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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Fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) in 2022 shortens the average Colombian resident’s life expectancy by 1.1 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline of 5 µg/m³ was met. Colombia is the eighth most polluted country in Latin America¹ —with air pollution shortening lives by as many as 2.8 years in the country’s most polluted regions.…
View Full ResourceFine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) shortens the average Thai resident’s life expectancy by 1.6 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 µg/m³ were met. In the most polluted parts of the country, such as parts of the Saraburi, Chiang Rai, and Phayao provinces, pollution is shortening people’s life expectancy by more than 2.5 years.…
View Full ResourceFine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) shortens the average Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) resident’s life
expectancy by 2.9 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 µg/m³ was
met. DRC is the most polluted country in the African continent—with pollution shortening people’s life expectancy by
as much as 4.4 years in the country’s most polluted regions.…
Our energy system is stuck in the past. Fire has been our primary source of energy for over a million years, providing the essential heat needed to survive. This reliance on fire made sense when our principal energy needs were purely for heat. However, today’s energy demands have evolved far beyond this primal necessity. Unlike in past millennia, we now require more work than heat: we desire mobility, motors, electrical appliances, and data processing in greater quantities than we do warmth. Despite this transformation over the past century from heat demand to work demand, our fundamental energy supply methods have …
View Full ResourceAmmonia production is one of the main uses of hydrogen today. The Haber process reacts hydrogen with nitrogen from the air at high temperatures and pressures with a catalyst to make ammonia. Nearly 90 percent of ammonia is in turn used to make chemical fertilizers, with the remainder used to produce other compounds like explosives, plastics, and synthetic fibers. Ammonia demand may grow considerably for use as a carbon-free fuel in sectors like marine shipping. However, this overview will highlight ammonia’s use for fertilizer.…
View Full ResourceRefineries take crude oil extracted from the ground and refine it into fuels that can be used in vehicles, aircraft, and other equipment. The process of transforming and separating out other molecules also results in a variety of products that can be burned on-site for energy or sold to the chemicals industry. These petrochemicals are a small share of overall refinery output but can be a significant part of their revenue and total petrochemical output.
Refineries are one of the top consumers of hydrogen today, using it to remove sulfur from crude oil and as part of other processes like …
View Full ResourceMost primary steel (i.e., high-quality steel originating from iron ore) is made today from the combination of a blast furnace (BF), responsible for 93 percent of global ironmaking, and a basic oxygen furnace (BOF), responsible for 71 percent of global steelmaking. The two processes are often integrated in a single system (BF-BOF) and rely heavily on coal. A loweremitting method involves using natural gas to purify iron ore via the direct reduced iron (DRI) process, then using electricity to make steel in an electric arc furnace (EAF). Hydrogen can replace natural gas in the DRI process, providing a near-term path …
View Full ResourceClean hydrogen has received a lot of interest for its potential use as a tool for decarbonization but has also prompted a lot of concerns. Hydrogen production and use can have serious consequences on water supplies, particularly in areas already facing water scarcity. The production of blue hydrogen, as well as certain end uses, can be very water intensive. This 3-page fact sheet outlines blue hydrogen’s impact on water supplies.…
View Full ResourceThis overview describes how electrolytic hydrogen can obviate the need for fossil fuels in making most petrochemicals. It focuses on the carbon embodied in feedstocks, which get “chemically transformed and become part of the output products,” rather than fuels, which are burned for heat or electricity and immediately release carbon as CO2 (with these functions covered in separate overviews). While temporarily fixed, the carbon in feedstocks eventually is released into the atmosphere (such as when plastics are incinerated); thus, the carbon must ultimately come from a net-zero source rather than fossil fuels.
This fact sheet is part of an Energy …
View Full ResourceOver the next few years, many current and prospective political developments have the potential to impact the cost, reliability, and environmental profile of electric power service in the western United States. The formation of a regional transmission organization (RTO) represents the most transformative prospective development. Over the next few years, key decisions about the potential RTO will reshape the region’s electricity landscape. This report aims to illuminate current developments in western power markets and outline what western stakeholders can learn from existing RTOs.
RTOs integrate real-time energy markets with electric transmission grid operations, aligning economic motives with the engineering realities …
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