Cost-Optimal Renewable Energy Capacity Planning toward 100% Green Energy in California Considering Climate Change

Greenhouse gas emissions pose a serious threat to the Earth and humanity by causing global warming and climate change. There have been many initiatives to accelerate the transition to green energies, especially with renewable energy, positioned as the mainstream of green energy. However, climate susceptibility and high capital expenditure have been the main hurdles in replacing fossil-based energies with renewable energies. This research proposes a consolidated renewable energy capacity planning methodology from statistical climate modeling and total incremental cost function. The methodology was applied to California’s generation data, generation cost, and weather change. In the case of replacing all fossil-based energies with renewable energies, the incremental generation cost was analyzed to find the cost-optimal transition capacities across the renewable energies and the reserved backup power plants. The proposed methodology provides a framework to handle diverse capacity planning requirements, such as geographical weather characteristics and various renewable energy types.