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.
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Because industrial sectors contribute a large fraction of total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, addressing their emissions is an essential element of combating climate change. However, emissions reduction is costly for industrial firms with energy-intensive production processes; requiring significant investment in low-carbon manufacturing technologies can disadvantage domestic firms relative to their unregulated, international competitors.
Fischer proposes using market-based tradable performance standards to reduce industrial carbon emissions. The proposal would set carbon emissions benchmarks tailored to energy-intensive industrial production processes against which a firm’s emissions would be evaluated. Firms with emissions in excess of their benchmark would be required …
View Full ResourceIn this report, we unpack these topline statistics and look in detail at the impact of less stringent standards on demand for clean vehicle technologies and the companies that build them. We look both at today’s vehicle technology manufacturing jobs that may be impacted if standards are weakened, and estimate the impact on future jobs and job growth in the industry.…
View Full ResourceThis report demonstrates that the cost increase to build a zero-energy or zero-energy ready home is modest—far less than consumers, builders, and policymakers realize—and highlights methods builders and policymakers can use to drive increased market penetration. Costs are expected to continue declining over time as this market matures.
Building new single-family homes to ZE or ZER design standards represents a massive opportunity to address the carbon footprint of our building stock while providing value to homeowners, communities, and other stakeholder groups. Yet, ZE and ZER homes currently make up less than 2% of residential new construction, largely due to outdated …
View Full ResourceThe transition to a clean energy economy continues. Motivated by mounting scientific evidence, shifting market forces, and in some cases policy, U.S. industries are installing more zero-carbon energy sources, developing more energy-efficient products, and adopting more environmentally-sensitive standards. More recently, debates have broken out in Congress over the need for an ambitious Green New Deal centered on clean economy employment. The result: Shifts in “green jobs,” carbon emissions, electricity consumption, and resilience to climate shocks have become some of the highest profile, most discussed trends of the decade.
Considerably less attention has been paid to the types of workers, activities, …
View Full ResourceThis report demonstrates that the cost increase to build a Zero Energy or Zero Energy Ready home is modest—far less than consumers, builders, and policymakers realize—and highlights methods builders and policymakers can use to drive increased market penetration. Costs are expected to continue declining over time as this market matures.
Building new single-family homes to ZE or ZER design standards represents a massive opportunity to address the carbon footprint of our building stock while providing value to homeowners, communities, and other stakeholder groups. Yet, ZE and ZER homes currently make up less than 2% of residential new construction, largely due …
View Full ResourceIn recent years, the conversation on energy in the United States has shifted from a theme of scarcity to one of abundance. The surge in domestic production of oil and gas alone, which provides a significant advantage to the US economy, may also have drained some of the urgency and enthusiasm from efforts to improve energy efficiency while achieving economic growth targets, particularly in the industrial sector. Yet even in this age of abundance, smarter, cleaner, and more efficient energy use could still provide enormous benefits to American industry, workers, and the country as a whole. Greater national focus on …
View Full ResourceThe proposed replacement rule for the US Clean Power Plan, named the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, employs a narrow “at-the-source” approach that targets heat rate improvements at individual coal plants. The emissions rebound and state-level implications of this type of policy are not well understood. We analyze the potential effects of a similar at-the-source policy scenario on national and state emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX) in 2030 using 2014 results from the Integrated Planning Model (IPM). Compared to a no-policy scenario, we find that an at-the-source scenario that provides an average fleet wide …
View Full ResourceThe impending environmental issues and growing concerns for global energy crises are driving the need for new
opportunities and technologies that can meet significantly higher demand for cleaner and sustainable energy systems. This necessitates the development of transportation and power generation systems. The electrification of the transportation system is a promising approach to green the transportation systems and to reduce the issues of climate change. This paper inspects the present status, latest deployment, and challenging issues in the implementation of EVs infrastructural and charging systems in conjunction with several international standards and charging codes. It further analyzes EVs impacts and …
This document is the final report of a two-year development, test, and demonstration project, ‘Cohesive Application of Standards- Based Connected Devices to Enable Clean Energy Technologies.’ The project was part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) Integrated Network Testbed for Energy Grid Research and Technology (INTEGRATE) initiative hosted at Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF). This project demonstrated techniques to control distribution grid events using the coordination of traditional distribution grid devices and high-penetration renewable resources and demand response. Using standard communication protocols and semantic standards, the project examined the use cases of high/low distribution voltage, requests for volt-ampere-reactive (VAR) …
View Full ResourceThis working paper is part of the larger World Resources Report Towards a More Equal City, which views sustainability as composed of three interrelated issues: the economy, the environment, and equity. We use the equitable provision of urban services as the premise for examining whether meeting the needs of the under-served can improve the other two dimensions of sustainability.
To address the question of how to power the city for all, we have conducted extensive literature reviews and consulted with international organizations such as the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program, the Global Buildings …
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