The Role of Grid Informatization in Mitigating Environmental Impacts: A Global Perspective on Smart Grid Applications

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🔬研究者:Comprehensive pathway taxonomy and trade-off analysis provide a foundation for further empirical studies on smart grid environmental impacts.

🏢実務担当者:Utilities and grid operators can identify high-leverage smart grid applications (e.g., loss reduction, DERMS) for decarbonization, while being aware of sensitivity to marginal emissions.

🏛政策担当者:Regulators should note that emission benefits depend on grid carbon intensity and accounting methods; policies should verify net lifecycle impacts and address cyber risks.

The informatization of the grid, i.e., the incorporation of sensing, communications, data platforms, analytics, and automation in the running of power systems, has turned out to be a vital facilitator of environmental mitigation as power systems increasingly take up larger proportions of variable renewables, distributed energy resources (DERs), and electrified end uses. The review summarizes the worldwide evidence related to the ability of informatization-based smart grid applications to lower the environmental impact in six pathways, namely efficiency improvement, flexibility activation, renewable integration, DER coordination, electrification management, and resilience enhancement. Across regions, the most consistently reported benefits arise from reducing waste and improving operational control, including loss reduction, volt/VAR optimization, conservation voltage reduction, and distribution automation, particularly in systems with high baseline losses or frequent outages. Demand response, dynamic pricing, and managed electric vehicle (EV) charging can further lower emissions when they displace high-emitting marginal generation or align consumption with time-varying low-carbon supply; however, outcomes are highly sensitive to marginal emissions profiles and accounting methods. In high-renewable systems, forecasting, congestion management, and curtailment reduction emerge as high-leverage mechanisms, while distributed energy resource management systems/virtual power plant (DERMS/VPP)-enabled coordination can expand hosting capacity and substitute distributed flexibility for carbon-intensive balancing, contingent on interoperability and constraint-aware control. The review also highlights trade-offs that shape net benefits, including embodied impacts and e-waste from digital hardware, information and communication technologies (ICT) energy use, rebound and equity effects, and cyber-physical risks. We conclude with governance and research priorities for verifiable, secure, and lifecycle-sustainable informatization.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.30564/jees.v8i2.13036first seen 2026-05-15 17:33:45