Nuclear Waste Cleanup: NNSA Should Improve Its Strategy for Managing Anticipated Waste from Defense Activities

Decades of nuclear weapons production and research generated millions of gallons of hazardous and radioactive waste. NNSA’s ongoing maintenance and modernization activities of the nuclear weapons stockpile are expected to generate a considerable volume of additional waste. However, a Senate committee report questioned whether there are sufficient facilities to address the waste generated by these activities, and whether such facilities are included in current plans and budgets.

NNSA was required by statute to develop a comprehensive strategy for treating, storing, and disposing of the waste generated by these activities. In July 2022, NNSA created an office to manage the planning …

2024 EERE Investment Snapshot

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has been driving groundbreaking advances in energy innovation for over four decades. The data and case studies in the 2024 EERE Investment Snapshot describe EERE’s recent successes in delivering the benefits of energy innovations to communities, companies, and industries across the country.

EERE has used targeted investments in applied research and development (R&D), demonstration and deployment expertise, in-kind technical assistance, and its unique convening power to drive energy innovation in select industries and technologies. While each field in EERE’s portfolio has seen remarkable progress, the report focuses on EERE’s impact and …

Bridging the Gap: How Emerging State Policies are Making Energy Storage Affordable and Accessible

As energy storage becomes an increasingly integral tool to deliver numerous benefits to communities and to the electric grid, the question of how to make this new technology broadly affordable and accessible becomes more urgent, particularly for state agencies tasked with meeting clean energy goals. This report compiles the results of independent research conducted by the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA) and Sandia National Laboratories, providing a summary of emerging affordability and accessibility approaches in leading state energy storage programs. The intent is to create a body of reference material that can be used in state energy storage policymaking across …

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, …

Attention and Positive Sentiments Towards Carbon Dioxide Removal Have Grown on Social Media Over the Past Decade

Scaling up CO2 removal is crucial to achieve net-zero targets and limit global warming. To engage with publics and ensure a social licence to deploy large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR), better understanding of public perceptions of these technologies is necessary. Here, they analyse attention and sentiments towards ten CDR methods using Twitter data from 2010 to 2022. Attention towards CDR has grown exponentially, particularly in recent years. Overall, the discourse on CDR has become more positive, except for BECCS. Conventional CDR methods are the most discussed and receive more positive sentiments. Various types of users engage with CDR on Twitter …

Summary Report of RBA Emissions Management Tool

In 2023, the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) introduced the Emissions Management Tool (EMT) to help RBA member companies streamline the collection of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data from their supply chains. The EMT enables respondents to report on critical emissions data, including energy and fuel consumption, renewable energy use, and emissions reduction efforts. The EMT includes questions at both the corporate and facility levels. Data from the EMT is intended to inform RBA members’ Scope 3 calculations, increasing visibility into their supply chain emissions and making it faster and easier to report GHG emissions data to customers and external entities …

Fuel Economy Guide

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) produce the Fuel Economy Guide to help car buyers choose the most fuel-efficient vehicle that meets their needs. The Guide is available on the Web at fueleconomy.gov.

This guide provides annual fuel cost estimates, rounded to the nearest $50, for each vehicle. The estimates are based on the assumptions that you travel 15,000 miles per year (55% under city driving conditions and 45% under highway conditions) and that fuel costs $3.05/gallon for regular unleaded gasoline, $3.61/gallon for mid-grade unleaded gasoline, and $3.96/gallon for premium. Cost-per-gallon assumptions for vehicles …

Climate Disclosure and Target Setting in the Agriculture Sector: Lessons from the Canadian Market

This paper analyzes approaches for emissions accounting, target setting, and transparent disclosure of emissions related to agriculture portfolios in Canada. The paper underscores the significant role financial institutions can play in supporting the sector’s transition to net-zero emissions as well as the challenges they face in this complex sector.…

Harnessing The Ocean: How Closed System Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (MCDR) Can Contribute to Meeting Global Decarbonization Goals

Durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is critical to meeting global decarbonization goals, particularly as emissions reductions alone could leave 6–10 Gtpa (gigatons per annum) of CO₂ unabated by the year 2050. In the near term, if companies proceed with meeting declared net zero targets by 2030, CDR demand could range from ~40–200 Mtpa (megatons per annum) CO2 to as high as ~1.1–1.6 Gtpa CO2. This contrasts sharply with an expected supply of just 15–32 Mtpa, requiring the adoption of all viable carbon removal pathways.

The recent agreement reached at the COP29 on Art. 6, promoting the establishment of a global …

Fourth International Workshop on the Indemnification of Damage in the Event of a Nuclear Accident: Workshop Proceedings, Lisbon, Portugal

The Fourth International Workshop on the Indemnification of Damage in the Event of a Nuclear Accident took place in Lisbon, Portugal in October 2019. It was organised in collaboration with the Instituto Superior Técnico and the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). This workshop focused on topics identified during an earlier workshop, held in Bratislava, Slovak Republic in 2017, as fit for further discussion: the determination of the nuclear damage to be compensated and transboundary claims handling. The workshop was attended by more than 150 participants from 29 countries.

This report summarises the work that took place …