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
From 2020 to 2023, the City of Denver participated as a partner in the Better Buildings Workforce Accelerator (BBWA). The BBWA is a Department of Energy initiative seeking to raise the level of building science and energy efficiency knowledge in the nation’s building-related workforce. Through the BBWA, DOE engaged industry partners in activities that build interest and awareness, streamline pathways, and improve skills for people pursuing green building careers. …
View Full ResourceThis case study details the groundbreaking renewable natural gas (RNG) agreement between RTC Member AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, and RTC Solutions Provider Vanguard Renewables. It provides an in-depth look at one of the largest business-to-business RNG purchases in the North American voluntary market, which will supply AstraZeneca with 650,000 MMBtu/year for 15+ years and contribute to the company’s ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its global operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 98% by 2026. Vanguard Renewables will build three new on-farm anaerobic digesters to produce the RNG.
Read this case study to understand the project’s origins, the …
View Full ResourceA broad suite of performance metrics is required to provide a holistic picture of how energy efficiency (EE) and distributed energy resource (DER) upgrades affect each stakeholder, and how their value varies by home. This report quantifies the relative and combined value of EE and DER investments within the residential, single-family home sector. The new workflow developed combines multiple tools from both the buildings and the solar plus storage domain to enable this analysis from the perspective of multiple stakeholders. This allows simulations to be performed for residential buildings to be modeled anywhere in the country with any efficiency features, …
View Full ResourceToday, interconnecting new generation to the grid is a years-long process that can involve costly upgrades to the transmission system. Surging levels of new clean generation and storage projects in development as well as rapidly rising demand for electricity have come up against an aging grid that is nearing maximum capacity. This bottleneck poses major problems for grid reliability, economic development, and climate policy.
More transmission is needed to accommodate this expansion of both generation and load, but in the near term, there are tools we can use to ensure we’re getting the most out of the grid we have. …
From 2020 to 2023, the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility (DCSEU) participated as a partner in the Better Buildings Workforce Accelerator (BBWA). The BBWA is a Department of Energy initiative seeking to raise the level of building science and energy efficiency knowledge in the nation’s building related workforce. Through the BBWA, DOE engaged industry partners in activities that build interest and awareness, streamline pathways, and improve skills for people pursuing green building careers.…
View Full ResourceAs the adoption of solar plus storage technology is rapidly increasing, there is a need for a more wholistic view of homes adopting them. In homes, both energy efficiency (EE) upgrades and DERs provide value not just to the homeowner, but to utilities and even society at large through emissions. Traditionally, EE and DERs are separate sectors, which makes it difficult to understand the co-benefits of their adoption. To address this, we created a novel workflow of tools that allows for a complete analysis of both efficiency and DERs. We also looked at a suite of metrics designed to capture …
View Full ResourceEngineers typically design thermal systems to provide the highest quality heat needed for industrial processes, leading to over-designed equipment that uses more energy than needed. Industrial heat pump (IHP) technology flips this approach, designing for the lowest-quality heat needed, then boosting to meet higher quality needs. This right-sizing approach reduces electricity requirements and energy use compared to the equivalent energy input into a boiler system, resulting in lower emissions and operating costs. Because IHPs are not a drop-in replacement for boilers, engineers must adopt a new mindset for thermal system design. This topic brief presents an alternative engineering approach for …
View Full ResourceCurrently, over one million megawatts of generator and storage projects are actively seeking to connect to the U.S. transmission grid. The various grid interconnection processes across the nation have been slow and received criticism from a wide range of stakeholders for being dysfunctional. The 2024 Advanced Energy United Generator Interconnection Scorecard evaluates the outcomes and processes of the generator interconnection process across the seven U.S. regional grid operators (the RTOs/ISOs), finding some bright spots and room for significant improvement.
Now that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has issued Order No. 2023 requiring RTOs/ISOs to implement reforms to the interconnection process, …
View Full ResourceThe power sector is in the midst a profound transition. Myriad climate policies at nearly all levels of government, including the landmark 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have incentivized the accelerated adoption of low-and zero-emission energy resources. These policies have sped along sectoral shifts already underway due to changing market conditions, plummeting renewables prices, and the replacement of aging coal-fired power plants with cheaper, more efficient resources. Meanwhile, the electric grid faces increasing vulnerability from climate change impacts that have become unavoidable, in addition to projected future increases in electricity demand. Both the structure and operation of our electric grid …
View Full ResourceNew Energy Innovation analysis shows the Treasury Department is considering a design flaw in its draft guidance for the 45V clean hydrogen production tax credit that could undermine its success, despite containing the “three pillars” approach required for truly clean electrolytic hydrogen. This analysis finds a “general carve-out” for exempting some share of existing clean energy from Treasury’s “incrementality” requirement would be disastrous for the tax credit’s integrity. For example, a 5 percent carve-out would allow for approximately 1.5 million metric tons (MMT) of dirty electrolytic hydrogen production per year, contributing roughly 30 to 60 MMT of CO2 emissions annually. …
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