Reconsidering US Sanctions Policy Amid the Coronavirus Crisis and the Oil Market Crash

For energy markets, the profound economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus have broken the arrangements of the OPEC+ oil exporters to limit production, as Russia and Saudi Arabia failed to agree on production caps. Oil prices plunged as producers ramped up output, made worse by the demand shock created by the spread of Covid-19 and resulting plunging global economic activity as countries have sought to cope with the widespread infection and mortality.

The global economic shocks and humanitarian crises have left US sanctions policy in a deeply uncomfortable spot. The United States has prioritized using sanctions as a means of …

Report: EPA’s Compliance Monitoring Activities, Enforcement Actions, and Enforcement Results Generally Declined from Fiscal Years 2006 Through 2018

This report focuses on national trends in the EPA’s enforcement efforts, including inspections, enforcement actions, and enforcement results.…

Expert Dialogue: Realizing the Promise of Offshore Wind

OurEnergyPolicy (OEP) hosted two discussions on policies around the emerging offshore wind market—first, an online discussion led by Laura Morton of the American Wind Energy Association with comments from energy professionals from across the country, and second, a live panel discussion in New York City as part of OEP’s Energy Leaders Luncheon Series. This summary features select excerpts and comments from both discussions.…

Technologies and Policies to Decarbonize Global Industry: Review and Assessment of Mitigation Drivers through 2070

Fully decarbonizing global industry is essential to achieving climate stabilization, and reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050–2070 is necessary to limit global warming to 2 °C. This paper assembles and evaluates technical and policy interventions, both on the supply side and on the demand side. It identifies measures that, employed together, can achieve net zero industrial emissions in the required timeframe. Key supply-side technologies include energy efficiency (especially at the system level), carbon capture, electrification, and zero-carbon hydrogen as a heat source and chemical feedstock. There are also promising technologies specific to each of the three top-emitting industries: …

Your Money or Your Life? The Carbon-Development Paradox

The relationship between human health and well-being, energy use and carbon emissions is a foremost concern in sustainable development. If past advances in well-being have been accomplished only through increases in energy use, there may be significant trade-offs between achieving universal human development and mitigating climate change. We test the explanatory power of economic, dietary and modern energy factors in accounting for past improvements in life expectancy, using a simple novel method, functional dynamic decomposition. We elucidate the paradox that a strong correlation between emissions and human development at one point in time does not imply that their dynamics are …

Dallas Fed Energy Survey: Oil Price Collapse Reverberates with Job, Capital Expenditure Cuts

West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices have fallen from $60 per barrel during the fourth-quarter survey period to $28 per barrel during the first-quarter survey period. (The price per barrel further declined to $24 per barrel during the week ended March 20.)

Special questions this quarter include an annual update to our data on breakeven prices by basin, expected changes in employee head counts for 2020, the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) on company outlooks and the ability of firms to remain solvent given lower oil prices.…

Forests: Carbon Sequestration, Biomass Energy, or Both?

There is a continuing debate over the role that woody bioenergy plays in climate mitigation. This paper clarifies this controversy and illustrates the impacts of woody biomass demand on forest harvests, prices, timber management investments and intensity, forest area, and the resulting carbon balance under different climate mitigation policies. Increased bioenergy demand increases forest carbon stocks thanks to afforestation activities and more intensive management relative to a no-bioenergy case. Some natural forests, however, are converted to more intensive management, with potential biodiversity losses. Incentivizing both wood-based bioenergy and forest sequestration could increase carbon sequestration and conserve natural forests simultaneously. We …

Boom and Bust 2020: Tracking The Global Coal Plant Pipeline

For the fourth year in a row, most leading indicators of coal power capacity growth declined in 2019, including construction starts, amount of capacity permitted for construction, and amount of capacity in pre-permit development, according to the Global Coal Plant Tracker.

With climate concerns dominating headlines, builders of new coal plants face an increasingly adverse business environment, including widening restrictions by over 126 globally significant banks and insurers, as well as commitments to phase out coal and accelerate a transition to clean power by 33 national and 27 subnational governments.…

Reconsidering US Nuclear Cooperation Agreements

Despite having played a central role in the creation of the international nuclear commercial sector, today the United States is increasingly on the outside looking in when it comes to civil nuclear projects. The United States now accounts for a relatively small number of new reactor builds, both at home and abroad. There are a few rays of sunshine for the US nuclear industry, especially when it comes to new technology. In fact, many of the new reactor builds that are underway do involve US technology and intellectual property, even if others are performing the construction. To take advantage of …

Natural Gas: A Bridge To Climate Breakdown

The rush to build more than 60 gigawatts of natural gas plants and pipelines risks tens of billions in investment and a trillion dollars in consumer costs by 2030. This report outlines these evolving risks for shareholders, lays out investor strategies to accelerate the clean energy transition, and shows how clean energy cuts utility investment risks from over-reliance on natural gas while providing new growth opportunities supporting decarbonization.…