Making Energy Resilient: State Strategies, Progress, and Opportunities

Amidst energy transitions and the rising impacts of climate change, resilience is a growing part of state energy strategies. But there is relatively little consolidated information describing what states are doing to build adaptive capacities in the power sector. This report fills this gap. It examines how resilience is addressed in planning and policy resources from a selection of representative states. These resources describe anticipated hazards and vulnerabilities, use-cases for emerging clean energy technologies, and broader efforts to create new resilience institutions and authorities. Though resilience garners considerable policy attention, most state initiatives are not guided by well-defined performance goals …

Risks to Sustaining Climate Action: Why Securing Clean Energy Supply Chains Requires A Global Perspective

Climate Advisers’ research finds that there are no international institutions or efforts aimed at securing key clean energy supply chains for all countries committed to climate action. After detailing the risks that exist for clean energy supply chains today, the report offers new U.S. foreign policy recommendations to achieve global clean energy security.…

Meeting Climate Change Targets: The Role of Nuclear Energy

All credible models show that nuclear energy has an important role to play in global climate change mitigation efforts (e.g. IEA, 2021; BNEF, 2021; IIASA, 2021). Despite clear analyses from many sources, including the NEA, that point to the need for a massive, “all-the-above” approach that includes nuclear energy, some multinational activities, financial institutions, and policy makers avoid discussion of nuclear energy. This dynamic is deeply problematic to the cause of carbon reductions. All low-carbon technologies, including nuclear energy must be included in relevant discussions about the energy transition in order to maintain the integrity and evidence base of the …

The High Price of “Cheap” Gas: What’s the True Cost of E15?

Authorizing year-round sales of E15 is a short-sighted political stunt that comes at a high price for taxpayers, consumers and the environment. For just a few more months of slightly cheaper fuel, Americans could be paying out for years to come.…

Most Electric Vehicles Are Cheaper Off the Lot Than Gas Cars From Day One

New research finds that in most states, new electric vehicles (EVs) are cheaper to own than gasoline-powered vehicles on a monthly basis from the day they are driven off the lot, even if the sticker price is higher. Many studies have shown EVs are cheaper to operate with a lower total cost of ownership than gasoline-powered vehicles over the vehicle’s lifetime, but this research examines monthly costs of owning and financing an EV compared to a gasoline car, since 85 percent of Americans finance their cars. These savings are contingent on extending the existing federal EV tax credit; if EV …

Transmission Reform Strategy from a Customer Perspective: Optimizing Net Benefits and Procedural Vehicles

Cost-efficient electric transmission planning, development and operations are vital for grid reliability and economic development. Investor-owned utilities (IOUs) have access to ample capital and spend about $20-25 billion per year on transmission in the United States. However, billions of dollars are misallocated annually, which erodes net benefits to consumers and suppresses the development of cleaner and lower-cost energy generation. The problem rests squarely on a regulatory system that is outdated and structurally flawed.

Nevertheless, a rare opportunity to remedy regulatory flaws has emerged. After years of experience and building records on the shortcomings of its transmission policies, FERC recently opened …

Energy Price Stability: The Peril of Fossil Fuels and the Promise of Renewables

In “Energy Price Stability: The Peril of Fossil Fuels and the Promise of Renewables,” authors Lauren Melodia and Kristina Karlsson demonstrate that volatile fossil fuel prices are a key driver of overall inflation and have historically triggered recessions. They argue that the Federal Reserve has little power to mitigate inflation driven by fossil fuel prices, and that the solution to ongoing energy price volatility is a government-led investment in renewable energy production and deployment.…

Innovation Trends in Electrolyzers for Hydrogen Production

Electrolysis of water, using renewable electricity, is the sustainable option to produce green hydrogen as an attractive low-carbon energy carrier. To respond to the growing demand for renewables-based hydrogen, an extraordinary expansion of the market for electrolyzers is needed linked to a significant capacity increase in the manufacture and deployment of electrolyzers. A rapid reduction in electrolyzer system costs is essential and technology innovation is crucial to this end.

According to IRENA, investment costs for electrolyser plants can be reduced by 40% in the short term and 80% in the long term through key strategies such as improved electrolyser design …

Reliably Reaching California’s Clean Electricity Targets

California’s Senate Bill 100 sets targets of 60% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045. In December 2020, the Joint Agencies SB 100 report (hereafter, referred to as the “SB 100 report”) analyzed the feasibility of the SB 100 targets and showed that accelerating this timeline to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030 or 2035 could be cost-effective. However, the SB 100 report identified the need for further analysis to understand the reliability impacts of a clean portfolio. The reliability events that occurred
during August 2020 highlight the shifting resource adequacy challenges for California and the increasing importance …

Charting the Course for Early Truck Electrification

Trucks in the United States produce 25 percent of transportation greenhouse gas emissions even though they only make up 10 percent of vehicles on the road. And the problem is growing — emissions from trucks have nearly doubled in the past 30 years and are slated to increase faster as e-commerce booms.

Fortunately, development in EV technology has led to breakthroughs in electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Today, although supply is still relatively low, there are dozens of battery-electric truck models available in the United States and Canada alone, and that number is increasing rapidly to meet demand. Across the …