Emergy Evaluation on Clean Development Mechanism Project of Straw Power Generation

Abstract

The straw power generation could bring additional benefits of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction if was registered as clean development mechanism (CDM) project. Its sustainability evaluation required quantitative analysis from the aspects such as economic, social and environmental benefits. The emergy evaluation of the CDM project was conducted and its emergy sustainability evaluation indices were established with the emergy theory. As the case of 4 MW straw gasification power generation CDM project in East China, the system's sustainable performance was evaluated. The results showed that the CDM project could bring the benefit of 200 thousand USD per year for GHG emission reduction. Because the benefit effectively increased the emergy yield ratio and reduced the environmental load of the power generation system, the system had not only been higher competitiveness, the emergy sustainability index of the system could be increased to 9.35 which was in the potential and sustainable development process for a long time.