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
121 to 130 of 134 item(s) were returned.
This paper briefly identifies project structures making low-income community solar projects more scalable, replicable, and cost-effective for electric cooperative and municipal utilities. The report explores the tradeoffs between utility project returns and providing energy bill savings for low-income subscribers, as well as some of the key lessons learned from previously successful solar pilot projects in low-income communities. …
View Full ResourceWhen it comes to enforcing environmental law, the Trump Administration is off to a very
slow start. So far, the Justice Department has collected 60 percent less in civil penalties than
polluters had paid on average by this time in the first year of Presidents Barack Obama,
George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The cases this year are smaller, requiring much less
spending on cleanup, and resulting in fewer measurable reductions in pollutants that end up
in our air or water. While the early news is neither encouraging nor surprising, enforcement
results may vary over the short term. The actions …
This report provides a comprehensive overview of common utility shut-off policies employed by utilities nationwide, explores critical issues that should be considered in the development of disconnection policies, and calls for concrete action toward establishing policies that protect the well-being of all utility customers and the eventual elimination of utility disconnections.…
View Full ResourceThrough campaign contributions and support for pre-emption laws, oil and gas interests are undermining communities’ right to limit or regulate industrial activities. Many local governments have responded to quick booms in fracking or the injection of fracking waste by enacting stricter regulations, bans, or moratoria. This report discusses how fracking companies and state governments have challenged many of these local bans, as well as how state supreme courts have upheld some of them. Other local bans, however, have been struck down by courts elected with money from fracking companies and other fossil fuel interests.
Most state constitutions outline the boundaries …
View Full ResourceThis report examines utility-administered low-income programs in the Southeast United States.
This landscape assessment, produced by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, identifies clear trends and opportunities as the Southeast region moves forward in its pursuit of comprehensive energy efficiency offerings to serve low-income communities.…
View Full ResourceIn order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, it’s clear that a rapid shift to a 100 percent renewable energy system is needed by mid-century – a move supported by leading climate scientists, industry experts, religious groups, justice organizations and environmentalists alike. Distributed solar energy plays a unique and critical role in creating a renewable energy future that stems climate change, promotes social justice and protects biodiversity, yet the expansion of this market in the United States relies in large part on state policies that determine whether solar panels are accessible and affordable. The 10 states with the …
View Full ResourceThis paper evaluates motivations in the lightbulb market using a theoretical model and two randomized experiments. Welfare effects are derived as functions of reduced-form sufficient statistics capturing economic and psychological parameters. These are estimated using a novel within-subject information disclosure experiment. Results suggest that moderate subsidies for energy-efficient light bulbs might increase welfare, although informational and attentional biases alone do not justify an incandescent light bulb ban. The paper provides broader methodological insights into welfare analysis with mis-optimizing consumers.…
View Full ResourceOn July 2, the U.S. Department of Justice and BP—one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies—announced that they had come to terms on a historic $18.7 billion settlement over damages from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. By any metric, this is an enormous sum of cash; for example, it is more than the gross domestic product of 83 countries, according to the World Bank. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced in a statement that, if ultimately approved, this restitution “would be the largest settlement with a single entity in American history”—appropriate considering that the spill was one …
View Full ResourceTo reduce emissions at source by the required amount, real changes in terms of EU consumption, production and infrastructure are needed, which will require making difficult political decisions to be made. The EU ETS was set up in order to allow the ‘market’ to produce this change, but with so many vested interests at stake and structural loopholes, it is doomed to fail. What the EU needs is an open, science-and-justice-based debate about the climate actions we need, and the policies that will make them work. At a time when the trading model is being pushed into other areas of …
View Full ResourceThis paper explains what is fracking, why and where it is happening today, who is promoting it and how; providing a map of the global boom of fracking, its web of actors as well as the state of popular resistance. Promoted as a more sustainable energy source than other fossil fuels, fracking is spreading worldwide through a state-capital alliance that is capturing control of huge land and water resources at the expense of ordinary people. Fracking is an expression of the water and land grabbing agenda already underpinning expanding corporate takeover of natural resources. In addition to further intensifying and …
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