In order to achieve the German greenhouse gas reduction targets, in particular, CO2 emissions of coal-fired power plants must be reduced. The co-incineration of biomass-based substitutes, here referred to as co-firing, is regarded as a highly cost-effective and short-term method of reducing CO2 emissions in the electricity sector. Another advantage of co-firing is its ability to meet base load demands and offer controllability. In this paper, we, therefore, evaluate the effectiveness of co-firing as a CO2 mitigation strategy in the German electricity sector by 2020. We consider the co-firing of three different substitutes: wood chips, industry pellets and torrefied biomass. Likewise, a comparison with three alternative mitigation strategies is part of the evaluation. We use seven sustainability indicators covering social, ecological and economic aspects as the basis for the evaluation. These sustainability indicators are determined by means of a merit order model, which enables us to simulate the electricity market in 2020 on an hourly basis and adjust it based on the assumption of widespread implementation of co-firing or one of the alternative mitigation strategies. Our results show that all mitigation strategies have a significant potential to reduce the CO2 emissions of the electricity sector. Compared with the alternative mitigation strategies, co-firing is characterised on the one hand by rather low mitigation potentials and on the other hand by low CO2 mitigation costs. The co-firing of industry pellets appears to have the most advantageous combination of mitigation potential and mitigation costs. The widespread implementation of co-firing with industry pellets until 2020 would have led to 21% reduction in CO2 emissions on average. Nevertheless, it cannot be implemented immediately because time is needed for political decisions to be taken and, afterwards, for the technical retrofitting of power plants. Co-firing will, therefore, not be available to contribute to the achievement of the greenhouse gas reduction targets for the year 2020. However, our approach can be used to assess the contribution of the various CO2 mitigation strategies to the ambitious mitigation targets for the year 2030.

中文翻译：

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在德国评估共燃作为具有成本效益的短期可持续CO ₂缓解策略

为了实现德国减少温室气体的目标，特别是必须减少燃煤电厂的二氧化碳排放量。基于生物质的替代品的共焚化，这里称为共燃，被认为是减少电力部门二氧化碳排放的极具成本效益的短期方法。共点火的另一个优点是其能够满足基本负载需求并提供可控制性。因此，在本文中，我们评估了到2020年共燃作为缓解德国电力行业二氧化碳排放的战略的有效性。我们考虑了三种不同替代品的共燃：木屑，工业颗粒和焙烧的生物质。同样，与三种替代缓解策略的比较也是评估的一部分。我们使用七个可持续性指标来涵盖社会，生态和经济方面作为评价的基础。这些可持续性指标是通过绩效顺序模型确定的，该模型使我们能够每小时模拟一次2020年的电力市场，并基于广泛实施共燃或其他缓解策略之一的假设进行调整。我们的结果表明，所有缓解策略都具有减少电力部门CO2排放的巨大潜力。与其他缓解策略相比，共燃一方面具有较低的缓解潜力，另一方面具有较低的CO2缓解成本。工业颗粒的共烧似乎具有减缓潜力和减缓成本的最有利组合。到2020年，与工业颗粒共烧的广泛实施将使平均二氧化碳排放量减少21％。然而，由于需要时间来做出政治决定，以及之后进行电厂的技术改造，因此无法立即实施。因此，共烧将无法为实现2020年的温室气体减排目标做出贡献。但是，我们的方法可用于评估各种CO2减排战略对减排目标的雄心勃勃。 2030年。