Summer Energy Market and Reliability Assessment 2022

The 2022 Summer Assessment provides staff’s outlook for energy markets and electric reliability, focusing on June, July, August, and September 2022. The report contains four main sections. The first section discusses the findings of the Summer Assessment. The second section details the weather outlook for Summer 2022. The third section discusses energy market fundamentals, including natural gas and electric market supply and demand expectations, including expected North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) regional resource adequacy details. The fourth section describes notable issues and addresses potential implications of pipeline outages, drought, hydro-generation, and wildfires on western United States (U.S.) energy markets.…

Stakeholder Recommendations for Reducing Energy Insecurity in the Southeast United States

Energy insecurity—the inability to maintain energy services like heating and cooling—is one of the most pressing issues in the Southeast, where more than one out of every four households face access or affordability challenges. This is more than an energy problem. Paying high energy bills and worrying about utilities being shut off can drain long-term savings, limit economic opportunities, and lead to difficult—and potentially dangerous—decisions to make tradeoffs between energy and other vital services and household items.

Energy insecurity stems from many factors, including income, energy costs, the quality and affordability of housing, historical practices and policies, access to efficient …

Building Energy Security Through Accelerated Energy Transition

‘Building Energy Security Through Accelerated Energy Transition’ focuses on the medium term actions that could improve energy security, strengthen stability of supply and limit the impact of future fossil fuel price shocks by 2030. The analysis finds that the response should be anchored around accelerated investment in renewable energy and economy wide electrification, together with improved energy efficiency. The paper also highlights tricky trade-offs and choices that have to be made. For example while imports of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) from secure suppliers could also play a role, these must be combined with measures to reduce CO2 and methane leak …

Storage Futures Study: Key Learnings for the Coming Decades

This report is the seventh and final publication from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Storage Futures Study (SFS). The SFS is a multiyear research project that explores how energy storage could impact the evolution and operation of the U.S. power sector.

The study examined the impact of energy storage technology advancement on the deployment of utility-scale storage and the adoption of distributed storage, as well as future power system infrastructure investment and operations. Some of the questions NREL sought to answer throughout this study included:

How might storage cost and performance change over time? What is the role of

Innovation Outlook: Renewable Ammonia

Ammonia is one of the seven basic chemicals used to produce all other chemical products. It is the second most produced chemical by mass, after sulphuric acid. Around four-fifths of all ammonia is used to produce nitrogen fertilizers, such as urea and ammonium nitrate; as such, it supports food production for around half of the global population.

Jointly developed by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Ammonia Energy Association (AEA), this report provides a detailed overview of renewable ammonia in contrast to conventional and fossil-based ammonia with carbon mitigation, and includes a review of the current technology status …

Private Equity Ownership of U.S. Power Plants: A Hidden Climate Threat

Private equity investment firms have quietly bought up close to 700 predominantly fossil fuel-fired electric power plants, making these Wall Street investment houses major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. The opaque nature of private equity ownership shields these major polluters from public scrutiny. Even as activist investors, climate divestment campaigners, and the public push for greater transparency in fossil fuel investments by energy companies and financial institutions like banks, the private equity investments in fossil fuel and climate-destroying companies have been shrouded from the public view.

This report presents the first comprehensive review of private equity ownership of power plants and …

Building a Framework for Post-Nuclear Accident Recovery Preparedness

More than ten years after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, many lessons have been learnt that have helped improve preparedness for nuclear emergencies and awareness of the global risks that such accidents can entail. This includes a number of long-lasting, multidimensional impacts on health (including mental health and psychosocial support), the economy, and the environment. Recovery from a nuclear or radiological accident is a long, complex and resource-intensive process. To facilitate efficient recovery, it is important to establish processes and procedures during the preparedness phase to activate the resources required and to involve the relevant stakeholders at all …

Considerations for a Just and Equitable Energy Transition

As the energy transition accelerates, it is our responsibility, it is our opportunity, to ensure that in addition to contributing to a healthy planet by replacing fossil fuels with clean energy sources, this is accomplished in a just and equitable manner providing prosperity for all. …

Investment in Technologies of Today: Increasing Flows of Finance into Developing Countries

The low-carbon transition requires an economy-wide transformation encompassing the decarbonization of electricity and heat generation, transport, industry and buildings sectors. This entails investments across a number of low-carbon technologies. This paper focuses on ‘technologies of today’, in other words those that have demonstrated technological viability but remain at varying levels of commercial viability in developing countries.…

State of the Art: CCS Technologies 2022

With the emergence of Carbon Capture and Storage as an essential tool to limit climate change impact and reduce emissions from energy intensive industries, interest in CCS has been growing at an unprecedented rate in recent years.

As a result of the key role played by CCS in the energy transition towards a net-zero future, the economic performance of CCS is becoming increasingly important and technology development fundamental to meet the demand for improved CO₂ capture systems, transport costs and storage options.

In our inaugural Technology Compendium, authored by Dr. Nouman Mirza and Dr. David Kearns, we take a …