Who’s the Buyer? Retail Electric Market Structure Reforms In Support Of Resource Adequacy and Clean Energy Deployment

Who is responsible for ensuring the availability of generation resources to meet peak electricity demand in states with retail competition? Electricity markets in Texas, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand follow the approach in typical markets, where consumers themselves have procurement responsibility. In many states, there has never been a clear answer to the procurement question. In general, the “hybrid” retail competition models implemented outside of Texas have not placed a priority on long-term contracting for generation resources. No entity in those markets has both the incentive and ability to procure power, given the rules and structures currently in place. …

Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO)

EIA delayed the release of the March STEO update by one day to incorporate recent significant global oil market developments. On March 9, Brent crude oil front-month futures prices fell below $35/b, a 24% daily decline and the second largest daily price decline on record. Prices fell following the March 6 meeting between members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partner countries, which ended without an agreement on production levels amid market expectations for declining global oil demand growth in the coming months. In addition to the following highlights, EIA has provided a short summary …

Alternative Policies

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) in January 2020. The AEO2020 Reference case generally assumes that existing laws and regulations remain as enacted throughout the projection period, including when the laws or policies are scheduled to sunset. However, in the area of policies that target emissions reduction, history has demonstrated that there is significant uncertainty in this assumption. For example, tax credits supporting wind and solar electric generation are often extended year to year, and vehicle emission standards, etc. are the subject of legislative debate and action. There are also examples, such as …

Fact Sheet: Federal Resources for Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change

Climate change is fueling more intense weather and compounding the impact of hazards that communities are dealing with already, such as flooding and heat waves. Projects that restore and/or emulate natural systems in order to increase human, ecosystem, and infrastructure resilience to climate impacts­­––often referred to as nature-based solutions––can reduce damage from natural hazards as well as (or better than) traditional engineered projects, often at less cost. Living shorelines, restored wetlands, reforestation projects, and green (vegetative) roofs are just a few examples of nature-based solutions. They provide multiple environmental, economic, and social benefits, including carbon sequestration, which is a key …

The Changing Geopolitics of Nuclear Energy: A Look at the United States, Russia, and China

The nuclear industry of advanced industrialized countries is under significant pressure to remain competitive as the market landscape for new nuclear power opportunities changes. The relative decline of U.S. nuclear export competitiveness comes at a time when Russia is boosting its dominance in new nuclear sales, and China is doubling down on its effort to become a leader in global nuclear commerce. This report illuminates how the changing market competition among the United States, Russia, and China will affect their future relations with nuclear commerce recipient countries, and discusses why Russia and China promote nuclear commerce, as well as which …

2019 RENEWABLE ENERGY NARRATIVE TRENDS

Analysis of more than 2,300 news and opinion articles from 2019 related to renewable energy— sourced from LexisNexis and Google News. Articles came from national and state outlets, as well as online and trade publications.

Purpose of the research was to understand how the media covers renewable energy, in particular to determine if funding gaps in climate philanthropy are also leading to a gap in media coverage of local leaders and innovations. To what extent would articles quote women as spokespeople, reference issues of equity, or talk about communities of color?

Percentage of clean energy news articles quoting women doubled …

Climate Solutions Series: Deep Decarbonization Pathways

Reducing emissions to lessen the long-term impacts of a warming climate has been a shared objective of the international community for decades. To date, progress toward this goal has not kept pace with pathways necessary to deliver a stabilized climate by the end of the century. The result is that the emissions pathways necessary to achieve this target relative to current activity are necessarily steeper and the energy and land-use system changes required are more abrupt. The current scientific consensus indicates that to stabilize the climate and prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we must reduce greenhouse gas …

Investing in Failure

Decarbonizing the electricity sector is critical to achieving climate goals. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report found that global carbon emissions must be cut by nearly half by 2030, and then reach net-zero by 2050 if we are to have a 50 percent chance at limiting warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels. The power sector is responsible for 33 percent of U.S. energy related CO2 emissions according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and decarbonization of the power sector is critical to enabling other sectors, such as transportation, to decarbonize through electrification.

Three …

A New Energy Strategy for the Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere has a unique advantage in global energy markets. It is rich in natural resources, from conventional fuels such as oil and natural gas, to critical minerals such as lithium for batteries. The region is also poised to become a leader in newer and emerging energy resources. It has, for example, abundant potential for solar and wind energy and other advanced energy technologies, such as nuclear energy. It enjoys high and rapidly growing levels of renewable energy, especially in power generation, largely based on significant levels of legacy, utility-scale hydropower. Many of the Americas’ subregions share cross-border electric …

THE D^2S AGENDA

“If solutions within this system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself.” This is the message of Greta Thunberg and the youth activists around the world demanding climate action. It is simple and powerful. Yet few global efforts are dedicated to making it happen – to changing the systems that are inhibiting transformative climate actions.

Most climate mitigation strategies approach the climate crisis principally as a carbon management problem, focusing on reducing emissions by sector (e.g. energy, transport, or food). Sector-based emissions reduction work is critical, but it is not sufficient. This is because, …