Environmental Impact of Electricity Generation - Negawatt Power

Negawatt Power

Negawatt power refers to investment to reduce electricity consumption rather than investing to increase supply capacity. In this way investing in Negawatts can be considered as an alternative to a new power station and the costs and environmental concerns can be compared.

Negawatt investment alternatives to reduce consumption by improving efficiency include:

• Providing customers with energy efficient lamps - low environmental impact
• Improved thermal insulation and airtightness for buildings - low environmental impact
• Replacing older industrial plant - low environmental impact. Can have a positive impact due to reduced emissions.

Negawatt investment alternatives to reduce peak electrical load by time shifting demand include;

• Storage heaters - older systems had asbestos. Newer systems have low environmental impact.
• Demand response control systems where the electricity board can control certain customer loads - minimal environmental impact
• Thermal storage systems such as Ice storage systems to make ice during the night and store it to use it for air conditioning during the day - minimal environmental impact
• Pumped storage hydroelectricity - Can have a significant environmental impact - see hydroelectricity.
• other Grid energy storage technologies - impact varies.

Note that time shifting does not reduce total energy consumed or system efficiency however it can be used to avoid the need to build a new power station to cope with a peak load.