Powering Agri-food Value Chains with Geothermal Heat: A Guidebook for Policy Makers

Global demand for food and water is expected to grow by 50% by mid-century, placing increasing pressure on existing water, energy and food systems. This increase in demand for food presents an opportunity for clean energy technologies such as geothermal energy to support the development of “sustainable food systems”.

The use of geothermal heat in the agri-food value chains has several benefits, including increased food productivity due to growing crops and animals in optimal environments, and reduced food spoilage due to timely processing, drying/dehydration and cold storage/refrigeration. Other benefits include empowering women and youth who are heavily involved in food …

Advancing Vehicle-to-Grid Technology Adoption: Policy Recommendations for Improved Energy Security and Resilience

The report, “Advancing Vehicle-to-Grid Technology Adoption,” calls on policymakers to “future-proof” electric vehicles and charging infrastructure to ensure that the U.S. is poised to take advantage of V2G’s many benefits. Given increased frequency of unprecedented extreme weather events, the technology can enhance critical infrastructure resilience and emergency preparedness. V2G enables EVs to serve as “mobile energy storage units” and can provide power during outages. With bidirectional charging technology, EVs can help manage system loads during periods of high electricity demand. A single electric school bus, for example, has enough battery storage capacity to power a hospital operating room …

Three Things to Watch in Development of U.S. Offshore Wind

Offshore wind developers have poured billions of dollars into securing leases in state and federal waters in recent months, with many more billions to be spent developing wind assets to support ambitious state and federal goals for the energy transition. With this influx of new infrastructure spending and offshore lease sales, the offshore wind industry is continuing to build momentum as a source of renewable power in the United States. Here are three things to watch over the next year.…

Building a Stronger, Cleaner Electric Grid

To face a climate-altered future, the United States needs a resilient, affordable, and nimble electric system, one that can adjust and adapt to any situation, keeping the lights on no matter the challenge. Ensuring that we have affordable and available electricity requires that Congress pass legislation now to support renewable energy and build a more resilient electric grid—the system that connects a source of energy such as a power plant to the consumers who use it.…

Clean Energy Neoliberalism: Climate, Tax Credits, and Racial Justice

In “Clean Energy Neoliberalism: Climate, Tax Policy, and Racial Justice,” co-authors Lew Daly and Sylvia Chi explain how energy tax credits embody a neoliberal approach to climate policy that continues to rely heavily on private incentives and market choices to drive the energy transition. They discuss how this could not only privatize the clean energy future, but also squander a once-in-a-generation opportunity for remedying historic harms and chronic underinvestment in communities of color.…

Lessons from the Front Line: Principles and Recommendations for Large-scale and Distributed Energy Interconnection Reform

The United States solar industry continues to rapidly expand, but outdated interconnection policies pose a major threat to solar and storage deployment across the nation. Because solar power is one of the lowest-cost resources for electricity and because solar paired with storage is also a way for customers to supply their own clean power and save money when compared with distribution utility costs, applications to interconnect solar and energy storage projects have skyrocketed.

Interconnection policies in regional transmission organizations (“RTOs”), vertically integrated utilities, and distributed utilities have not kept pace with the demands of this new energy marketplace. Interconnection procedures …

Hanford Cleanup: DOE Has Opportunities to Better Ensure Effective Startup and Sustained Low-Activity Waste Operations

There are 54 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste being held in aging underground storage tanks at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington State.

DOE created the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste program to help treat some of this waste, and built and modified several waste treatment facilities. These facilities are mostly complete but DOE faces challenges in starting operations. For example, some equipment is likely to be obsolete by the time operations begin, which could delay the schedule and increase costs.

We recommended that DOE ensure these issues are resolved during a test phase before starting normal operations.…

Net Zero, Carbon Removal and the Limitations of Carbon Offsetting

A position paper from CSSN’s Working Group on Net Zero provides an overview of key concepts and questions regarding net zero emissions targets and the proposed role of carbon offsets to help meet them. It aims to introduce clarity and nuance to the net zero debate by rejecting the presumption that the achievement of net zero depends on offsetting. It indicates ways in which a focus on offsetting might undermine the pursuit of net zero, highlighting mechanisms through which offsetting can delay or even obstruct climate action, in particular the phasing out of fossil fuels.…

Double or Nothing: How Regulators are Gambling on the Future Self-Interest of Large Oil and Gas Companies to Decommission the Gulf of Mexico’s Aging Infrastructure

The Gulf of Mexico has long been a major oil and gas producing region for the U.S., but field depletion in shallower regions near shore has driven development into deep and ultra-deep waters, driving up the cost to develop and decommission infrastructure.

Meanwhile, aging wells and platforms closer to shore — many of which are now owned by smaller operators — are increasingly marginal in value, raising the risk that they will be abandoned by their current operators.

Double or Nothing finds that as the energy transition accelerates and oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico close, taxpayers …

The Climate and Freedom Agenda: Policy Solutions for Energy Consumers, Energy Security, and Climate Progress

The Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions (C3 Solutions) is providing a set of energy, environment, and climate solutions that work for all Americans. In ten chapters, C3 Solutions lays out policy and regulatory reforms that would help increase and diversify energy supplies, remove supply chain constraints, invest in healthy ecosystems, and build more resilient communities. Policies that unleash the human ingenuity of innovators and entrepreneurs will provide affordable energy for American families, build a stronger economy, and reduce the risks and costs of climate change.…