Economic Impact of Stimulus Investment in Advanced Energy: An Economic Assessment of Applying Stimulus Funds to Advanced Energy Technologies, Products, and Services In Virginia

This report outlines how government stimulus dollars could be put to work in the Commonwealth of Virginia as an investment in advanced energy technologies.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, states will need to make decisions about where and how to invest potential stimulus funding from the federal government to get their economies moving again.

For the purpose of this analysis, we postulate a hypothetical level of stimulus spending invested across a range of advanced energy technologies and services: energy efficiency, renewable energy (solar and wind), electrification of buildings, electrification of transportation (electric vehicles and charging infrastructure), energy …

Headwinds and Tailwinds: Implications of Inefficient Retail Energy Pricing for Energy Substitution

Electrification of transportation and buildings to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requires massive switching from natural gas and refined petroleum products. All three end-use energy sources are mispriced due in part to the unpriced pollution they emit. Natural gas and electricity utilities also face the classic natural monopoly challenge of recovering fixed costs while maintaining efficient pricing. We study the magnitude of these distortions for electricity, natural gas, and gasoline purchased by residential customers across the continental US. We find that the net distortion in pricing electricity is much greater than for natural gas or gasoline. In most of the …

The Role of Energy Storage in Reducing Building Emissions: New York City’s Local Law 97

The New York City Council passed the Climate Mobilization Act in April of 2019, charting a path forward to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Central to the Act is Local Law 97 (LL97), which places a declining cap on emissions from the city’s largest buildings and is considered “the most ambitious building emissions legislation enacted by any city in the world.” The building sector accounts for two-thirds of emissions in New York City, and given the law’s high penalty—$268 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent (tCO2e)—LL97 is expected to dramatically reduce those emissions over time. Buildings can pursue a variety …

The Environmental Case for Rooftop Solar Energy: Protecting California’s Climate and Land

California has long been a global leader in environmental protection. California’s pioneering actions to reduce air pollution, safeguard natural areas, and protect vulnerable species have set a high standard for the United States and beyond.

Today, California faces its biggest environmental challenge: climate change. Over the next several decades, California will need to repower its economy with clean, renewable energy – and do so with as little impact as possible on wildlife and wild places.

Rooftop solar power is a key tool in the fight against climate change. Solar energy on homes, schools, farms and other buildings can be deployed …

Designing the Next Generation of Federal Tax Credits for Low-Carbon Technologies

Achieving emissions reductions to reach economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050 will require sustained technological innovations and widespread deployment of emerging low-carbon technologies that are not yet commercially deployed on a mass-market scale. Tax credits are an important policy tool for supporting the early-stage deployment of emerging technologies as well as more mature technologies that have not yet reached widespread deployment. While existing federal tax credits have played an important role in enabling the deployment of several low-carbon technologies, including wind, solar, and electric vehicles, they also suffer from critical design deficiencies that make them less effective.

This paper proposes six …

Building Decarbonization Roadmap

The buildings sector represents about 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions and a similar portion of U.S. emissions. This substantial impact necessitates attention and action, and it also brings with it a wide array of opportunities for decarbonization policy.

The Roadmap was produced for the U.S. Climate Alliance by RMI through collaboration with staff from various state offices as well as industry experts. It is not meant to represent a policy plan for the Alliance or any Alliance states, but it is rather a tool designed to summarize the highest-impact actions that states can take to decarbonize buildings. …

Advanced Energy Now 2021 Market Report: Global and U.S. Market Revenue 2011-20 and Key Trends in Advanced Energy Growth

The Advanced Energy Now 2020 Market Report is Advanced Energy Economy’s seventh report of market size, by revenue, of the advanced energy industry, worldwide and in the United States. As defined by AEE – a national association of businesses making the energy we use secure, clean, and affordable – advanced energy is a broad range of technologies, products, and services that constitute the best available
technologies for meeting energy needs today and tomorrow. Defined in this way, advanced
energy is not static but dynamic, as innovation and competition produce better energy
technologies, products, and services over time.

Today, plug-in electric …

Green Steel Production: How G7 Countries can Help Change the Global Landscape

From bridges to buildings, cars to kitchenware, steel plays an important role in our daily lives. Steelmaking is highly emission-intensive and the nearly 2 billion tonnes of steel produced every year generate around 8% of global CO2 emissions. But current process technologies are not in sync with the Paris Agreement’s commitments and objectives. Process emissions must fall by at least 30% by 2030 to bring the sector in line with a 2050 net-zero trajectory. This brief examines the concept of green steel production and discusses what the G7 can do to help decarbonize the steel sector.…

Hard-to-Abate Sectors and Emissions: The Toughest Nuts to Crack for a Net Zero Future

The COVID-19 pandemic has been noteworthy for so many negative things, but there was one temporary bright spot — global carbon emissions declined. With the sudden halt in industrial production and transportation coming to a standstill, cities saw noticeable declines in air pollution and the atmosphere benefitted from a decline in greenhouse gas emissions. Although these benefits were temporary and reversed once economic activity started to ramp up, it was encouraging to see that declines in emissions can actually happen.

Obviously shutting down major sectors of the economy for periods of time isn’t the long-term answer to reducing emissions. But …

Renewable Energy Policies for Cities: Power Sector

The energy transition in cities promises to transform the urban environment, with impacts that extend well beyond the energy sector. It will shape transport, buildings, land use and a host of other sectors.

Even within the energy sector, the adoption of renewable energy involves more than a shift in energy sources; it also includes an emphasis on greater energy efficiency and modified consumption patterns, all of which could remake cities in ways that benefit their inhabitants and our planet alike.

Renewable Energy Policies for Cities: Power Sector is intended to help policy makers accelerate efforts to create sustainable cities powered …