The OurEnergyLibrary aggregates and indexes publicly available fact sheets, journal articles, reports, studies, and other publications on U.S. energy topics. It is updated every week to include the most recent energy resources from academia, government, industry, non-profits, think tanks, and trade associations. Suggest a resource by emailing us at info@ourenergypolicy.org.
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Evidence suggests that several of the catastrophic wildfires that struck Los Angeles earlier this year may have been sparked by electric utility infrastructure. As utilities prepare for record infrastructure demand driven by electrification, data centers, and renewables, the cost of inaction in the face of rising wildfire risk is mounting. Wildfires can cause billions of dollars in damages to communities, bankrupt utilities, and ultimately drive up rates for customers.…
View Full ResourceUtility grids in the United States are at an inflection point, and equipping regulators to be more agile can help ensure we are prepared for the future. State public utilities commissions (PUCs) are critical for ensuring the health and economic vitality of households and businesses across the country. State PUCs have historically been tasked with ensuring access to safe, reliable, and affordable energy services. Now, they face new and more complex responsibilities due to shifting economics, aging and fragile infrastructure, and new customer demands for cleaner and more transparent service.…
View Full ResourceCarbon capture and storage (CCS) is critical in meeting U.S. decarbonization goals. Recently, tax incentives and federal grants have spurred interest in CCS resulting in dozens of projects in various stages of development across the country. The federal government has created metrics to measure which communities have been historically disadvantaged or overburdened by pollution and has made efforts to not unnecessarily harm these communities as CCS is deployed at scale.…
View Full ResourceAs global energy demand grows and the urgency of climate action intensifies, Carbon Management Solutions (CMS) are increasingly recognized as essential tools for helping balance economic resilience, energy security, and emissions reduction. The International Energy Forum’s latest report, Building Markets to Scale Carbon Management Solutions, explores how comprehensive policy frameworks and commercial market development can unlock the full potential of CMS, from Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) to clean hydrogen.…
View Full ResourceThe severe economic burden that forced electrification would place on families across the state, with particular harm to the 37% of Illinois households already living below the ALICE (Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) threshold. Currently, Illinois consumes the eighth highest amount of natural gas in the country, with nearly 8 out of 10 Illinois homes relying on natural gas for heating.
In this report, CEA found that if Illinois households had been forced to switch to all-electric heating, their utility bills would have increased by $7.6 billion statewide or $2,631 per household.…
View Full ResourcePennsylvania is ground zero for the abandoned oil and gas well crisis in the United States. The state’s long history of drilling, dating back to the late 1850s, has culminated in hundreds of thousands of unplugged wells that are spread across the state. Many of these wells are leaking harmful pollutants and hazardous chemicals that pose significant risk to human health, the environment, and the climate. Left unplugged, these wells can lower property values, contaminate the soil and groundwater, and leak harmful methane into the air. Improperly plugged oil and gas wells, including decommissioned shale gas wells, can also leak …
View Full ResourceCongress is considering raising the tax burden on electricity investment and production supported through tax credit ( ITC & PTC) enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). These provisions support building generation capacity across a range of sources, including nuclear, geothermal, energy storage, wind, solar, and hydro, thereby diversifying a sector currently led by natural gas. Part of the justification for the ITC & PTC was the additional development and returns to scale that could be unlocked from otherwise underinvested sources and technologies.…
View Full ResourceThe “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” being considered by the U.S. Senate would repeal multiple federal policies, funding programs, and tax credits that drive American energy manufacturing and deployment. The text claws back unobligated funding, expands new oil and gas leasing, changes or eliminates energy and manufacturing tax credits, and repeals some Clean Air Act programs.…
View Full ResourceLevelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is a widely used standardized metric to assess electricity generation project costs per expected generation output. Often used to compare technology costs, LCOE has become a ubiquitous metric used in electricity industry literature, cost forecasts, project business cases, and policy making.
The LCOE metric is popular in part due to its simplicity and standardization and has been used widely to display LCOE declines of solar and wind. LCOE is calculated by summing the discounted project cost, primarily capital and operating expenditures, and dividing those costs by the discounted expected electricity generation over the life of …
View Full ResourceIn the United States alone, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there may be nearly 4 million inadequately decommissioned oil and gas wells. These wells and associated surface facilities represent material health and safety risks for people and nature in their immediate surroundings. They also collectively are a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, a driving force behind global warming.
A climate mitigation business model is emerging in which a project developer undertakes to properly plug a leaking abandoned wellbore (or a leaking orphaned well, which is a subset of abandoned wells that lack a viable owner) to stop its …
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