The Florida Wildlife Corridor and Climate Change

The Florida Wildlife Corridor (FLWC) is a critical conservation initiative aimed at preserving natural landscape connectivity across Florida. Spanning the length of the state, from Alabama to the Everglades, the FLWC not only plays a vital role in protecting endangered species like the Florida Panther, but also brings economic and climate benefits to local communities. Although the FLWC was not designed to enhance climate resilience, its climate benefits are not trivial, and a successful FLWC will help Florida achieve climate resilience more easily and quickly.

After four decades of research and advocacy, the Florida Wildlife Corridor Act was unanimously passed …

Decarbonizing the U.S. Economy by 2050

Residential and commercial buildings are among the largest sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, responsible for more than one-third of total U.S. GHG emissions. There are nearly 130 million existing buildings in the United States, with 40 million new homes and 60 billion square feet of commercial floorspace expected to be constructed between now and 2050. Today, most buildings consume large amounts of energy and cause significant climate pollution to meet our basic needs. Buildings account for 74% of U.S. electricity use and building heating and cooling drives peak electricity demand. Moreover, …

Evaluating the Impact of Tidal Energy in the Cook Inlet on Alaska’s Railbelt Electrical Grid

This report presents the findings of a case study that evaluates the impact of integrating significant tidal energy generation in the Cook Inlet in Alaska. The case study is part of a series within the “Quantifying the Grid Value of MRE [Marine Renewable Energy] in Early U.S. Markets” project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The Cook Inlet represents approximately 30% of the total tidal energy in the United States. It is located alongside the Kenai Peninsula, a region serviced by the Homer Electric Association (HEA). HEA constitutes the southernmost portion of Alaska’s Railbelt electricity grid, which in …

Unlocking Community Resilience: Innovative Strategies to Access Climate Adaptation Funding

Community efforts to adapt to the physical impacts of climate change are lagging despite unprecedented financing available for resilience in the United States. Local and state governments and organizations are pioneering approaches to address key challenges and improve community access to resilience funding. These innovative strategies include:

– Boosting local capacity to plan projects and access funding, featuring Colorado’s Regional Grant Navigators.

– Stacking public and private funding to implement and scale projects, featuring Downtown Denver Partnership’s Urban Forest Initiative.

– Streamlining access to multiple financial resources for end users, featuring Impact Development Fund’s Disaster Recovery Program.

Case studies from …

Perceptions of Large-Scale Solar Neighbors Results from a National Survey

As of 2022, there were more than 10 million U.S. homes within 3 miles of large-scale solar (LSS) plants. Yet, until recently, no comprehensive study had examined the experiences and perceptions of these LSS neighbors. In 2023, a Berkeley Lab led team conducted the first-of-its-kind nationally representative survey of LSS neighbors living within 3 miles of existing LSS projects. The survey asked about LSS neighbors’ attitudes toward their local projects, related perceptions, and insights for future LSS development. In total, 984 usable survey responses were collected.
Overall, the responses illustrate that positive attitudes vastly outnumber negative attitudes among LSS neighbors, …

Alaska Hydrogen Opportunities Report

Hydrogen has recently received significant attention at the national and international levels due to its decarbonization potential in numerous economic sectors. As a piece of the clean energy solution puzzle, it offers spatial and temporal flexibility in the use of energy sources that might otherwise pose challenges in their locations and times of output. This inaugural report on Alaska’s hydrogen energy opportunities introduces key themes for developing a hydrogen economy in Alaska, establishes a baseline understanding of Alaska’s infrastructure and resources relevant to hydrogen, and contextualizes this baseline in terms of national and global initiatives focused on hydrogen. This report …

Energy Subsidy Reform in Action – Total Carbon Pricing for Energy Consumption: The Importance of Energy Taxes and Subsidies

Faced with the urgency of climate change mitigation, many governments around the world are considering and deploying different approaches to pricing greenhouse gas emissions. The efforts to put a price on carbon—aiming to reflect the social and environmental costs resulting from these emissions—have traditionally focused on carbon taxes and emissions trading systems.

Governments use a broader set of energy, climate, and fiscal policy instruments that affect the price signal on carbon emissions, even when sending such a signal is not stated as an explicit objective. In addition to decisions related to emissions trading or carbon taxes, governments take actions that …

Home Heating in Massachusetts: What Influences Future Costs?

On behalf of the Home Energy Efficiency Team (HEET), Researchers Tanya Stasio and Joshua R. Castigliego, Assistant Researcher Sumera Patel, and Senior Economist Elizabeth A. Stanton prepared a white paper that estimates the average home heating costs faced by Massachusetts households using different heating technologies.

This March 2024 AEC white paper updates the home heating cost analysis conducted in AEC’s January 2021 white paper; both analyses present operating costs only, excluding the costs of purchasing or maintaining heating equipment. Updated analysis, based on the most recent data and cost projections, finds that heating with networked geothermal and ground-source heat pumps …

Russia’s Coal Sector: Between Sanctions and the Global Energy Transition

While coal’s contribution to Russia’s energy system, economy, exports, and tax revenue is much smaller than that of oil and natural gas, coal mining sustains other key industries and coal transportation is the backbone of Russia’s rail system.

Looking ahead, Russia’s coal industry faces significant macro-level challenges, including Western sanctions and global efforts to reduce coal consumption. It also faces operational challenges due to rail capacity constraints, competition for rail access from more profitable goods, a large domestic surplus of natural gas following the collapse of Russia’s gas exports to Europe, and competition for Asian markets from other regional suppliers, …

Who Should Use NETPs? Managing Expectations for NETP Demand

Negative Emissions Technologies and Practices (NETPs) will be essential to remove and store carbon dioxide (CO2) permanently and reach net-zero targets. Some sectors may not be able to completely abate all emissions. NETPs will play a crucial role in counterbalancing these so-called “residual emissions”.

Many NETPs are emerging technologies with a range of technological readiness, potential physical limitations, adverse impacts, and co-benefits. Hence, there is large uncertainty as to how much of the theoretical potential for each NETP to remove carbon permanently can be achieved in the next 30 years, and still respect physical limits in the natural environment, sustainable …