EV Charging Infrastructure Energization: An Overview of Approaches for Simplifying and Accelerating Timelines to Processing EV Charging Load Service Requests

The United States has seen significant growth in electric vehicle (EV) adoption, leading to increased demand for EV charging infrastructure. Over the past decade, EV charging infrastructure site developers, site hosts, and electric distribution utilities have navigated the process to integrate chargers onto the electric grid. Site developers and site hosts have raised the alarm that the integration process for high-powered EV charging projects does not meet the needs of the EV market for timeliness or cost. High-powered charging stations typically require a load service request or an agreement with the local utility to connect to the grid. The process …

Underground Gas Storage in Natural Gas Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Insights

This whitepaper explores the role of UGS in the Gulf Coast region, highlighting its
essential contribution to reliable and responsive energy delivery. It covers key federal
and state policy measures governing UGS facilities and provides data underscoring
storage’s critical role in supporting energy resiliency and grid stability by securing
supply and stabilizing prices during peak demand. Additionally, the report examines the
potential of active and inactive UGS facilities for repurposing to support decarbonization
goals.…

State Capacity for Building Infrastructure

Recent legislation has brought the goal of getting the most out of public infrastructure funds to the fore. The high cost of building major infrastructure in the US is a longstanding challenge, but it is not inevitable. This paper highlights three elements of state capacity that underlie the high costs and slow timelines the US faces. The first challenge is personnel: government pay has not kept up with private pay, and the public workforce has not kept up with the workload; public-sector work is instead increasingly privatized, raising costs. The second challenge is procedure: government workers operate under onerous procedures …

Industry Wide Strategies: Emission Management and Infrastructure Integrity

GTI Energy launched the Reliable Affordable Infrastructure for Secure Energy (RAISE)
program in June of 2023 to communicate and improve understanding of how current
gas infrastructure can provide the foundation for future, decarbonized energy systems.
The emissions management and integrity of these systems are critical elements that
underpin the continued use of gas systems. This paper highlights some of the key
solutions to emissions mitigation and integrity management of gas systems, specifically
Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR), strategies to improve energy and operations
efficiency, and emerging technologies to reduce methane slip of natural gas systems.
The aforementioned reduction strategies are …

Modeling the DOE’s Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program in Resource Planning

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 created a slate of federally funded tools to lower the cost of power sector investments. One of the most important of these tools is the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program, administered by the Loan Programs Office (LPO) of the US Department of Energy (DOE). The EIR can provide low-interest, guaranteed loans for qualified investments that “retool, repower, repurpose, or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or enable operating energy infrastructure to avoid, reduce, utilize or sequester air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions.”

There are two key factors that influence how much savings an …

Federal Incentive for Alternative Fuel Refueling Infrastructure, IRC § 30C

The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005 (PL 109–58, § 1342, 26 USC 30C) created an income tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost of installing alternative fuel refueling equipment including equipment used to dispense natural gas and hydrogen. To qualify for the credit, the fueling equipment also must be used to refuel motor vehicles, which are defined as vehicles that have been manufactured primarily for “use on public streets, roads, and highways.” Over the years various improvements have been enacted by Congress.

Most recently, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 (PL 117–169, § 13404) amended section …

The Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Opportunity: Accelerating the Transition of the Oil and Gas Sector

The Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment (EIR) program of the Loan Program Office (LPO), coupled with Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) tax incentives, provides a unique and time-sensitive opportunity for the US oil and gas sector to accelerate its transition toward cleaner sources of energy and away from oil and gas.

Through the EIR, the LPO can provide financing for projects that retool, repower, repurpose or replace energy infrastructure that has ceased operations or projects that reduce operational emissions of existing energy infrastructure (for a detailed description see Appendix A), providing the opportunity not only for emissions reductions but also for reinvestment in …

Benchmarking Infrastructure Development: PPP Regulatory Landscape

Despite its intrinsic relevance and policy makers’ efforts to address the infrastructure gap, progress has been limited. A confluence of challenges from macroeconomic shocks and political instability to weak institutional capacity has hindered the capacity of countries to develop infrastructure that meets demand. Increasing efficiencies in delivering infrastructure services is at the core of addressing the gap. Numerous countries have turned to private sector participation in infrastructure development to achieve these efficiencies and catalyze private capital investments.

Although there are different modalities to procure infrastructure, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been extensively used by many countries to deliver successful programs. This …

US Guide to an Integrated Carbon Accounting Infrastructure for the Industrial Carbon Management Market

The CCS+ Initiative responds to two significant priorities for advancing the US climate mitigation agenda: responsibly advancing carbon management technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR); and establishing robust standards for carbon credit supply to drive climate action.

The CCS+ US guide can serve as a comprehensive blueprint for building a robust carbon accounting ‘infrastructure’ tailored to industrial carbon management in the US. It supports the creation of a high-quality, high-integrity certification framework and delves into the opportunities and challenges of adopting these technologies, while identifying synergies with existing US …

Sizing Electric Service Panels and Utility Infrastructure for Residential Electrification and Distributed Energy Resources Adoption

This Berkeley Lab Technical Brief summarizes key considerations for electric service equipment and utility infrastructure to support residential customer electrification and adoption of distributed energy resources such as photovoltaic solar and energy storage.…