Fracking With “Forever Chemicals” in Texas

Previously unpublicized information unearthed by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) shows that since at least 2013, oil and gas companies used in Texas oil and gas wells more than 43,000 pounds of a class of extremely toxic and persistent chemicals known as PFAS. However, gaps in Texas’s disclosure rules prevent the public from knowing how widely PFAS – or other toxic chemicals – have been used in oil and gas drilling and extraction. These findings raise concerns that Texans may unknowingly be exposed to highly hazardous substances.

By shielding from public view the chemicals injected into oil and gas wells, …

Accountable Allies: The Undue Influence of Fossil Fuel Money in Academia

Data for Progress analyzed the contributions of key fossil fuel companies and allied interests to 27 universities across the US, including leading research universities. ExxonMobil Corporation, BP America Inc., Chevron Corporation, Shell Oil Company, ConocoPhillips, and Koch Industries have donated or pledged at least $677,373,368 between 2010 and 2020 to 27 universities. The top recipients of fossil fuel funding among these recipients were the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and George Mason University.

In order to hold fossil fuel companies accountable, eliminate conflicts of interest within university funding streams, and end fossil fuel exploitation of …

Assessing the Impact of Renewable Energy Policies on Decarbonization in Developing Countries

This study offers the first consistent attempt to identify how energy sector decarbonization policies have affected the energy mix over the past four decades across more than 100 developing countries. It applies systematic regression analysis to five energy sector decarbonization outcomes and more than 75 policy instruments aggregated into seven policy packages. Combining instrumental variables with country interactions and country and time fixed effects in regional panels helps address potential endogeneity issues. Only a handful of energy policy packages significantly affect the decarbonization of developing countries’ energy mix, and the packages more often achieve a negligible or opposite result than …

From the Ground Up: Recommendations for Building an Environmentally Just Carbon Removal Industry

This report is the result of XPRIZE and Carbon180’s partnered effort to bring environmental justice to the forefront of the competition and prioritize EJ within the broader carbon removal community. It includes learnings from an EJ questionnaire that XPRIZE Carbon Removal teams completed as part of their Milestone Round application as well as tailored recommendations for integrating EJ into carbon removal projects from the outset.

The analysis presented in this report is targeted to early-stage carbon removal companies, but it may also be useful for carbon removal purchasers, investors, civil society organizations, government actors, communities, and others who are working …

Renewable-Energy Development in a Net-Zero World: Disrupted Supply Chains

As countries around the world work to meet aggressive decarbonization goals, energy from wind and solar sources are a beacon of hope. Carbon-free, inherently abundant, and increasingly affordable, these renewable sources remain a vital pathway to achieving global net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

McKinsey estimates that between 2021 and 2030, planned global electricity generation from committed solar and on- and offshore wind projects (excluding China) will more than triple, from 125 gigawatts to 459 gigawatts (Exhibit 1). This could further accelerate as countries seek to make renewables part of their strategy to address the current geopolitical energy crisis. The European …

West Coast Offshore Wind Transmission Literature Review and Gaps Analysis

To access the nation’s most robust wind energy resources on the West Coast, electric transmission facilities need to be coordinated and developed. West Coast wind resources are located over waters hundreds to thousands of feet deep, requiring floating turbine foundations and substations to meet engineering challenges. Most of the best wind resources are in areas with limited nearby electricity transmission capacity, making it difficult to interconnect large wind projects to customer load. West coast topography, location of load centers, requirements for floating generation and transmission components, state decarbonization policies, and electricity policies, markets, and transmission networks present unique considerations. If …

Global Landscape of Renewable Energy Finance 2023

Global investment in energy transition technologies, including energy efficiency, reached a record high of USD 1.3 trillion in 2022. However, annual investments need to at least quadruple to remain on track to achieve the 1.5°C Scenario in IRENA’s World Energy Transitions Outlook 2022. Investment in renewable energy was also unprecedented – at USD 0.5 trillion – but represented less than 40% of the average investment needed each year. Investments are also not flowing at the pace or scale needed to accelerate progress towards universal energy access; investments in off-grid renewable energy solutions in 2021 – at USD 0.5 billion – …

Trilemma and Transition: the Momentum to Break Barriers

After a complex and difficult year, the energy industry has competing priorities in 2023, as energy security comes to the fore. But we also see a transition in the energy trilemma, as the energy industry recognizes and invests in a decarbonized future in which energy sustainability, affordability, and security all pull in the same direction. We see an industry confident for growth in the year ahead, driven by progress in the energy transition. Indeed, energy professionals say the energy transition keeps accelerating, through both a pandemic and an energy crisis. But this has left markets striving to keep up, as …

U.S. Governance on Critical Minerals

Critical minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and rare earth elements, undergird the digital economy – everything from MRIs to smart phones – but also modern military technology and the energy transition. Once the global economy recovers from the pandemic slowdown, commercial forecasts suggest explosive demand growth for critical minerals in the coming decades. The world needs far more of these materials, but hardrock mining and refining take time and capital, and tend to be destructive to the environment and host communities. Recycling and reclamation from waste streams are feasible but are relatively expensive or technologically immature.

The United States …

Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Clean Energy Transitions: Time for a New Approach?

The IEA has long described fossil fuel subsidies as a ‘roadblock’ on the pathway to clean energy systems and provided data and advice to support their removal. The methodology is a “price gap approach” where we establish a market reference price and then compare it with the price paid by consumers. When the end-user price is lower than the reference price, it is counted as a subsidy.

But this approach does not reflect the environmental costs of fossil fuels such as carbon prices. To deal with this issue, this report suggests “price gap-plus approach”, which explores whether, and how, it …