Comparing empirical and model-based approaches for calculating dynamic grid emission factors: An application to CO₂-minimizing storage dispatch in Germany

As one possibility to increase flexibility, battery storage systems (BSS) will play a key role in the decarbonization of the energy system. The emissions-intensity of grid electricity becomes more important as these BSSs are more widely employed. In this paper, we introduce a novel data basis for the determination of the energy system's CO₂ emissions, which is a match between the ENTSO-E database and the EUTL databases. We further postulate four different dynamic emission factors (EF) to determine the hourly CO₂ emissions caused through a change in electricity demand: the average emission factor (AEF), the marginal power mix (MPM), the marginal system response (MSR) and an energy-model-derived marginal power plant (MPP). For generic and battery storage systems, a linear optimization on two levels optimizes the economic and environmental storage dispatch for a set of 50 small and medium enterprises in Germany. The four different emission factors have different signaling effects. The AEF leads to the lowest CO₂ reduction and allows for roughly two daily cycles. The other EFs show a higher volatility, which leads to a higher utilization of the storage system from 3.4 to 5.4 daily cycles. The minimum mean value for CO₂ abatement costs over all 50 companies is 14.13 €/t_CO2 .