Sustainability Assessment of Combined Cooling, Heating, and Power Systems under Carbon Emission Regulations

Abstract

The combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system, which is a sustainable distributed energy system, has attracted increasing attention due to the associated economic, environmental, and energy benefits. Currently, the enforcement of carbon emission regulations has become an increasingly concerning issue globally. In this paper, a multi-objective optimization model is established to evaluate the CCHP system under two different carbon emission regulation policies in terms of economic benefit, environmental sustainability, and energy advantage. A nonlinear programming optimization model is formulated and solved by using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The results from the case studies demonstrate that when considering carbon tax regulation, the cost savings of the optimal CCHP system strategy were on average 10.0%, 9.1%, 17.0%, 22.1%, and 20.9% for the office, supermarket, hotel, school, and hospital in China, respectively, compared with the conventional energy supply system. On the other hand, when considering carbon trading regulation, the optimal CCHP system strategy can lead to a 10.0%, 8.9%, 16.8%, 21.6%, and 20.5% cost-saving for the five different building categories, respectively. Furthermore, the optimal CCHP system strategy for the five buildings, i.e., an average of 39.6% carbon dioxide emission (CDE) reduction and 26.5% primary energy consumption (PEC) saving, can be achieved under carbon emission regulations.