Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Clean Hydrogen 2024 Update

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has published a series of Liftoff Reports—living documents that serve as a shared fact base on the development, deployment, and commercialization of clean energy technologies, like clean hydrogen. The Liftoff Reports build upon deep industry and community engagement, learnings from DOE investments and initiatives, and input from other public sector organizations. They analyze both challenges and opportunities in the acceleration of our energy transition in an effort to align and catalyze action.

In March 2023, the DOE published its first Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Clean Hydrogen Report. DOE reported that clean hydrogen can reduce …

Advancing Economic Diversification in America’s Energy Communities: Energy Communities IWG Progress Report

This new comprehensive report details the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization’s (Energy Communities IWG) ongoing efforts to address the unique stakeholder challenges and interagency initiatives to drive economic investment, build community capacity, and further decrease barriers impacting energy communities and workers.…

Application of Artificial Intelligence Based on State Grid ESG Platform in Clean Energy Scheduling Optimization

The randomness and volatility of existing clean energy sources have increased the complexity of grid scheduling. To address this issue, this work proposes an artificial intelligence (AI) empowered method based on the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) big data platform, focusing on multi-objective scheduling optimization for clean energy. This work employs a combination of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Deep Q-Network (DQN) to enhance grid scheduling efficiency and clean energy utilization.

First, the work analyzes the complexity and uncertainty challenges faced in clean energy scheduling within the current power system, highlighting the limitations of traditional methods in handling multi-objective optimization …

Scaling Up Renewables in Europe and Central Asia: Barriers and Opportunities

Although not on track to meet climate targets, renewables for electricity production are rising globally, having reached nearly 30 percent of total electricity generation in 2022. Renewable energy – based electricity – including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass – are mature, least-cost technologies in the decarbonization pathways, providing no-regret solutions to policy makers in the short to medium terms. Non-hydro renewables make up a mix of energy sources that rose more than seven-fold in a decade, increasing the percentage of generation over the last ten years. The findings of this report informed several World Bank operations in Europe and …

Offshore Wind Energy Guide

The advantages of offshore wind extend far beyond it being a clean energy resource. Coastline states and communities are home to a significant portion of the population; about 81% of the U.S. population lives in states adjacent to the coast (including the Great Lakes), and 40% of the U.S. population lives in coastline counties (i.e., counties adjacent to the ocean or the Great Lakes). Furthermore, a significant amount of electricity demand—nearly 80%—comes from coastal areas and the Great Lakes. Offshore wind energy projects have the potential to serve those communities by generating reliable, clean electricity.

Additionally, offshore wind resources are …

A Report on Actions for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicle Energy and Emissions Innovations

A Report on Actions for Medium – and Heavy- Duty Vehicle Energy and Emissions Innovation (the MHDV Plan) summarizes strategies and actions to substantially reduce emissions in the U.S. commercial on-road medium- and heavy-duty vehicle (MHDV) sector. This includes all on-road vehicles over 8,500 pounds used for commercial purposes. The intended audience of this report are industry and stakeholders who will take on the suite of actions needed to drive forward MHDV emissions reduction and decarbonization in a sustainable and economic way.

The MHDV Plan is one of several action plans that cover each part of the transportation sector and …

Strategic Industries Surging: Driving US Power Demand

Over the past two years, the 5-year load growth forecast has increased by almost a factor of five, from 23 GW to 128 GW, including Grid Strategies’ estimate of recent update reports.
• The official nationwide forecast of electricity demand shot up from 2.8% to 8.2% growth over the next five years to 66 GW through 2029 — but with an additional 61 GW of growth in preliminary updates, nationwide electric demand is forecast to increase by 15.8% by 2029.
• While some of the additional growth merely reflects corrections to last year’s incomplete forecast update, major changes have occurred …

Americans’ Support for Climate Justice

Collaborating with climate justice practitioners, the authors conducted a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (n = 1011) to measure and explore predictors of Americans’ climate justice beliefs and intentions to engage in related behaviors. They find that only about one-third of Americans have heard of climate justice, but about half of Americans support climate justice goals once they are explained. Support for climate justice is predicted by many factors, including views about global warming, perceptions of climate and racial injustice, cultural worldviews, and demographics including racial identity, gender, and political party/ideology. The study suggests a need to build public …

Feedstock-Conversion Interface Consortium Capstone Report

The Feedstock-Conversion Interface Consortium (FCIC), led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), is a collaborative effort among researchers from nine national laboratories focused on solving challenges related to biomass feedstock variability in biorefineries.

Researchers from the FCIC recognize that lignocellulosic feedstocks are nonhomogeneous and have greater variability compared to other agricultural commodities such as grains. As a result, empirical approaches to equipment design for processing these feedstocks have proven unsuccessful in pioneer biorefineries.

FCIC researchers use first-principles based science to better understand the physical, mechanical, thermochemical, and biochemical interactions and reactions as solid feedstocks are …

Battery Energy Storage Systems Associated with Transmission Lines: Implementation Proposal with IEC 61850 Standard and Feasibility Case Study Author Links Open Overlay Panel

Due to the variable nature of energy consumption and recent growth in solar and wind generation sources, transmission lines deal with a complex operational reality, with the duality between scenarios in which their transmission capacity is exceeded and scenarios where the line operates below its nominal capacity. To bring more operational flexibility to transmission lines and comply with the electrical sector’s digitalization trends, the authors propose implementing battery energy storage systems at transmission lines with the system’s communication protocols and data modelling based on the IEC 61850 standard.

The proposal allows the linearization of the energy transmission profile on the …