The potential role of nuclear energy in mitigating CO2 emissions of te built environment in the United Arab Emirates
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Date
2011-02
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The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
Carbon Dioxide emission is a foremost contributor to the threatening global warming and climate change. It is more than doubled in the UAE since 1990, and the electricity generated by conventional energy is responsible for almost half of the country’s emissions. As willingly committed to Kyoto Protocol in 2005, the UAE decided to integrate nuclear energy into the electricity scheme to mitigate CO2 emissions. This research is set-up to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed nuclear energy in mitigating CO2 emissions from the built environment of the UAE which achieved thereafter in the due course Chapters.
MESSAGE modeling software from IAEA is used with the dissertation’s simulation research methodology to compute the energy demand and CO2 emissions up to 2050. Business As Usual (BAU), the UAE proposed case (APR 1400) and Clean Energy Era (CEE) of twelve sub-classification are examined in the form of simulation scenarios. The results of energy switching and CO2 emission are individually interpreted and thereafter the entire scenarios included in results comparison.
The nuclear energy in its extreme CEE scenario (8NPPs) supplies around 62% of the total electricity grid, and found mitigating almost 93.9% of the CO2 emission from the BAU and 63.3% of the CO2 emission from the UAE proposed scenario (APR 1400). Nuclear energy, furthermore, found more appropriate in mitigating CO2 than renewable energy and carbon capture and sequestration among the simulated scenarios up to 2050. Economic analysis is, moreover, performed to evaluate the viability of nuclear energy which confirmed its economical feasibility aside the environmental viability. The 8NPPs scenario found saving around $18.94 billion in the 2050 due to fuel switching to nuclear power in addition to the possibility to trade almost 296.5 million tone of CO2 in the same year.
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DISSERTATION WITH DISTINCTION
Keywords
CO2 emission, nuclear energy, built environment, global warming, climate change, conventional energy, United Arab Emirates (UAE)