Connected & Flowing: A Renewable Future for Rivers, Climate and People

With thousands of hydropower dams planned across the globe, a report from WWF and The Nature Conservancy demonstrates how we can solve the world’s climate and energy challenge without sacrificing our remaining free-flowing rivers and the diverse benefits they provide to people and nature.…

Least Cost Carbon Reduction Policies in PJM

Achieving decarbonization goals requires effective, efficient solutions that do not unduly burden consumers or impede the reliability of our power grid – while allowing for continued competition and innovation.

To inform these solutions, EPSA retained Energy & Environmental Economics (E3) to perform an independent and unbiased analysis of regional market-based pathways to reliably and cost effectively achieve decarbonization goals in the PJM Interconnection (PJM) footprint, which serves 65 million electricity customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia.…

Enhancing US-Japan cooperation on clean energy technologies

Japan’s October 2020 pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 presents an opportunity to expand the robust US-Japan energy partnership into additional clean energy areas. But with a stark divide on energy policy in the United States, how can the US-Japan energy partnership appeal to disparate visions of the energy transition and be politically durable? In the wake of Japan’s net-zero announcement, the Global Energy Center is launching this new report, “Enhancing US-Japan cooperation on clean energy technologies,” which explores how the United States and Japan can increase the politically durable foundation for clean energy cooperation in their already robust …

Leveraging Competitive Markets to Unlock the True Value of AMI

The electric utility sector is undergoing a digital transformation, which includes the creation of a sophisticated data management and communications network that has the potential to significantly lower
consumers’ energy costs and create environmental benefits. This data management and communications network is known as Automated Meter Infrastructure (AMI) and includes two-way meters capable of sending and receiving data, a communications network and a data management system that can store and analyze data. …

A Resilient Future for Coastal Communities: Federal Policy Recommendations from Solutions in Practice

Across the United States, coastal communities face increased uncertainty and risks from intensifying coastal erosion, flooding, sea level rise, and other climate change impacts. These threats need to be taken very seriously. Nearly 100 million Americans live in coastal counties making up about 30 percent of the U.S. population; another 30 million people (9 percent) live in the Great Lakes region.

Through creative partnerships, innovative program design, and intentional community engagement, practitioners and researchers around the country are carrying out new work to adapt to the rapidly changing coastal environment. These efforts would be enhanced and more successful with increased …

Potential Implications of the COVID-19 Crisis on Long-Term Electricity Demand in the United States

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented changes in the ways people interact and approach economic activities. Electricity demand has declined and usage patterns have been altered, changes that could remain even after the pandemic ends. Failure to properly account for these declines in demand could lead to excess capacity in the electric power sector, added costs for consumers, and losses for investors.

This paper, from the power sector program at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, presents a methodology to quantify potential permanent reductions in demand triggered by the pandemic. The authors first identify how electricity demand changed …

Climate Intervention: The Case for Research

Climate change policy needs to be able to anticipate and plan for the possibility of rapidly escalating or abrupt changes that dramatically escalate risks to public safety. Achieving net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases is essential to solving the climate change problem. However, due to the climate system’s inertia, even rapid emission reductions may not produce a sufficiently fast response to prevent the climate system from crossing critical thresholds that lead to abrupt and possibly irreversible change. This paper argues that there is an urgent need for research on climate intervention as a potential means of addressing abrupt change, and counters …

Framework Proposal for a US Upstream GHG Tax with WTO-Compliant Border Adjustments: 2020 Update

The original Framework (2018) described how to design BTAs in the context of a US upstream GHG tax. Rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) allow nations to rebate value-added taxes (VATs) on exported products and impose them on imports. For that reason the Framework explicitly defined the GHG-index (GGI) in close analogy with VATs as its basis for BTAs. GGI tracks taxed sources of GHG emissions along supply and manufacturing chains to produce GHG-intensive products. BTAs for products are determined by their GGI multiplied by the US GHG tax. Justification for WTO-compatibility relies on Articles II and III of …

Policy Guidance for US GHG Tax Legislation and Regulation: Border Tax Adjustments for Products of Energy-Intensive, Trade-Exposed and Other Industries

An increasing number of US senators and representatives are proposing legislation to address climate change based on a greenhouse gas (GHG) tax or “pollution fee.” Such proposals would create significant economic impacts on fossil fuel producers and energy-intensive industries that rely on them, especially those proposals that call for large tax increases over time to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement. Resulting cost increases for US industries with significant GHG emissions—typically referred to as energy-intensive, trade-exposed (EITE) industries—could cause some production to shift to countries without comparable carbon pricing policies, resulting in “leakage” of GHG emissions that the …

An Action Plan for Carbon Capture and Storage in California: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions

“An Action Plan for Carbon Capture and Storage in California: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions” provides policymakers with options for near-term actions to deploy carbon capture and storage (CCS) to meet California’s climate goals.…