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.
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Largely excluded from emissions inventories and often unreported to state and local authorities, Massachusetts’ vast and poorly documented fleet of backup diesel generators makes our air dirty, contributes to climate change, and is disproportionately sited in our most vulnerable communities. Diesel generators, or diesel generating sets, consist of a diesel engine and an electric generator that produce electricity. Emergency, or backup, diesel generators are used to supply electricity when power from the grid is unavailable during a power outage or other service disruption. Reliable backup power is important to electric customers—especially hospitals, fire stations, and other essential …
View Full ResourceIn the face of a warming climate and associated climate change impacts, the State of Colorado is embarking on an ambitious multi-decade effort to dramatically cut carbon emissions while confronting a growing need to build climate resilience. The State recently set targets to expand renewable electricity generation while slashing economy-wide greenhouse emissions. It is now developing pathways and policies to achieve these goals.
To better understand the technical approaches Colorado could follow to achieve its climate targets, Evolved Energy Research—working with Sierra Club, NRDC, and GridLab—recently modeled four potential decarbonization pathways from 2020-2050. These pathways rely on energy efficiency, …
View Full ResourceWe are on the cusp of a Third Industrial Revolution. The digitized broadband Communication Internet is converging with a digitized Continental Electricity Internet, powered by solar and wind electricity, and a digitized Mobility and Logistics Internet made up of autonomous electric and fuel-cell vehicles, powered from the electricity internet. These three internets are continuously being fed data from sensors embedded across society that are monitoring activity of all kinds in real time, from ecosystems, agricultural fields, warehouses, road systems, factory production lines, retail stores, and especially from the residential, commercial, and institutional building stock, allowing humanity to more efficiently manage, …
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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 …
View Full ResourceElectrification 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 …
View Full ResourceThe 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 …
View Full ResourceCalifornia 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 …
View Full ResourceAchieving 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 …
View Full ResourceThe 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. …
View Full ResourceThe 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 …
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