is to be limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels this century,1 it will be
necessary to cut global emissions in half by 2030 relative to 2010 levels and achieve net-zero emissions
by 2050. Unfortunately, despite the reduction pledges (or Nationally Determined Contributions) made
by almost 200 countries at the 2015 COP21 meeting held in Paris, data released at COP26 indicates that

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The background to the choice of 1.5°C: In 1990, a UN report recommended a 1°C rise, and in 1996, the EU council
of ministers adopted a 2°C rise. In 2010, the UN adopted the EU’s limit of 2°C. In the lead up to COP21 in Paris in
2015, several small island states, already experiencing the impact of global heating, said 2°C was too high and
should be reduced. The delegates compromised on 1.5°C because it was seen as technically and economically
possible. A political rather than a science-based decision.

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reaching the 30% target is highly unlikely. In fact, achieving net zero and limiting global temperature rise
to 1.5C or no more than 2C appears increasing unlikely.
If emissions are to be reduced, it is important to understand where they come from.
There are five principal sources of greenhouse gas emissions: energy extraction and use (CO2); cement
and other carbonate uses (CO2); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); and fluorocarbon compounds (HFCs,
PFCs, and SF6). To allow comparison of the different gases, the global warming potential (GWP) of non-
CO2 greenhouse gases are expressed in terms of the global warming potential of CO2 (GWP = 1) over 100
years; for example, methane, nitrous oxide, and the fluorocarbons have GWPs of 25-36, 265-298, and
thousands, respectively. Total emissions are expressed in terms of CO2e or carbon-dioxide equivalent.
The emissions act as a blanket, trapping more heat
The following charts show the global changes in all five greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2018. In all
cases, emissions have been increasing, with overall emissions increasing by about 56% from 33 Mt to
51.8 Mt CO2e. Global energy emissions increased by 13.7 Mt or about 53%.

At COP26, the focus was on methane emissions and carbon dioxide emissions. Since methane has such a
high GWP but is short lived, considerable time was discussing ways methane emissions from agricultural
practices and fugitive emissions from energy could be reduced, with methane reduction pledges and a
methane reduction agreement between the U.S. and the EU. Despite this, there was no agreement on
agricultural methane emissions, with the emphasis being on fugitive emissions in the energy sector.
The importance of reducing methane from agriculture notwithstanding, reducing carbon dioxide
emissions from the extraction of carbon-intensive primary energy sources (crude oil, coal, and natural
gas) and our use of their secondary energy products (such as gasoline and electricity) for transportation,
heating, and electricity is still the major challenge humanity faces if we are to address the climate
emergency.2

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It is worth noting that not all the world considers the climate to be under threat. Instead, many people consider
emissions-intensive energy industries to be under threat; for example, see CFACT.

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The following chart shows global energy demand between 1990 and 2020, increasing from 342 exajoules
(EJ or 2.8  1017 kWh) in 1990 to 582 EJ in 2019, before falling back to 557 EJ in 2020 because of the
pandemic. Consumption of carbon-intensive fuels rose faster than emissions, indicating a change in
global energy systems, moving to less carbon-intensive fuels (typically from coal to natural gas for
electricity generation and heating). The decline in emissions because of the pandemic was short-lived; in
2021, with a return to a degree of normality, CO2 emissions recovered most of their losses caused by the
pandemic. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 increased from 2020 to 2021, continuing to reduce the
global carbon budget.

