Marginal Carbon Emission Factor-Driven Low-Carbon Demand Response Mechanism: A Pathway Toward Power System Sustainability

The low-carbon transition of the power sector is fundamental to achieving “Dual Carbon” goals, where demand-side management plays an increasingly vital role in transforming flexible loads into renewable energy accommodation and active emission-reduction resources. However, existing low-carbon demand response mechanisms based on dynamic carbon emission factors only reflect average system states and fail to quantify the incremental carbon impact of marginal load changes. To address this limitation, this paper proposes a novel marginal carbon emission factor-driven low carbon demand response mechanism. Unlike traditional methods, the proposed mechanism utilizes marginal carbon emission factors as a high-sensitivity guiding signal to inform users of the real-time emission and renewable energy consumption variations caused by their consumption adjustments. Furthermore, considering the forecasting errors of high-penetration renewable energy, the uncertainty of marginal carbon emission factors is explicitly considered. Case studies are conducted to compare the proposed method with the conventional method through comparative analyses based on the modified PJM-5 system. Results demonstrate that the MCEF-driven approach provides more precise carbon-reduction and renewable energy utilization signals to achieve superior system-wide decarbonization performance and sustainable development.