Renewable Energy Policies for Cities: Transport

Cities bring together the people and resources needed for commerce, recreation, and cultural activity. Transport of all kinds plays a central role in cities, as they are home to an ever increasing share of the world’s population. For urban stakeholders working to build greener cities in the years ahead, creating a sustainable transport sector will be critical to their success.

Renewable Energy Policies for Cities: Transport is intended to help policy makers accelerate efforts to create sustainable cities powered by renewable energy. This brief highlights best practices in sustainable urban transport and showcase city actions that accelerate the creation of …

Unlocking Advanced Nuclear Innovation: The Role of Fee Reform and Public Investment

This report evaluates the history and effects of the licensing fee system at the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), compares it to other regulatory agencies, finds
that the current fee system poses a barrier to carbon free advanced nuclear energy, and
recommends options for reform. NRC recovers its costs by charging industry for regulatory
activities, including licensing. The current fee model limits NRC’s capabilities to review
advanced reactors, slows innovation, and makes the U.S. a less attractive regulatory
environment. There is no evidence that the current fee model enables innovation. Alternative
models at other federal agencies provide examples for how fee …

Downwind and Out: The Strategic Dispersion of Power Plants and Their Pollution

Most recent policy conversations about coal power plants focus on the carbon emissions they create. But burning coal also creates other pollutants that are more immediately harmful. These pollutants, like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, can cause respiratory illness, lung disease, acid rain, smog, and a host of other negative impacts. Policymakers have tried to reduce exposure to this harmful pollution. Policies like the Clean Air Act, for example, have helped to limit dangerous emissions, but the rogue nature of air pollution makes it difficult to efficiently track and enforce such policies.

This working paper from economists John Morehouse and …

Rare Earth Elements: A Resource Constraint of the Energy Transition

Climate change is presenting humans with an unprecedented challenge: the need to wean ourselves off of a group of valuable natural resources; not because of scarcity or cost, but because of their long-term global pollution impacts. Although the combined capabilities of wind, solar, hydropower, and geothermal technologies have the potential to harness near limitless amounts of energy from our environment, they are not free from the limitations of resource availability. On the contrary, the clean energy transition will require economic mobilization on a scale not seen since the industrial revolution, and will strain the global production of silicon, cobalt, lithium, …

Washington State’s Climate Commitment Act: A model for ambitious climate policy

On May 17, 2021, Governor Inslee signed the Climate Commitment Act, a bold cap-and-invest bill, into law. This legislation solidifies Washington state as a national climate leader with the most ambitious limit on emissions of any state in the nation. Washington is the second state, behind California, to place a binding, declining emissions limit across all major sectors of its economy and translate its climate goals into a policy framework designed to fully deliver.

The Climate Commitment Act sets a new gold standard for climate policy because it slashes greenhouse gas emissions at the pace and scale necessary to meet …

Repowering America: Transmission investment for economic stimulus and climate change

London Economics International LLC (LEI) conducted this in-depth analysis for WIRES to illustrate the economic benefit of transmission investment in terms of GDP and job creation as a means of stimulating the U.S. economy, and as a potential public policy tool to reduce carbon emissions.

The report identifies $83 billion in planned transmission projects around the country that have been ISO/RTO Board-approved and/or recommended to regulators. The study found that the construction phase of this infrastructure investment would add $42 billion to GDP, create approximately 442,000 well-paying jobs, and boost direct local spending by nearly $39 billion cumulatively. To put …

Reducing Coal Plant Emissions by Cofiring with Natural Gas

Using its existing authority under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can jump-start the Biden administration’s plan to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 52 percent and contribute important air quality benefits in this decade.

Under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, the EPA can establish guidelines and require states to develop standards of performance for existing sources of air pollution. These performance standards are emissions limits that the EPA administrator determines are achievable using an adequately demonstrated best system of emissions reductions. This provision has been successfully exercised many times; however, the two times it …

Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector

The number of countries announcing pledges to achieve net-zero emissions over the coming decades continues to grow. But the pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C.

This special report is the world’s first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net zero energy system by 2050 while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust …

Effects of Climate Change on Heat-and Cold-Related Mortality: A Literature Review to Inform Updated Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon

As the climate changes, the frequency and intensity of hot and cold days will shift across the globe, with considerable implications for human health. In this review, I survey the available literature on the projected effects of climate change on heat- and cold-related mortality, with the goal of identifying studies that can be most useful in updating the social cost of carbon (SCC). I identify and discuss in detail several studies that are strong candidates for use in updating the SCC. However, major challenges continue to exist in the literature, including estimating damages for parts of the world where data …

Energizing Innovation: Raising the Ambition for Federal Energy RD&D in Fiscal Year 2022

The fiscal year (FY) 2022 budget is a critical opportunity for Congress and the administration to rapidly scale up U.S. investment in energy innovation. In December, Congress provided a sweeping bipartisan overhaul of federal energy innovation programs in the Energy Act of 2020, paving the way for a major expansion in federal research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to combat climate change and strengthen U.S. competitiveness. And members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called for reinvigorating the national energy innovation system in order to reverse decades of declining investments and position the United States to thrive in …