Our reliance on three primary energy sources to meet most of our energy demand stems from the fact
they are easily extractable and transportable and can be converted into useful and relatively inexpensive
energy products for a variety of end uses.
For most people in the developed world, energy security is rarely an issue: energy is available, affordable,
and acceptable (the energy trilemma). Energy systems, which are considered critical infrastructure in
most countries, are designed with a degree of resilience to return the system to its normal state within
an acceptable period. As threats evolve, vulnerabilities become apparent, as we have seen over the past
year with cyber attacks on the Colonial pipeline, wildfires causing electricity suppliers to shutoff supply to
customers in Oregon, China’s electricity shortage this fall, European consumers of Russian natural gas
facing a hard winter because of the dispute over Ukraine and the approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,
and liquid propane gas price increases in Kazakhstan earlier this week.
Policies or regulations for maintaining the energy security of an energy system can be grouped into three
categories: reduction, in which an end user reduces demand for energy (e.g., insulating a house), typically
to reduce costs; replacement, in which the end user replaces one energy source with another, often less
expensive (for example, using E85 rather than gasoline), or replaces infrastructure but uses the same
energy source, again for cost reasons (e.g., replacing an internal-combustion vehicle with a hybrid-
electric vehicle); and restructuring, in which both the energy source and the infrastructure are replaced
(for example, changing from wood heating to electric heating).

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The effects of policies based on reduction, replacement, and restructuring are evident when we consider
how well the jurisdiction is decoupling (that is, its energy demand for a specific indicator, such as
population or GDP) and decarbonizing (the carbon emissions from its energy system). For example, of
the world’s top four emitters, China is experiencing moderate coupling but strong carbonizing, the United
States is weak coupling and weak decarbonizing, the EU 27 are weak decoupling and strong
decarbonizing, while India is strong coupling and strong carbonizing.

China United States

EU27+UK India
These three policy categories have been central to all energy transformations throughout history. We
are witnessing them again as energy systems are transformed by jurisdictions attempting to reduce their
emissions, both to reach their 2030 NDC obligations and their net-zero-by-mid-century pledges. Policies
for carbon pricing, emissions trading, subsidizing electric vehicles, and restructuring electricity systems
are becoming commonplace in many countries. An overarching requirement of any of these
transformations should be energy security; for example, an unexpected weather system (a high-pressure
anticyclone over the North Sea) causing a significant decline in wind-electricity output coupled with
limited supplies of natural gas affected electricity supply in several European countries.
The need for energy security is not restricted to middle- and high-income countries, it is needed in many
lower-income countries as well. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean
Energy), with the objective ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all,
has been developed to address this. The 2019 SDG7 Progress Report noted some successes, for example,
giving access to electricity to communities in sub-Saharan and southeast Asian countries using rural off-
grid solutions such as solar lighting and mini-grids; however, there are significant concerns. More than

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half the population of sub-Saharan Africa (573 million) lacks access to electricity, one-third of households
with connections experience at least one interrupt a week, and the cost of a subsistence level of
electricity (30 kWh/month) is unaffordable for about 40% of the households in this region. In 2017, about
3 billion people lacked access to clean fuels and technologies for clean cooking solutions (40% of whom
lived in sub-Saharan Africa and about 26% in Central and Southern Asia); this disproportionally affected
the health of women and girls in families still rely on wood, coal, charcoal, or animal waste for cooking
and heating. and caused socioeconomic concerns.

Given the importance of both energy and the environment to society’s health and well being, there will
be a need for energy practitioners (policymakers, scientists, engineers, environmentalists, and planners)
who can apply an evidence-based approach to analyse the risks posed by current and future energy
systems, their energy sources, and the energy services they support, to develop solutions that protect all
members of society and the environment.

Course objectives
ECED 6190 is intended to introduce graduate students to some of the data sources, terminology,
methods, tools, and techniques available to energy practitioners for understanding, assessing, and
analyzing energy systems in a time of climate-driven transformation in global energy markets.

Prerequisites
Permission of the instructor; the course is open to all graduate students, regardless of discipline.

Reading material and data sources

All course material, including the names of and links to journals, organizations, data sources, and other
material relevant to the course will be available from the course’s bright-space website. Major media
sources will also be included, since they often report on the rapid changes that are taking place in the
energy field; a list of media will be available on the website. These sources will be useful for the weekly
reviews, the three assignments, and a country project (all discussed below).
Given the breadth of the field, the list of reading material on the website will not be exhaustive, so be
prepared to look elsewhere for additional information. Although Wikipedia can be a useful starting
point, it should not be used as primary reference material because it often contains outdated material.

