Hydropower 2050: Identifying the next 850+ GW towards Net Zero

There needs to be a step change in the amount of global installed capacity of sustainable hydropower by 2050 in order to support the clean energy transition away from fossil fuels and to tackle climate change. This is based on an assessment of modelled pathways to Net Zero from independent energy agencies, as well as looking at current and future planned hydropower capacity.

Hydropower is today the largest source of renewable electricity, with over 1,300 GW of installed capacity providing more than 15% of the world’s electricity. The twin challenges of development and climate change means that we need to …

Importance of Preserving Existing Nuclear

Preservation of the U.S. nuclear fleet has immense consequences for meeting our climate and environmental goals. According to a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report in 2018, “[m]ore than one one-third of US nuclear plants are unprofitable or scheduled to close,” and this situation has only become worse in recent years.

Given that our nuclear plants generate over half of our carbon-free and emissions-free electricity, premature nuclear closures have enormous implications for meeting our climate and emissions reductions targets.…

Just & Reasonable? Transmission Upgrades Charged to Interconnecting Generators Are Delivering System-Wide Benefits

The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), with support from the Macro Grid Initiative and in collaboration with American Clean Power Association, engaged ICF Resources, LLC (ICF) to evaluate the regional economic benefits of transmission network upgrades necessitated by generation interconnection requests in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP) wholesale power markets. Both markets have seen a significant uptick in renewable generation interconnection requests over the past few years. Currently, over 92% of the 79 gigawatts (GW) of active requests in the MISO generation interconnection queue are solar, wind, and hybrid resources. In SPP, …

Adapt to Survive: Why Oil Companies Must Plan for Net Zero and Avoid Stranded Assets

Carbon Tracker’s fifth annual analysis of the risk of investing in oil and gas producers – warns investors that companies have not woken up to the “seismic implications” of the International Energy Agency’s finding that no investment in new oil and gas production is needed if the world aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

In this report we primarily focus on modelling the International Energy Agency’s Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), associated with 1.65°C of warming. We also show the implications of the IEA’s new, more stringent Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE), which targets 1.5°C of warming. Both …

Methane Fees’ Effects on Natural Gas Prices and Methane Leakage

Methane (CH4) is both the primary component of natural gas and also a highly potent greenhouse gas. Methane routinely leaks out from oil and gas wells, pipelines, and processing facilities into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change. While there is a private incentive for operators to reduce methane leaks to capture and sell it as a valuable commodity, the private incentive to capture the gas falls far short of — around 1/10th of— the social costs imposed by its leakage. As a result, basic economics demonstrates that industry will exert insufficient effort to capture that gas, relative to the social …

Help Wanted: Diversity in Clean Energy

Despite its broad range of businesses, including construction, utilities, manufacturing, professional services, and repair and maintenance, the clean energy sector is dominated by white men. Given the incredible job growth of the energy sector over the past decade, this lack of diversity threatens to cause women, Hispanic and Latino workers, and Black workers in particular to miss out on one of America’s great economic expansions.

As the United States looks to build back a better, cleaner, more equitable economy, a renewed focus on increasing diversity in the clean energy sector should be an economic imperative. Both the transition to a …

Oil Intensity: The Curiously Steady Decline of Oil in GDP

Oil is the largest primary fuel, and the trajectory of oil consumption is of great concern and consequence for economic, political, and, not least, for climate change reasons. Anticipating oil prices and production from year to year is not easy; identifying even basic ingredients of aggregate demand and supply schedules, such as price or income elasticities, is notoriously difficult. It’s an additional challenge to model the structure of a market that sometimes appears to be highly cartelized, and at other times populated by a large flock of peaceful price takers.

But a remarkably steady metric—and possible tool for projecting consumption …

The Future of California’s Water-Energy-Climate Nexus

Without urgent water efficiency measures, carbon emissions associated with water usage in California are likely to spike in coming years, as changing sources of water supply and population growth drive up energy-intensive urban and agricultural water needs. Climate change-fueled droughts are likely to further increase water-related energy use and carbon emissions. That’s the finding of Next 10’s latest report—The Future of California’s Water-Energy-Climate Nexus.

While California has experienced a dramatic decoupling between water use and population growth over the last 40 years, continued population growth and ongoing water challenges are prompting urban water planners to pursue new water-supply …

The Social Cost of Carbon: Advances in Long-Term Probabilistic Projections of Population, GDP, Emissions, and Discount Rates

The social cost of carbon is a vitally important metric for informing the climate policy of numerous entities, including most notably its role in guiding climate regulations issued by the US federal government (USG). Characterization of uncertainty and transparency of assumptions are critical for supporting such an influential metric used in policy analysis. Challenges inherent to SCC estimation push the boundaries of typical analytical techniques and require augmented approaches to assess uncertainty, which in turn also raises important considerations for discounting. This paper addresses challenges related to projecting very long-term economic growth, population, and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as …

Clean Hydrogen: A Versatile Tool for Decarbonization

As Congress considers policy support for hydrogen technologies, it is essential to understand the distinction between how we use hydrogen today and the role of hydrogen in a decarbonized US economy. Hydrogen currently plays a crucial function in our economy, primarily as an industrial feedstock. Nearly all of today’s supply is from steam methane reformation, an emissions-intensive form of hydrogen production made from natural gas. Retrofitting these facilities with carbon capture is important for near-term carbon emissions reductions. Carbon capture is a cost-effective and commercial technology that can abate nearly 40 million metric tons (MMt) of CO₂ emissions per …