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.
Resource Library
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Studies show that a diverse portfolio of zero-carbon resources will be needed to decarbonize the U.S. electricity sector, and that high-capacity-factor resources like geothermal will become particularly important in later stages of decarbonization as the capacity contribution of variable, weather-dependent resources like wind and solar declines with increasing market penetration. Yet while wind, solar, and—more recently—storage have all seen significant U.S. deployment in recent years, deployment of new geothermal plants has barely budged over the same period. We explain this disparity in historical deployment by analyzing empirical price data from power purchase agreements (PPAs) and wholesale energy and capacity markets, …
View Full ResourceSince the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) became law in August 2022, companies are racing forward with massive investments to build our clean energy future. New manufacturing in wind, solar, batteries, and electric vehicles—along with storage projects across the country—mean new, good-paying jobs for hard working Americans. In the six months since the landmark climate and clean energy investments became law, clean energy companies have announced more than 100,000 new clean energy jobs for electricians, mechanics, construction workers, technicians, support staff, and many others.
As the largest U.S. investment in clean energy and climate in history, this national clean energy …
View Full ResourceSolar energy is rapidly developing as one of the most common forms of renewable energy production. They produce clean, locally generated energy — a must-have in a time of ambitious sustainability goals. But not all solar installations are alike. While they capture the benefit of lower emissions and reduce the cost of electricity consumed, many do not realize the full investment value because of disruption costs that stem from utility grid dependence.
Our white paper will provide you with valuable insights and practical advice on how to optimize your solar installation to achieve maximum value. Learn about the limitations of …
View Full ResourceAs the power system changes due to increased renewables, coal and gas retirements, and the increased use of storage and load flexibility for reliability, new methods and principles are needed to measure each resource’s contribution toward reliability. The ESIG Redefining Resource Adequacy Task Force developed this report to provide an overview of capacity accreditation: the measure of the contribution of individual resources toward meeting the system’s resource adequacy.
The report details the ways that resources are accredited today, how those processes are evolving with a changing resource mix, and limitations inherent in these techniques, and provides suggestions on ways to …
View Full ResourceThe Net Zero Roadmap for Copper and Nickel Value Chains is a net zero transition guide that sets out a science-based decarbonization strategy for copper and nickel mining value chain actors. It highlights how mining sector actors can lower their emissions footprints, including scopes 1 and 2, and a subset of scope 3. It shows how to take advantage of the growth in demand coming from end users such as EVs, solar, wind, and storage. And it demonstrates how a net zero strategy offers opportunities to improve broader ESG impacts and performance, access sustainable finance, and contribute to a just …
View Full ResourceIn this report, the authors compare the cost of operating each continental U.S. coal plant in 2021, totaling 220 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity across the country, to the estimated costs of building new wind and solar generation. We consider the wind and solar costs within two geographic scopes: local to the coal plants (within 45 kilometers) and
regionally (roughly within the utility balancing area), finding that nearly all existing coal plants have multiple lower-cost clean energy replacement options.
This research shows all but one of the country’s 210 coal plants are more expensive to operate than either new wind …
View Full ResourceEnergy Transition Investment Trends is Bloomberg NEF’s annual accounting of global investment in the low-carbon energy transition. It covers a wide scope of supply- and demand-side technologies, including renewables, energy storage, electrified vehicles and heating, hydrogen, nuclear, sustainable materials and carbon capture.
The report tracks annual spending on the deployment of these technologies, as well as investment in manufacturing facilities (new for this year). It also covers VC/PE and public markets investment in climate-tech companies.
Our data are compiled through bottom-up research on hundreds of thousands of individual deals and projects around the world, as well as aggregated estimates for …
View Full ResourceElectric school buses (ESBs) equipped with Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X), or bidirectional charging capability, can serve as “mobile power units” to provide backup power to emergency shelters and other critical facilities, enhancing much-needed infrastructure resilience and aiding in emergency planning, preparedness, and response efforts. Given that underserved communities often are hit the hardest by extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, or wildfires, ESBs as mobile power units could be particularly useful in enhancing resilience in these areas.
This implementation guide (guide) describes the potential to use V2X-enabled ESBs as alternative emergency backup power sources during power outages. The core of …
View Full ResourceThe success of any carbon neutral energy transition requires orchestrating a complex network of different technologies that will all be integrated. In all this, energy efficiency and circularity will remain important, and more thought must be given to how the waste of one industry can serve as input for another. This industrial symbiosis will not only require technical solutions but also non-technical ones such as regulatory frameworks. No doubt electricity will play a crucial role and a much bigger one than today. It will be integrated not only from a demand-side management point of view: ie. matching consumption with production …
View Full ResourceThe consensus is that grid instability and power cost increases will occur as renewable penetration increases, though there is no consensus on what level of renewable penetration will be the threshold of serious problems. While the United States currently has 20% renewable energy penetration, NREL’s latest study predicts 57% RE penetration by 2050 while EIA predicts 37% by
2050. The difference between the two predictions is indicative of the gamble currently playing out over the U.S. power grid. Going well beyond the current 20% penetration of VRE is a risk, with skyrocketing electricity prices and grid instability as
consequences.
The …
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