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
Reducing methane – a potent short-lived climate pollutant – is key to addressing climate change. One effective way is by capturing these methane emissions and converting them into transportation fuel, concentrating on those transport sectors nearly impossible to electrify.
As waste and organic matter break down, they emit methane. Renewable Natural Gas (RNG), or biogas, is gas produced from methane emitted through decomposition of animal manure, food waste, forest management waste, wastewater sludge, and garbage. RNG projects capture this methane and redirect it away from the environment, repurposing this energy for positive use and supporting a circular, carbon-neutral economy.…
View Full ResourceSince its launch at COP 26, the Breakthrough Agenda has become established as an annual collaborative process centred around the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is currently supported by 59 countries representing over 80% of global GDP, and by over 150 initiatives working to enhance collaboration within major emitting sectors. Countries can endorse
Breakthrough goals to make clean technologies and sustainable practices more affordable, accessible and attractive than their alternatives by 2030 in the power, road transport, hydrogen, steel, cement, buildings and agriculture sectors. This report covers six …
View Full ResourceAn intuitive, web-based tool — S.A.M (Stakeholder Analysis and Mapping) — simplifies the process of creating insightful visualizations of stakeholder relationships and power dynamics for projects in all sectors, communities, and regions.
This free, user-friendly, web-based tool will enable all types of decision makers – communities, labor groups, project developers, community-based organizations (CBOs), local, state, and federal officials, etc. to create clear visualizations of local stakeholder relationships and real-time power dynamics and gain deeper insights into the local context and socio-economic landscape.…
View Full ResourceWell-designed, high integrity carbon markets can play a pivotal role in financing climate action in developing countries. However, several critical bottlenecks impede the growth of these markets. The 2024 State and Trends of International Carbon Markets report evaluates the progress made in addressing these bottlenecks, highlights the urgency of these issues, and proposes recommendations to ensure that carbon markets reach their full potential.…
View Full ResourceEnergy utilities and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) are important and parallel threads on the path to deep decarbonization. Utilities, especially electric utilities, are leading the energy sector decarbonization efforts — integrating gigawatts of new clean energy resources each year while preparing for surging demand from new climate loads, including transportation and building electrification, clean fuels production, and now carbon removal. Carbon Removal, a suite of pathways to draw carbon down from the atmosphere, is emerging as a necessary complement to direct emissions reduction measures for legacy emissions and hard-to-abate sectors.
In this report, they examine four key threads which intertwine …
View Full ResourceFor more than a decade, the biennial Off-Grid Solar Market Trends Report (MTR) has been the sector’s flagship publication, produced by the World Bank / ESMAP and GOGLA with support from key partners. It serves as the primary source of information on the off-grid solar (OGS) sector for investors, industry professionals, policymakers,
and other stakeholders.
Building on previous editions, Part One of the 2024 MTR focuses on the state of the OGS market and explores key
trends in supply, demand, finance, and policy over the last two years. Part Two focuses on the market outlook
and explores the factors that …
Heliostat-based concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) systems offer immense potential to provide low-cost, dispatchable renewable thermal and electrical energy to help achieve 100% decarbonized energy infrastructure in the United States. CSP with low-cost thermal energy storage can be used either to produce dispatchable electricity or provide high-temperature heat to difficult-to-decarbonize industries, such as cement, steel, and chemical production.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is working to improve the techno-economic performance of heliostat-based CSP systems, with a target of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour electricity (kWhe) or $0.02 per kilowatt-hour thermal (kWhth) for heat generation for next-generation CSP …
View Full ResourceCalifornia’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is a prominent and increasingly controversial part of the state’s climate mitigation strategy. The LCFS requires the carbon intensity of transportation fuels sold in California to decline every year. To comply, bulk fuel sellers must either reduce emissions within their own supply chains or procure credits from companies that sell lower-carbon fuels—all based on life cycle carbon intensity calculations overseen by the state climate regulator.
The LCFS program mobilizes significant financial flows through private transactions, rather than by raising public funds from auctioning pollution rights. It has issued more than 22 billion dollars’ worth …
View Full ResourceThe national emissions trading scheme (ETS) of the People’s Republic of China is at an important juncture. China is using the ETS as a tool to bend the country’s emissions curve while cleaning its domestic environment, driving innovation, and capturing a greater share of high-value segments of the global economy. This paper first explores the origins of the ETS, including the seven subnational ETS pilots that formed the foundation of China’s national efforts. It then looks at the characteristics and performance of the national ETS. The paper provides a case study in policy experimentation that is applicable for nascent and …
View Full ResourcePacific Island Countries (PICs) face economic challenges due to their remoteness, limited resources, and gender inequality. The remoteness, size, and limited resources of Pacific Island Countries (PICs) contribute to several economic challenges, including limited economies of scale, high transportation costs, and vulnerability to external shocks. While economies vary across the region, most countries rank relatively low on human development and gender equality indices. To address these challenges, PICs are increasingly focused on sustainable development and economic diversification to build resilience and improve living standards.
The energy sector plays a crucial role in addressing these challenges by providing reliable and climate …
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