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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Congress is back from the end-of-summer slowdown, and lawmakers and advocates have their sights set on getting a tax credit extension package moving through key committees with the potential for passage by the end of the year. Opportunities to advance a large package of clean energy tax credits do not come often. Depending on the scale of the legislative effort, a tax extenders package could represent this Congress’s largest opportunity to advance clean energy and reduce emissions. As policymakers weigh their options, this independent analysis examines several key energy tax credits that cover zero-emissions electricity, electric vehicles, biofuels, and carbon …
View Full ResourceOutput-based carbon regulations—such as fuel economy standards and the rate- based standards in the Clean Power Plan—create well-known incentives to inefficiently increase output. Similar distortions are created by attribute-based regulations. This paper demonstrates that, despite these distortions, output and attribute-based standards can always yield greater expected welfare than “flat” emission standards given uncertainty in demand for output (or attributes), assuming locally constant marginal damages. For fuel economy standards, the welfare-maximizing amount of attribute or mileage-basing is likely small relative to current policy. For the electricity sector, however, an intensity standard may yield greater expected welfare than a flat standard.…
View Full ResourceThe last twelve months have seen a marked shift in state and utility company energy and climate policies towards ambitious carbon targets and an embrace of diverse technologies to achieve them through “Clean Electricity Standards” (or CES’s). For many years, clean electricity policies focused either on achieving targets for renewable energy through “renewable portfolio standards” or setting emissions caps. Instead, CES’s typically require an increasing percentage of zero-carbon electricity. As opposed to carbon emission limits or pricing, CES’s focus on bringing more clean energy resources to market.…
View Full ResourceWith this notice, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing three distinct actions, including Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Electric Utility Generating Units (EGUs). First, EPA is proposing to replace the Clean Power Plan (CPP) with revised emissions guidelines (the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule) for states to follow in developing implementation plans to reduce greenhouse gas emission from certain EGUs. In the proposed emissions guidelines (UUUUa), consistent with the interpretation described in the proposed repeal of the CPP, the Agency is proposing to determine that heat rate improvement (HRI) measures are the best system of emission …
View Full ResourceState and local air agencies, responsible for implementing regulations and standards under the federal Clean
Air Act, have been at the forefront of the significant progress in air quality that has been achieved over the past
several decades. This progress has been driven by complex planning and regulatory decisions that are made by
agencies informed through direct connections with the communities they serve. Sensible, localized strategies
that address air pollution and respond to unique social and economic factors are developed through agency
leadership and active public participation.
This yearly report, first published by the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies …
View Full ResourceElectric power systems around the world are rapidly changing. For over a century, these systems have relied largely on centralized, fossil fuel plants to generate electricity and sprawling grids to deliver it to end users. Utilities had a straightforward objective: provide electricity with high reliability and at low costs. But now, governments have new ambitions for electric power systems. Many are requiring these systems to rely heavily on volatile wind and solar power; several are also aiming for a high share of electric vehicles (EVs), which can strain grids. Further complicating the matter, customers are installing their own equipment—from solar …
View Full ResourceRegional electricity markets—operated by regional transmission organizations (RTOs)— span multiple states and bring significant benefits to the electricity grid. States policies—such as renewable or clean energy portfolio standards or procurement mandates—have always helped shape market outcomes, but increasingly they are aimed at addressing perceived market shortcomings. Recent state policy actions to support new or existing resources in RTO markets have renewed attention to issues of RTO market design, including how RTO markets and state policies interact. Those actions, a rapidly changing electricity sector, and low electricity and capacity prices have heightened the urgency of calls for changes in market designs …
View Full ResourceAs solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems become increasingly competitive, continued market growth depends on assurances of performance and durability. Quality assurance protects and accelerates future PV investments, lowers capital costs, improves performance, extends module lifespans and lowers the resulting electricity costs.
From less than 10 gigawatts (GW) worldwide in 2006, installed solar PV capacity reached nearly 300 GW in 2016. More than 71 GW was added in 2016, with over USD 113 billion invested in solar energy technologies.
However, comprehensive quality assurance requires physical and institutional infrastructure. This so-called, Quality Infrastructure (QI), comprises the total institutional network and legal framework …
View Full ResourceToday, 10 percent of the U.S. gasoline supply is provided by renewable fuel, primarily ethanol. Increasing the use of renewable fuel, which is more sustainable and less polluting than gasoline, will require the greater adoption of higher ethanol blends in the transportation fuel supply. While electrification of the light-duty fleet could achieve the greatest potential reductions in both tailpipe emissions and greenhouse gases (GHG), the lifecycle of the vehicle fleet and market realities suggest that the internal combustion engine will continue to dominate the light-duty fleet for several decades.
The transportation sector currently accounts for 27 percent of U.S. GHG …
View Full ResourceThe Clean Air Act requires that transportation fuels contain a minimum amount of renewable fuel. This renewable fuel standard (RFS) was established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05; P.L. 109-58) and amended by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA; P.L. 110-140). The RFS includes scheduled volume mandates that grow each year (starting with 9 billion gallons in 2008 and ascending to 36 billion gallons in 2022), with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determining the annual volume amounts following 2022. Within the overall RFS, there are sub-mandates for advanced biofuels, including cellulosic biofuel, biomass-based diesel, …
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