CIAB Market & Policy developments 2005/06 - IEA

November 2006, and Andy Lloyd’s resignation as his CIAB Associate, Allan Jones took
on responsibility for the working group’s project on reconciling power station efficiency
measurement. The work is in support of IEA work on the potential for improving world
power station efficiency and complements studies carried out by the IEA Clean Coal
Centre.
59. In order to promote power station efficiency improvements, it is essential to understand
how efficiency is measured at power stations around the world. There are many
potentially differing aspects of quoted efficiency estimates and there is a clear need for
the derivation of a standard methodology to make data comparisons more meaningful.
60. Japanese CIAB Associates, VGB (Germany), EPRI (USA) and Affari Istituzionali e
Internazionali (Italy) have all participated in the work; and the working group has worked
closely with the IEA Secretariat and the IEA Clean Coal Centre.
61. During 2007, the working group has sought to define a methodology to benchmark power
station performance, case by case over a long term average, to indicate CO 2 mitigation
potential from the adoption of leading practice. It is anticipated that a report of the work
will form part of the IEA report to the G8 in 2008 on a bottom-up assessment of electricity
generating plant around the world and the costs of improving its performance.
62. Initial findings from the CIAB work are that a large number of factors contribute to
differences in plant performance. The proposed methodology will adjust for the uncontrollable
factors (e.g. local climate, specific plant design parameters) to derive
performance data for individual plants that can be compared to a leading practice plant.
63. It appears feasible to usefully normalise performance data, without disclosure of detailed
commercially sensitive information; and to integrate basic data capture, expression of
actual and normalised performance and comparison of leading practice within one coordinated
international system. National reporting of the required data, with the IEA
Clean Coal Centre acting as the data repository, is proposed.
Work proposed for 2008
64. In November 2007, the CIAB Plenary meeting and the subsequent meeting of the CIAB
Executive Committee discussed with IEA representatives possible items of work during
2008. Items previously agreed include:
• Completion of the CIAB report “Accelerating Commercial & Policy Drivers for
Deployment of Clean Coal Technologies”. A final draft will be made available in
January 2008, for publication in March/April 2008.
• Completion of the work on power station efficiency reconciliation methodology. A
final draft will be submitted to the IEA in February 2008, for integration with a wider
report on power station benchmarking.
• Preparation of the annual CIAB report “International Coal Market & Policy
Developments in 2007/08”.
• Support for other IEA coal initiatives as required.
65. The Executive Committee also agreed to further consider the option of holding an
Associates meeting in Beijing in May 2008 as an alternative to the more usual June/July
meeting in Paris.
66. Central to the consideration of further CIAB work is the issue of balancing energy supply
security and significantly increased coal use with the need to slow the growth of CO 2
emissions, which has been brought into focus by the WEO2007 scenarios. There are two
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