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 …

Dynamic Cycling Enhances Battery Lifetime

Laboratory ageing campaigns elucidate the complex degradation behaviour of most technologies. In lithium-ion batteries, such studies aim to capture realistic ageing mechanisms to optimize cell chemistries and designs as well as to engineer reliable battery management systems. In this study, they systematically compared dynamic discharge profiles representative of electric vehicle driving to the well-accepted constant current profiles.

Surprisingly, they found that dynamic discharge enhances lifetime substantially compared with constant current discharge. Specifically, for the same average current and voltage window, varying the dynamic discharge profile led to an increase of up to 38% in equivalent full cycles at end of …

Retail Electricity Price and Cost Trends: 2024 Update

Berkeley Lab’s Retail Electricity Price and Cost Trends summarizes recent trends in retail electricity price levels and price drivers in the United States. This report is intended to serve as a reference document for the diverse set of decision-makers impacted by changes in retail electricity prices and to provide a factual basis for assessing recent changes in retail electricity prices and key underlying drivers. National, regional, and state trends are reported for 2019 through 2023 using publicly-available data for:

– Average retail electricity prices, retail sales, and utility revenues
– Utility capital expenditures, operations and maintenance costs, and fuel and …

Data Centers in Virginia 2024

Data centers provide positive benefits to Virginia’s economy mostly because of the industry’s substantial capital investment. The primary benefit comes from the initial construction of data centers. Most construction spend in likely remains in the state economy because much of it goes to Virginia-based businesses providing construction materials and services.

Data centers employ fewer employees than some other industries, but data center jobs tend to be high paying. Several data center representatives indicated that a typical 250,000-square-foot data center may have approximately 50 full-time workers, about half of which are contract workers. Data center construction supports a substantially larger number …

The U.S. National Blueprint for Energy and Emissions Innovation in Transportation

In 2023, the United States Department of Energy (DOE), the United States Department of Transportation (DOT), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization (Blueprint). The Blueprint provides the roadmap for innovative transportation fueling and vehicle technologies across every mode of transportation, expanding affordable and accessible transportation options. The Blueprint takes a systems approach to address overall efficiency and convenience across the sector and focuses on realistic, cost-effective approaches while working closely with industry.

Building on the Blueprint, DOE, DOT, EPA, and …

Michigan City Generating Station Closure: Environmental Implications and Community Benefits

On behalf of Just Transition Northwest Indiana (JTNWI), AEC assessed the retirement of Michigan City Generating Station (MCGS)—a 93-year-old coal-fired power plant located on the southern shore of Lake Michigan in Michigan City, Indiana. AEC’s report presents the environmental and community impacts of MCGS’ retirement, outlines opportunities for just and equitable redevelopment of the MCGS site, presents eight related case studies of coal plant redevelopment efforts, and makes five recommendations for a just transition for Michigan City to ensure that the communities most impacted by MCGS’ operations benefit from redevelopment. …