Catalyzing Agroforestry in the Farm Bill: Recommendations for Resilient Agriculture

Because of its myriad benefits, agroforestry rises to the top as a priority solution for climate adaptation, climate mitigation, conservation, economic resilience, and environmental justice. At the federal level, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is devoting for the first time substantial funding to new climate-focused projects that will accelerate the scaling of agroforestry. Public and private initiatives recognize the promise of agroforestry for climate mitigation and adaptation. Opportunities and momentum for agroforestry are multiplying at unprecedented rates. Yet, several key barriers remain for producers interested in adopting these practices. To remove these barriers and ensure agroforestry can deliver on …

Resilient Power Funding Programs: 2022 Annual Impact Report

Clean Energy Group offers two small-grant programs to help overcome the challenges to developing solar and battery storage projects at critical community-serving facilities.

The Technical Assistance Fund (TAF) helps environmental justice communities gain access to early-stage project development funding, expert guidance and advisory support, and the technical resources needed to develop community- led solar and energy storage projects that can serve as local resilience hubs during times of crisis. The Resilient Power Leadership Initiative (RPLI) provides community-based organizations with funding support to build the internal capacity to advance resilient power solutions.

From 2014 through 2022, CEG’s resilient power funding programs …

The State of Bidirectional Charging in 2023

Bidirectional charging has significant potential in transforming how consumers view and use their electric vehicles (EVs). Bidirectional charging allows EVs to become a flexible resource for power systems. At high rates of adoption, EVs can have significant impacts on coincident- system and feeder-level peaks. To mitigate these load impacts, utilities and EV charging site hosts often utilize a variety of managed charging solutions to optimize EV charging. As part of the continuum of managed charging solutions, bidirectional charging creates an opportunity for EVs to be used as an energy resource and to discharge back to the grid. Bidirectional charging’s ability …

Don’t Overlook Your Aging Substations

Substations are a key part of every utility’s infrastructure, but their quiet dependability makes them a vulnerable part of the power grid. They work until they don’t. When a utility only services substations after a fault or outage, they should expect long, slow, and expensive repairs along with frustrated rate payers.

Regular assessment and preventative maintenance is key to substation resilience, and can ensure that the substations your customers count on keep running with no interruptions. Ensuring that substations and other transmission infrastructure are properly maintained is key to reduced total cost of ownership and customer value creation.…

Hydropower Value Drivers

In April 2019, WPTO launched the HydroWIRES Initiative to understand, enable, and improve hydropower and pumped storage hydropower’s (PSH’s) contributions to reliability, resilience, and integration in the rapidly evolving U.S. electricity system. The unique characteristics of hydropower, including PSH, make it well suited to provide a range of storage, generation flexibility, and other grid services to support the cost-effective integration of variable renewable resources. The U.S. electricity system is rapidly evolving, bringing both opportunities and challenges for the hydropower sector. While increasing deployment of variable renewables such as wind and solar have enabled low-cost, clean energy in many U.S. regions, …

Winter Storm Elliott: Event Analysis and Recommendation Report

Winter Storm Elliott hit the eastern United States over the Dec. 23–25 weekend and tested the reliability of much of the Eastern Interconnection. Precipitous temperature drops and powerful winds caused widespread generator failures and froze up natural gas supplies while driving up electricity demand, leading to power outages in some of PJM’s neighbors.

PJM and its members were able to maintain the reliability of the system, serve customers and even support neighboring systems during some periods, which was a significant accomplishment. Specifically, PJM operators were able to avoid electricity interruptions throughout this event. Nevertheless, PJM operators had to implement multiple …

Driving Resiliency Through Your Organization’s Energy Infrastructure

Explore ways in which municipalities, federal agencies, healthcare facilities, and private sector companies can leverage their energy infrastructure to improve energy resilience and minimize the adverse impacts of major events.

To date, much of the interest in energy resilience has been limited to a few key sectors; however, as addressed throughout this white paper, a wide range of organizations, public and private, are beginning to understand that they can use their energy infrastructure to become more resilient in budget-sensitive ways.

A smart approach to resilience integrates innovative technological solutions, contracting structures, and participation in broader energy markets. Organizations can become …

Critical Materials Assessment

The global effort to curb carbon emissions is accelerating demand for clean energy technologies and the materials they rely on. Demand for these materials will only continue to grow, especially as some nations aim to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. While some major materials like steel, copper, and aluminum are already powering the fossil fuel economy, others are more minor materials with potential supply risks. These risks could jeopardize the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the desirable timeframe to avoid significant climate change. In some cases, it may be necessary to take action to improve the resilience of …

Advantage Local: Why Local Energy Ownership Matters

With soaring energy costs for American families, electric grid-induced fires burning up the West Coast, and the looming threat of power blackouts, the need for equitable, affordable, and resilient local clean energy has never been clearer.

Today, corporate utilities and Wall Street control much of the country’s clean energy infrastructure. They prioritize profits over people, keeping many of the benefits of clean energy for themselves. But if households and communities owned more of this clean energy, we could maximize the positive local impacts while putting power back in the hands of people to meet their own energy needs. This melds …

Better, Faster, Cleaner: Securing Clean Energy Technology Supply Chains

As part of the ETC’s Barriers to Clean Electrification series, this Insights Briefing focuses on the issue of supply chain risks. The importance of supply chain issues for the energy transition has recently come to the fore in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine. In 2021–2022, as the global economy re-started following the pandemic prices for commodities and raw materials (e.g., steel, copper), and shipping and freight
rates shot up, leading to cost increases for wind turbines and batteries. Furthermore, these dynamics have served to catalyse a series of policy choices to relocate the production of …