Financing a Net Zero Economy: The Consequences of Physical Climate Risk for Banks

This report offers detailed recommendations to guide the banking industry in fully measuring, analyzing, and acting against threats posed by the physical risks of climate change. It sets out a practical roadmap to help banks conduct risk assessments and incorporate climate risks into their day-to-day decision-making. …

Solar Futures Study

Dramatic improvements to solar technologies and other clean energy technologies have enabled recent rapid growth in deployment and are providing cost-effective options for decarbonizing the U.S. electric grid. The Solar Futures Study explores the role of solar in decarbonizing the grid. Through state-of-the-art modeling, the study envisions deep grid decarbonization by 2035, as driven by a required emissions-reduction target. It also explores how electrification could enable a low-carbon grid to extend decarbonization to the broader energy system (the electric grid plus all direct fuel use in buildings, transportation, and industry) through 2050.

The Solar Futures Study uses a suite of …

California Needs Clean Firm Power, and So Does the Rest of the World: Three Detailed Models of the Future of California’s Power System all show that California needs Carbon-Free Electricity Sources that don’t Depend on the Weather

California’s energy planners project that electricity demand in California will nearly double from today to 2045, as more end uses in our economy currently powered by fossil fuels, from cars to the heating of building, transition to electricity. Electrification would increase California’s peak demand for electricity from about 50 gigawatts today to about 100 gigawatts midcentury. How will California maintain the affordability and reliability of electricity supplies while tackling the twin tasks of decarbonization and electrification?

To answer these questions, we convened a group of energy system experts who used three different optimization models of California’s electricity system to quantify …

Five Reasons to Be Concerned About Green Hydrogen

Green hydrogen has generated a lot of interest as a zero-carbon or low-carbon fuel. Its ability to be injected into existing natural gas infrastructure has led to several large oil and gas companies promoting its use to preserve their existing pipeline assets while lowering emissions. However, despite all the hype surrounding green hydrogen, Clean Energy Group has found that there are several reasons to be concerned about its use, particularly in power plants. While hydrogen might have a valid role to play in deep decarbonization of the heavy transport or industrial sectors, runaway plans to use it extensively in the …

Studies Agree 80 Percent Clean Electricity by 2030 Would Save Lives and Create Jobs at Minimal Cost

An updated meta-analysis of 11 studies released since 2020 by universities, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations converge on the immense benefits and feasibility of achieving 80 percent clean electricity by 2030 in the United States. In this clean energy future, solar, wind, and batteries would provide nearly all new generation capacity, while electricity prices would remain roughly the same or be cheaper than today. The studies agree it would add 500,000 to 1 million net new jobs per year and up to $1.5 trillion in new net clean energy investment through 2030. And cleaner air would prevent 85,000 to 317,000 …

Energy Sector Workforce Diversity, Access, Inclusion, and the Policy Case for Investment: Recommendations for State Energy Office Action

Job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding, the U.S. energy sector has been an engine for economic growth and job creation, boasting millions of workers, with opportunities for employment in nearly every county of the United States, and experiencing faster growth than the rest of the economy.

Yet, demographically speaking, the energy workforce is not representative of the communities and markets it serves. Its low levels of ethnic, racial, and gender diversity are a matter of concern not only for employers, who stand to lose revenue to more diverse competitors, but also to policymakers, for whom a qualified, diverse, and …

Market-Based Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Legislation: 108th Through 117th Congresses

Congressional interest in market–based greenhouse gas (GHG) emission control legislation has fluctuated over the past 20 years. Market–based approaches that would address GHG emissions typically involve either a cap–and–trade system or a carbon tax or emissions fee program. Both approaches would place a price—directly or indirectly—on GHG emissions or their inputs, namely fossil fuels. Both would increase the price of fossil fuels, and both would reduce GHG emissions to some degree. Both would allow covered entities to choose the best way to …

Climate Change and Social Vulnerability in the United States: A Focus on Six Impacts

Climate change affects all Americans—regardless of socioeconomic status—and many impacts are projected to worsen as temperatures and sea levels continue to rise, snow and rainfall patterns shift, and some extreme weather events become more common. A growing body of literature focuses on the disproportionate and unequal risks that climate change is projected to have on communities that are least able to anticipate, cope with, and recover from adverse impacts. Many studies have discussed climate change impacts on socially vulnerable populations, but few have quantified disproportionate risks to socially vulnerable groups across multiple impacts and levels of global warming.…

Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks in U.S. Agriculture

Agriculture and land–use activities continue to play a central role in the broader debate about energy and climate policy options in the United States and abroad. Such activities offer opportunities to remove greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere, potentially reducing the nation’s net emissions: the metric of emissions targets for the Paris Agreement (PA), the binding international climate change treaty. Pursuant to the PA, the Biden Administration released a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2021 specifying a new U.S. target of reducing net GHG emissions by 50%–52% …

A Policy Agenda for Gigaton-Scale Carbon Management

Transitioning our economy to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 will be difficult and will require significant advancements not just in emissions reductions, but also in carbon management, which we define as the capture, removal, transport, storage, and utilization of CO2. Scaling carbon management to the necessary gigaton-scale will require a comprehensive policy agenda as well as an accurate accounting framework to catalyze innovation and deployment. This paper describes the need for a carbon management agenda, discusses the current state of play of carbon management and finally suggests a suite of policy tools which, in combination, would spur commercial-scale deployment …