Construction upstream process flow amounts

[dt-woods]

In developing a solution for renewable upstream construction (#150), I'm tracking down where the flow amount is set for construction processes.

It all seems to come down to add_fuel_inputs in combinator.py.

But first! A bit on the mysterious 'quantity' field.

Upstream processes consist of several different types (power plant construction, natural gas/petroleum extraction & processing, coal mining & transportation, and nuclear fuel extraction & processing), but each data frame (as read in get_upstream_process_df) has a column labeled 'quantity'.

For coal mining, quantity is tons of coal.
For petroleum extraction, quantity is heat input (MJ).
For nuclear, quantity is net generation (MWh).
For natural gas, quantity is total fuel consumption (MJ).
For coal/ngcc power plant construction, quantity is nameplate capacity (MW).
For the new renewable plant construction, quantity is net electricity generation (MWh).

In olcaschema_genupstream_processes (upstream_dict.py), the 'quantity' field is used to generate each flow's emission factor.

ElectricityLCI/electricitylci/upstream_dict.py

Line 347 in ab4e98d

merged_summary["emission_factor"] = (

The emission factor is supposed to be the process's functional unit because it's used as the reference flow amount.

ElectricityLCI/electricitylci/upstream_dict.py

Line 288 in ab4e98d

ar["amount"] = data["emission_factor"]

The only mis-match I see is the quantity and reference flow for power plant construction, which is nameplate capacity (MWh) and Item(s).

ElectricityLCI/electricitylci/upstream_dict.py

Line 233 in ab4e98d

ar["unit"] = _unit("Item(s)")

Best that I can understand is the upstream process emission factors are the total flow amounts (across all facilities) normalized by the total quantity (in this case, the total electricity generation from all contributing facilities) resulting in amounts in units of emission per MWh.

The flow amount used in the downstream process is the quantity, which here would be the total net electricity generation (MWh). During flow aggregation (generation.py), a new emission factor is calculated based on the summed flow amounts divided by the total electricity generation.

ElectricityLCI/electricitylci/generation.py

Line 1428 in ab4e98d

database_f3["Emission_factor"] = (

This should result in emission factors of 1.0.

And it does!

>>> generation_process_df = get_gen_plus_netl()
>>> upstream_df = get_upstream_process_df(2020)
>>> upstream_dict = write_upstream_process_database_to_dict(upstream_df)
>>> upstream_dict = write_process_dicts_to_jsonld(upstream_dict)
>>> gen_plus_fuels = add_fuels_to_gen(
...     generation_process_df, upstream_df, canadian_gen, upstream_dict
... )
>>> gen_agg = aggregate_data(gen_plus_fuels)
>>> gen_agg.query("stage_code == 'wind_const'")[[
...     'Balancing Authority Name', 'FuelCategory', 'electricity_sum', 'Emission_factor']].head(10)
                          Balancing Authority Name FuelCategory  electricity_sum  Emission_factor
2549                Arizona Public Service Company         WIND     3.478230e+05              1.0
3209         Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc.         WIND     2.970077e+06              1.0
3682                      Avangrid Renewables, LLC         WIND     3.227250e+06              1.0
4240                            Avista Corporation         WIND     6.815950e+05              1.0
5697               Bonneville Power Administration        MIXED     5.186640e+05              1.0
6807               Bonneville Power Administration         WIND     7.365084e+06              1.0
9081        California Independent System Operator        MIXED     1.000000e-04              0.0
11356       California Independent System Operator         WIND     1.354485e+07              1.0
17090                     El Paso Electric Company         WIND     1.296310e+05              1.0
17506  Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc.        MIXED     1.000000e-04              0.0

Note that some emission factors are zero.

These emissions factors should be the values used in the input exchange table.

ElectricityLCI/electricitylci/generation.py

Line 1596 in ab4e98d

data["amount"] = data["Emission_factor"]