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
301 to 310 of 343 item(s) were returned.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report, titled ‘Technology Roadmap: Energy Efficient Building Envelopes,’ which illustrates how improving primary thermal barriers of buildings can cut buildings’ total energy consumption by nearly 20%. The report offers policy guidance on how to encourage the incorporation of new building technologies into building retrofitting and new construction.
The report focuses on the building “envelope,” also called the shell, fabric or enclosure, which forms the boundary between itself and the outdoors. It analyzes new wall, window, door, roof and floor technologies that can markedly improve energy efficiency of both heating and cooling buildings …
View Full Resource
The 2013 Integrated Energy Policy Report Update provides the results of the California Energy Commission’s assessments of a wide variety of energy issues currently facing California. These issues include future demand for electricity, natural gas, and transportation fuels; energy efficiency in California’s existing buildings; publicly owned utilities’ progress toward achieving 10-year energy efficiency targets; the definition of zero-net-energy and its inclusion in state building standards; challenges to increased use of geothermal heat pump/ground loop technologies and procurement of biomethane; using demand response to meet California’s energy needs and integrate renewable technologies; bioenergy development; California’s electricity infrastructure needs given potential retirement …
View Full ResourceMany state policymakers and utility regulators have established aggressive energy efficiency (EE) savings targets which will necessitate investing billions of dollars in existing buildings – and tax payer and utility bill payer funding is a small fraction of the total investment needed.1 Given this challenge, some EE program administrators are exploring ways to increase their reliance on financing with the aim of amplifying the impact of limited program monies.2 While financing is potentially an attractive tool for increasing program leverage and mitigating the rate impacts of utility customer-funded efficiency programs, administrators can face difficult choices between allocating funds to financing …
View Full ResourceAlthough photovoltaic (PV) penetration in the United States is increasing rapidly, properly valuing homes with PV systems remains a barrier to PV deployment. Previous studies show that PV homes command sales price premiums. Still, some appraisers and other home valuers assign no value to a home’s PV system, and those who do often cannot find comparable home sales to help determine the PV premium. This has spurred the development of alternative methods of valuing PV homes, including the use of an income approach (based on the present value of PV energy produced over its useful lifetime) and the replacement cost …
View Full Resource
The systemic waste of oil and gas in the Gulf is eroding economic resilience to shocks and increasing security risks, including to citizens’ health. Success or failure in setting and meeting sustainable energy goals in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will have a global impact.
The report proposes specific measures that should be investigated at the GCC level, including the potential for setting common prices for electricity trading and fuel. Countries should cooperate to establish common appliance efficiency standards for buildings, appliances and vehicles, with air conditioning a priority area. Establishing a common buildings code and building materials standard …
View Full Resource
Since the 1970s California’s residential electricity consumption per capita has stopped increasing, while other states’ electricity use continued to grow steadily. Similar patterns can be seen in non-electric energy, industry, and transportation. What accounts for California’s apparent energy savings? Some credit the strict energy efficiency standards for buildings and appliances enacted by California in the mid-1970s.
…
View Full ResourceRecent technological advances have unleashed a boom in U.S. natural gas production, with expanded supplies and substantially lower prices projected well into the future. Because combusting natural gas yields fewer greenhouse gas emissions than coal or petroleum, the expanded use of natural gas offers significant opportunities to help address global climate change. The substitution of gas for coal in the power sector, for example, has contributed to a recent decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas, however, is not carbon-free. Apart from the emissions released by its combustion, natural gas is composed primarily of methane (CH 4), a potent …
View Full Resource
This report provides data and analysis of the land use associated with utility-scale ground-mounted solar facilities, defined as installations greater than 1 MW. We begin by discussing standard land-use metrics as established in the life-cycle assessment literature and then discuss their applicability to solar power plants. We present total and direct land-use results for various solar technologies and system configurations, on both a capacity and an electricity-generation basis. The total area corresponds to all land enclosed by the site boundary. The direct area comprises land directly occupied by solar arrays, access roads, substations, service buildings, and other infrastructure. As of …
View Full Resource
In New York City, over 30% of a building’s energy consumption is used to provide space heating and hot water. This demand is largely met by fuel oil- and natural gas-powered boilers; nearly 96% of New York City buildings use these fuels for heating, but at a significant economic and environmental cost. New Yorkers spend more than $15 billion on energy each year, paying among the highest energy prices in the nation. Building energy use accounts for approximately 75% of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions.1 Solar thermal technology provides a renewable, emissions-free and cost-efficient alternative to fossil fuel-based space …
View Full ResourceThis fact sheet on combined heat and power (CHP) technologies seeks to explain how such technologies can and do benefit industry, communities and institutions.
Combined heat and power (CHP) technologies provide industries, commercial businesses, institutions, and communities with ways to reduce energy costs and emissions while also providing more resilient and reliable thermal energy and electric power. CHP systems combine the production of heat (for both heating and cooling) and electric power into one process, using much less fuel than when heat and power are produced separately. CHP systems can achieve energy efficiencies of 70 percent or more, compared to …
View Full Resource