Course Structure
ECED 6190 is a one semester graduate course consisting of four parts:
Classes. Unless otherwise indicated, classes will be held twice a week. In Tuesday’s classes, the topics
listed in the next section will be introduced and discussed. Thursday’s classes will be devoted to a
discussion on an energy topic found in one or more journal articles (see next item, Weekly Review, for
details).
In each class, we will also discuss local, regional, national, and global energy news items.

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Weekly reviews. The weekly review consists of two parts. First, one member of the class will be
expected to cover the review a research paper in detail using additional sources, lead a discussion on
the topic, present the findings, and submit a review (typically three to five pages). The other
members of the class will be expected to participate in the discussion and submit a summary of the
paper (typically one or two pages).
Assignments. Three assignments covering different aspects of energy systems.
Term project. A project employing the analysis techniques covered in class will be applied to a
jurisdiction (one per student). Details of the project will be announced in the first full week of term.
The proposed grading scheme is as follows:
Weekly reviews 25%
Assignments 35%
Country project 40%
Total 100%

Course topics
The following lists the topics to be covered in ECED 6190. Some topics may be overlap or be presented in
parallel or out-of-order.
Introduction
− Course outline
− Online teaching
Energy systems: concepts, terminology, and representation
− What is a system
− The system and its environment
− Primary energy, secondary energy, and end-use services or final demand
− Sectors (Transportation, Industry, Buildings, and Agriculture)
− Sankey diagrams
− Dataflow diagrams:
• Entities: sources, system processes, services, and storage
• Energy flows and energy chains
Data sources
− International Energy Agency (OECD), Energy Information Administration (U.S.), BP, Canada Energy
Regulator (formerly National Energy Board), Natural Resources Canada, and others
Common energy issues
− State of the world’s energy resources
− Energy as a strategic resource
− Energy poverty (energy affordability, and energy and health)
− Energy intensity and energy efficiency
Energy security
− Definitions
− Indicators and metrics: availability, affordability, and acceptability
Risks to energy systems
− Threats, vulnerabilities, impact, and likelihood
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 − Events, stress (tension, disruption, and tipping points), and the “new normal”
− Diversity
− Resilience and adaptation
Energy and climate policy
− The problem
− Climate change: mitigation and adaptation, decoupling and decarbonizing
− Policy responses: Reduce, Replace, and Restructure
− Corporate responses: Greenhouse Gas Protocol
− Governance and policies: Feed-in-Tariffs, Renewable Portfolio Standards, Net metering, Carbon-
pricing (cap-and-trade, and carbon pricing and carbon levies)
− Nationally Determined Contributions
− Net zero
Energy system transition – the new normal
− Today: Where are we now?
− Tomorrow: Where do we want to go?
− Transition: How do we get there?
− Our electric future:
• Electricity pricing and metering
• Smart grid: C2I, Advanced Metering Infrastructure, security, SCADA
• Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) and storage
• Hydrogen
− Military energy consumption
− Other projections and scenarios (International Energy Agency, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, Energy Information Administration, World Energy Association)
Project presentations

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Online teaching
ECED 6190 is designed to encourage discussions between all members of the class. Students with a
particular area of expertise (both non-technical and technical) can contribute to the discourse. This has
worked very well in pre-pandemic in-class offerings of the course; however, since this is the first time
ECED 6190 has been taught on-line, it is unclear how well the approach will work. The challenge is
compounded because my ISP uses a satellite, which results in transmissions delays of a second or more
and reduces the spontaneity of responses.
If you want to contribute to a discussion, use chat, raise your hand, or if things are quiet, turn on your
mic and talk.
With any luck, we’ll be back in class in February and these problems will be yet another fond memory of
La educación en los tiempos del COVID.3

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Education in the Time of Covid. With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez who wrote Love in the Time of Cholera.