Procuring Large-Scale Renewables through Aggregation: A Guide for Local Governments

Local governments across the United States are setting ambitious goals to transition to renewable energy. Since most municipalities cannot supply 100 percent of their electricity needs with on-site supply alone, they often look to purchase off-site renewable energy. One approach to do this that can provide numerous benefits is buyer-led aggregation.

Aggregation is an innovative yet underutilized approach in which two or more buyers collaborate to purchase energy from a large-scale generation facility.

This guide outlines how local governments can pursue buyer-led aggregated PPAs for utility-scale renewable projects. It includes the benefits of aggregation, off-site procurement options available to aggregation …

Actions Large Energy Buyers Can Take to Transform and Decarbonize the Grid: Procurement Practices for Achieving 100% Carbon Free Electricity

Large energy buyers—including corporates, cities, and institutional customers—have played and will continue to play an important role in driving clean energy in the near term, particularly renewables. However, to ensure that the power sector achieves deep decarbonization over the next two to three decades, large energy buyers will need to take additional actions to play a leading role in accelerating the transition to a carbon-free grid.

This issue brief begins with a description of the characteristics of transformative clean energy procurement that can enable grid decarbonization. It then explores various methods of procurement and actions by large energy buyers that …

A Roadmap to 100% Clean Electricity by 2035: August 2021 Update

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned and won on a bold platform for confronting the climate crisis and building a clean energy economic recovery—including a clean energy standard to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035. Now, Senate Democrats have included a Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP), an investment program designed to achieve the goals of President Biden’s proposed clean electricity standard, in their $3.5 trillion budget resolution, along with complementary investments that will help decarbonize the power sector.

In this updated report, we explain why action this year is essential for 100% clean electricity, and how a …

How Wholesale Power Markets Work

The transition to a 100% clean electric supply will likely involve a very large amount of wind and solar power generation. These resources, with very low operating costs and variable output driven by natural forces, fit poorly in wholesale electricity markets premised on the marginal cost of production. In the first of a series of explainers on the impact of 100% clean power on wholesale markets, this white paper explores how power markets work today.…

Federal Fleet Electrification Assessment

By 2025, 40 percent of all non-Postal Service federal fleet vehicles and 97 percent of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) vehicles can be replaced with electric vehicles (EV) at a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than comparable gas and diesel vehicles. This means that choosing an EV over a conventional vehicle will save money over the life of the vehicle. By 2030, the vast majority of all federal fleet vehicles—USPS and non-USPS—will be cost competitive on TCO basis. Electrification of non-USPS federal fleet vehicles could yield vehicle lifetime savings of as much as $1.18 billion, while USPS electrification could yield …

Redefining Resource Adequacy for Modern Power Systems

Today’s rapidly increasing levels of wind, solar, storage, and load flexibility require the industry to rethink reliability planning and resource adequacy methods for modern power systems. Periods with a risk of shortfall often no longer coincide with peak demand—reliability risks are less about peak load and more about the daily setting of the sun, extended cloud cover, wind speeds, cold snaps, and heat waves. In addition, demand is increasingly flexible. Key resources are time-sensitive, as batteries need time to recharge and electricity customers can only be asked to provide demand response for just so long. And reliability failures are often …

Too Many (Loop)holes in the Net: “Net-Zero” Promises Ring Hollow Without “Zero Fossil Fuel” Pledges

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report made clear: For the world to have a good shot at keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, emissions would need to be cut in half by 2030 and globally stabilize by 2050.

In accordance with the IPCC’s conclusions, several banks and other financial institutions have made public commitments to pursue a “net-zero” pathway. Many more are likely to do so in the lead-up to the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) this fall in Glasgow, Scotland. Some of these …

California’s Offshore Wind Electricity Opportunity

California has set forth an ambitious goal of generating all of its electricity from clean and carbon-free technologies by the year 2045. The state is planning for this target, outlined in California Senate Bill 100, to be met primarily by several renewable sources like solar, land-based wind, geothermal, along with energy storage and other zero-carbon technologies. Wind energy has long been proven to be a technologically feasible and economically viable option. Moreover, momentum is increasing to include California’s offshore wind (OSW) energy as a complement to the state’s current renewable energy and storage resources.

In this report, we provide a …

The North American Renewable Integration Study: A U.S. Perspective

The North American Renewable Integration Study (NARIS) is the first detailed power system integration study for the entire North American continent. NARIS aims to inform grid planners, operators, policymakers, and other stakeholders about the potential opportunities for system integration of large amounts of wind, solar, and hydropower to create a low-carbon grid in the future. The NARIS project began in 2016. This report describes a U.S. perspective in coordination with the U.S. Department of Energy, and a companion report describes a Canadian perspective in coordination with Natural Resources Canada.
The North American electric power grids are evolving toward higher contributions …

Beyond BID: Getting EV Charging Plugged Into Reconciliation

Consumers are starting to see the value in electric vehicles (EVs), and automakers are leading the charge by going big on these vehicles and the necessary charging infrastructure. While private companies are building out more and more EV charging infrastructure to accommodate the accelerating shift towards EVs, we need federal support to ensure a robust buildout and to make sure this infrastructure is available to all drivers, including those in rural and underserved communities. The bipartisan infrastructure deal (BID) is a good first step towards building out that nationwide, publicly accessible network and could help fund as many as 600,000 …