Discussion Question

From looking into the greenhouse gas emissions from residential consumption it appears that the emissions are essentially from residential heating. The “Commonwealth Accelerated Renewable Thermal Strategy” Report (https://www.mass.gov/doc/renewable-heating-cooling-market-strategy-report/download) identified ‘the main renewable thermal technologies considered by the Massachusetts state agencies as:

1. High-efficiency, cold-climate air-source heat pumps (ccASHP)
2. High-efficiency ground-source heat pumps (GSHP)
3. High-efficiency, sustainable biomass thermal (BM)
4. Solar thermal (ST)
5. Biofuels (BF)
6. Biogas (BG)

Possibly Replace 6 with water source heat pumps?
With this foundation information the goal for my thesis is to answer the following questions:

Overall:
How can Massachusetts mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector?

Sub- questions:
What is the mitigation potential of each technology (quantity of CO2eq)?

What are life cycle costs for each technology, including capital and O&M costs?

What is the cost for tonne of mitigated CO2eq?

To answer these questions I am first hoping to get information about the mitigation potential for each technology. That is, how many residences have the technical possibility to implement each technology, how many BTU´s that will replace – and then translating that to CO2eq.

For example: if ground-source heat pumps would roll out to every available home/building tomorrow how many locations would this actually physically be possible to implement at? I am ignoring reality in this way and just running high level hypothetical academic experiment.

Introduction:
1st subsection: Motivation for thesis, what is important about research, need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
• Massachusetts is at forefront in US. Residential is one of the flattest problem areas that is not reducing.
2nd subsection: Research questions:

Overall:
How can Massachusetts mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector?

Sub- questions:
What is the mitigation potential of each technology (quantity of CO2eq)?

What are life cycle costs for each technology, including capital and O&M costs?

What is the cost for tonne of mitigated CO2eq?

3rd subsection in introduction: Very short section on what are the methods applied in this thesis, what are the methods used to answer thesis question: mickinsey cost curves, mitigation cost curve in heating
4th section last section in introduction: what is the structure of the thesis, “in next section I do X then I do Y then Z.
• Roadmap for the thesis -> help understand mode of thinking understand where coming from etc.
Chapter 2:
Description of other academic studies analyzing the same question, who has looked at this and what have they found, don’t do all of them pick some, simply show that I know the literature and what others have done and I understand it. Enable myself to place what I have done in this context someone else has answered this too do I agree with them? Place my work in this context. What methods did those apply? How do my methods compare? Has much has been written exactly on this? If there are no gaps that’s ok supply information about high level for today. Science direct and state publications.
Chapter 3: Describing Massachusetts- what heating is used now what does it look like, what are the technological possibilities, what are the conditions right now and what are the technologies of the future.
Chapter 4: Go into thesis itself, methods detailed. Restate research questions, describe the methods applied to answer each and every research question and combine to answer big question. Describe method to come up with McKinsey curve. Describe data as well, section is called data and methods. Data needed to apply the methods. Last section is description of limitations for methods applied. Limitations of mac curves
Chapter 5:
Present results by question, technical potential, section on life cycle cost of heating, then section on mitigation costs when all life cycle heating costs are transformed into mitigation costs. End with creation of McKinsey cost curve for heating in Massachusetts. 5.1 5.2 5.3
Chapter 6:
Discussion: answer research questions and address big question, what are the results saying what are we seeing here. Put what I found in context of literature -ok to just confirm. Explain why it is different if there is anything new. Third section of this, what are the implications practically of what I have seen in the analyses, what would I advise state to do based on this. Referring to other literature and how do they rank to one another given what I’ve seen and as what others have seen. Practical implications of the work. End of discussion sector talk about the limitations of this and what are the unanswered questions (research opportunities) some assumptions beyond the scope of the thesis. Two paragraphs for section about implications and what does it mean about the big scheme of things.
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Chapter 8
References