Modelling the Transformation of Energy-Intensive Industries Based on Site-Specific Investment Decisions

The transition towards climate-neutral industry is a challenge, particularly for heavy industries like steel and basic chemicals. Existing models for assessing industrial transformation often lack spatial resolution and fail to capture individual investment decisions. Consequently, the spatial interplay between industry transformation, energy availability, infrastructure availability, and the dynamics of discrete investments is inadequately addressed. Here we present a site-specific approach that considers individual industrial sites to simulate discrete investment decisions. The investment decision is modelled as a discrete choice among alternative technologies with their total cost of ownership as the main decision criterion. Process costs depend on the scenario-specific assumptions, …

Beyond Borders: Power Grid Interconnections and Regional Electricity Markets for the Sustainable Energy Transition

This report provides a foundational guide to regional energy integration, with a particular focus on developing and emerging economies. Many regions are about to integrate power grids and markets across national boundaries, which can offer economic benefits, enhanced power supply quality and security, and opportunities for scaling up climate change mitigation measures. The report begins with an overview of the different levels of power system integration, followed by an analysis of the primary drivers behind regional energy integration. It identifies five key building blocks essential for achieving deeper integration: interconnection infrastructure, planning and investment coordination, technical and operational coordination, commercial …

Designing a Sector-Coupled European Energy System Robust to 60 Years of Historical Weather Data

As energy systems transform to rely on renewable energy and electrification to mitigate climate change, they encounter stronger year-to-year variability in energy supply and demand. Yet, most infrastructure planning relies on a single weather year, risking a potential lack of robustness. In this paper, we optimize capacity layouts for a European energy system under net-zero CO2 emissions for 62 different weather years. Subsequently, we fix the layouts and optimize their operation in every other weather year to assess resource adequacy and CO2 emissions. Our analysis shows a variation of ± 10% in total system costs across weather years. Layouts designed …

Grid Connection Barriers to Renewable Energy Deployment in the United States

Bulk-power grid connection is an emerging bottleneck to the entry of wind, solar, and storage but has been understudied due to a lack of data. The authors create and analyze two novel interconnection datasets with more than 38,000 project-level observations that provide new information documenting interconnection challenges in the United States. Active grid connection requests are more than double the total installed capacity of the US power plant fleet (2,600 vs. 1,280 GW). The time required to secure a connection has increased by 70% over the last decade, and withdrawal rates remain high at 80%, suggesting a constrained transmission system …

The Business Case for LC3: A Global Solution for Low-Carbon, Low-Cost Cement

The cement industry is at a turning point — decarbonization now offers a transformative opportunity to reduce emissions and unlock economic benefits. This report shows how limestone calcined clay cement (LC3) can lead the charge, delivering significant emissions reductions and cost-competitiveness within existing industry infrastructure.

By reducing reliance on clinker, the most carbon-intensive component of cement, LC3 presents a practical and immediate solution to the industry’s decarbonization challenges. Through an analysis of seven scenarios spanning North America, Europe, Latin America, and Africa, the report evaluates the financial and climate impacts of LC3 adoption.

This research shows that LC3 can deliver …

Utility Engagement Playbook for Industrial Customers

While industrial electrification must play a critical role in decarbonizing the U.S., utilities often lack clear pathways to support industrial customers’ electrification efforts. Electricity costs frequently make such transitions financially unfavorable compared to natural gas.

The Utility Engagement Playbook for Industrial Customers: Addressing Power Sector Barriers to Electrification, prepared for the RTC by Synapse Energy Economics and the World Wildlife Fund, provides a comprehensive roadmap industrial companies can use to overcome electrification barriers by engaging utilities and policymakers.

This Playbook aims to:
– Describe the barriers to industrial electrification related to the electric utility sector.
– Explore potential utility, regulatory, …

Energy Parks: A New Strategy To Meet Rising Electricity Demand

As we seek to clean up our electricity supply and leverage zero-emission electricity to cut climate pollution from buildings, transportation and industry, we need to think outside the box to reach the speed and scale our times demand. This report explores a solution to meet rising electricity demand that can be deployed quickly and affordably: Energy parks. Energy parks integrate multiple renewable energy source and storage solutions like batteries, and potentially co-locate with electricity consumers such as factories or data centers, all connected to the grid at a single point. They do this to speed up development, share costly onsite …

The End of Oil

It is now plausible to envision scenarios in which global demand for crude oil falls to essentially zero by the end of this century, driven by a combination of improvements in clean energy technologies and adoption of increasingly stringent climate policies. This paper asks what such a demand decline might mean for global oil supply once the industry adopts a belief that the decline is upon it. One concern is the well-known “green paradox”: because oil is an exhaustible resource, producers may accelerate near-term extraction in order to beat the demand decline. This reaction would increase near-term CO2 emissions and …

New Perspectives for Financing Nuclear New Build: Financing, Market Design and Project Management in Nuclear New Build

Realising the full contribution of nuclear energy to achieving net zero targets requires mastering the challenge of financing and constructing significant numbers of new reactors. This new NEA report shows that this entails treating the financing and the management of new nuclear construction projects as interrelated issues in the framework of electricity systems designs appropriate for the low-carbon energy transition. “Hybrid markets” will thus combine competitive short-term dispatch with centrally co-ordinated incentives for long-term investment. The benefits of nuclear energy at the level of the energy system on the one hand and the current size of nuclear construction risk on …

Powering the Data-Center Boom with Low-Carbon Solutions: China’s Perspective and Global Insights

Transitioning data centers to reduce emissions is a global imperative, but it faces four key challenges: poor coordination in energy infrastructure planning, untapped energy efficiency potential in buildings and IT systems, difficulty in scaling up green electricity consumption, and weak policy and market incentives. This report analyzes these challenges and proposes pathways for decoupling the growth of data centers from rising emissions. Key actions include optimizing data center location and design, improving energy efficiency through applying more rigorous standards, adopting low-carbon and grid-friendly power consumption behaviors, and fostering green development through policy and market collaboration.…