The Choice Of Pollution Control Technology Under Emission Trading Policy:A Research On Chinese Thermal Power Plants

In air pollutants total amount control goal,on the one hand,power plants install desulfurization and denitration facilities to achieve the emission reduction targets.On the other hand,power plants implement the emissions trading policy to reduce the abatement costs.However,the execution time of sulfur dioxide total amount control goal is earlier than sulfur dioxide total control goal.Thus it causes that the installations of the desulphurization facilities of power plants are earlier than the installations of the denitration facilities.Due to technical irreversibility,desulfurization technologies which have already been installed may impact on the new denitration technical options.Thus it may weaken the market performance of emissions trading policy.In this study,through the observation of power plants nitrogen oxide emission trading market behavior,we study the running process of NOx emissions trading market under different scenarios.The existing abatement facilities will influence the choice of the new abatement facilities,and it will weaken the market performance of emissions trading.The result will support for the introduction of environmental policy in China.Combined with domestic and international research and practical experience,the research chooses bilateral negotiations as the trading market structure.For each pair of agents(thermal power plants)with different marginal abatement costs,they negotiate bilaterally to decide the price and desired/offered quantity of permits,and reduce their joint abatement costs.Each agent negotiates with three potential trading partners.All agents are assumed to make decisions for minimizing their own total abatement costs.The agent-based model of nitrogen oxides emission trading was built the NOx emissions trading simulation system of the country's thermal power plants and was implemented in NetLogo.We will build three scenarios.One scenario is the condition under command and control policy.One anther scenario is the condition of the absence of desulfurization facilities under NOx emissions trading simulation system,the other is the condition of the presence of desulfurization facilities under NOx emissions trading simulation system.The results show that under command and control policy,nitrogen oxides average abatement cost was highest and about 6014.9 yuan/ton;under the condition of the absence of desulfurization facilities,nitrogen oxides average abatement cost was lowest and about 4982.54 yuan/ton;Under the condition of the presence of desulfurization facilities,nitrogen oxides average abatement cost was about 5326.32 yuan/ton.Under the condition of the absence of desulfurization facilities,more power plants choose desulfurization and denitrification integration technology;under the condition of the presence of desulfurization facilities,more power plants choose separate denitrification technology.According to the results,the exiting desulfurization facilities have a lock-in effect on the choice of nitrogen oxides.The lock-in effect causes a certain impact on the implementation of emissions trading policy and undermines the effectiveness of the implementation of the emissions trading.Combined with the design and practice of nitrogen oxides emissions trading policy,we should consider existing technology investment impacting on environmental policy-making process.