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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China’s heavy industry sectors are large in scale, carbon-intensive in both feedstock and fuel use, asset-heavy, and have a long life cycle in nature. Ensuring a successful low-carbon transition is challenging and requires large amounts of capital investment. The rapidly evolving green financing mechanisms have successfully channeled capital to support a wide range of decarbonization activities. However, due to the misalignment between the high emitting nature of heavy industry and the original definitions of green finance, existing financial support is still insufficient to meet the heavy industry’s decarbonization needs. Therefore, there is an urgent need for innovative financing mechanisms.
This …
View Full ResourceOn behalf of the Southern Environmental Law Center, Researchers Chirag T. Lala and Joshua R. Castigliego, Senior Economist Tyler Comings, and Assistant Researcher Elisabeth Seliga prepared a report that models the costs to consumers of alternatives for the soon-to-be retired Kingston Fossil Plant—a coal-fired power plant in Harriman, Tennessee that is owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). TVA’s Alternative A plan replaces Kingston with a gas-heavy portfolio that constructs gas combined cycle (CC) and combustion turbine (CT) plants, while Alternative B focuses on replacing Kingston with a clean energy portfolio that relies on solar and battery storage …
View Full ResourceHydropower plays a key role in the United States energy generation mix, representing nearly a third of U.S. renewable energy generation today. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) currently represents 96% of utility-scale energy storage capacity and 70% of grid storage capacity and supports grid stability and reliability across the country. Despite the potential of these technologies to support the U.S. clean energy transition, new public and private investment in hydropower projects of all sizes lags other renewable energy generation sources such as wind and solar). Between 2005 and 2022, the United States substantially increased its solar and wind generation capacity, adding …
View Full ResourceNumerous new pressures are being placed on the trucking industry. States and the federal government are examining regulations to quickly transition the industry by 2040 to full electrification with the goal to reduce commercial vehicle carbon emissions. The Clean Freight Coalition contracted a study with Roland Berger to determine the added costs to the freight industry and utilities if commercial vehicles reach 100% electrification. This study examined two scenarios- one with current vehicle and charging technology offerings, and the other with modest improvement in both vehicles and chargers- to determine the realistic electricity infrastructure buildout scenario for medium- and heavy-duty …
View Full ResourceRenewable power generation is the key to decarbonizing the electricity system. Wind power is the fastest-growing renewable source of electricity in the United States. However, expanding wind capacity often faces local opposition, partly due to a perceived visual disamenity from large wind turbines. Here, they provide a US-wide assessment of the externality costs of wind power generation through the visibility impact on property values. To this end, they create a database on wind turbine visibility, combining information on the site and height of each utility-scale turbine having fed power into the U.S. grid, with a high-resolution elevation map to account …
View Full ResourceIn the ever evolving economic and energy landscape, the outset of 2024 brings with it updated economic forecasts, particularly in the face of broad expectations for a slowdown. Yet, emerging data show resilience and unexpected growth, challenging preconceived notions and setting the stage for a reevaluation of this year’s prospects.
This article delves into the latest insights from TXOGA’s quarterly monitoring and analyses of economic and energy markets, with critical implications for American households and businesses, core to energy security and affordability, and especially important to Texas.…
View Full ResourceCovering more than 70 percent of the planet and holding about 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere, our ocean plays a big role in helping to stabilize our climate. But this natural process comes at a cost. Too much greenhouse gas pollution in the air, blunted by the ocean, has cascading effects, making the ocean more acidic, increasingly starved of oxygen, less productive, and less habitable for fish and marine wildlife. Today’s climate challenges require urgent solutions.
To this end, scientists around the world are evaluating whether and which ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (oCDR) approaches can safely and permanently …
Given the high deployment targets for solar photovoltaics (PV) to meet U.S. decarbonization goals, and the limited carbon budget remaining to limit global temperature rise, accurate accounting of PV system life cycle energy use and greenhouse gas emissions is needed. In the United States, most PV systems are large, utility-scale systems that use single-axis trackers and central inverters, which are not commonly examined in existing life cycle assessment (LCA) literature.
This study presents a cradle-to-grave LCA of a typical silicon U.S. utility-scale PV (UPV) installation that is consistent with the utility system features documented in the NREL annual PV system …
In September 2022, President Biden signed Executive Order (EO) 14081 on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. The EO directs the Secretary of Agriculture, in consultation with the heads of appropriate agencies as determined by the Secretary, to submit a plan to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA) and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (APEP), to support the resilience of the U.S. biomass supply chain for domestic biomanufacturing and biobased product manufacturing, while also advancing food security, environmental sustainability, and the needs of …
View Full ResourceThis report presents practical guidance to enhance leadership for safety in nuclear regulatory bodies. It identifies the effective characteristics, competencies and behaviours of leaders in regulatory bodies that have a healthy safety culture and lays out programmes and processes that can continuously improve that safety culture.
Some 12 characteristics and competencies that emerged from the original research underpinning this guide are identified as essential to the development of effective leadership for safety in regulatory bodies. These are grouped into three aspect categories and are accompanied by examples of good practices for the regulatory body as an organisation and good practices …
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