Implications of sustainability assessment for electricity system design: The case of the Ontario Power Authority’s integrated power system plan

Implications of sustainability assessment for electricity system design: The case of the Ontario Power Authority’s integrated power system plan

Ontario

Power system planning

Sustainability assessment

This paper explores the results and implications of an illustrative application of a sustainability assessment framework in the design and evaluation of a major integrated power system plan. The paper examines the integrated power system plan developed by the Ontario Power Authority in 2007. The basic framework rests on a generic set of evaluation criteria reflecting basic requirements for progress towards sustainability that was adopted, reinterpreted and applied by the Authority in support of its proposed plan. In response to evident deficiencies in the Authority’s work, the authors and colleagues undertook a re-examination using a more fully elaborated sustainability assessment framework, specified for application to power system planning. The results point to a plan and plan components substantially different from those proposed by the Authority. More generally, the results highlight three advantages of applying such a sustainability assessment framework: comprehensive coverage of key requirements for progress towards sustainability while ensuring careful attention to the context and concerns of the sector

emphasis on identifying plan options that avoid major trade-offs among the sustainability criteria and recognition of interactions among the social, ecological, economic and technological realms favouring options that offer multiple, mutually reinforcing and lasting benefits.

4115-4126

38

Winfield, Mark

Gibson, Robert B.

Markvart, Tanya

Gaudreau, Kyrke

Taylor, Jennifer

Energy Policy

2010

journalArticle

0301-4215

10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.038

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421510002016