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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End-use energy efficiency is expected to play an important role in the development of state plans to comply with the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan (CPP) and could be particularly important in those states that adopt an emissions rate-based approach to comply with EPA’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions guidelines. Under such an approach, entities including utilities, community groups, energy agencies, and others that take certain actions to increase investments in end-use energy efficiency (EE) are entitled to earn emissions reduction credits (ERCs) for every demonstrated MWh of electricity saved. In the aggregate, crediting energy savings in this …
View Full ResourceGreater energy efficiency can benefit countries at all stages of development, but particularly fast-growing economies trying to achieve universal energy access with limited resources. In developed countries, while 2010 energy use was around 20% higher than in 1974, it would have almost doubled without the savings made by energy efficiency investments. By offering cost-effective opportunities to avoid new energy supply, energy efficiency is increasingly recognised as the first fuel”.
Globally, enhanced energy efficiency investments could boost cumulative economic output by US$18 trillion to 2035, increasing growth by 0.25–1.1% per year. Cooperation to raise energy efficiency standards for appliances, lighting, vehicles, …
View Full ResourceAbout 40% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions originate from energy use in industry, transport, and buildings, and another 25% from power generation (IPCC 2014). A highly efficient use of energy is thus fundamental to limit GHG emissions. Yet, energy efficiency receives much less attention than the decarbonization of the energy supply. A recent report by the International Energy Agency states that global energy efficiency (EE) investments since 1990 have avoided more than 870 MtCO2e (megatons of CO2-equivalent emissions) in 2014, while reducing fuel costs by 550 billion US Dollar (IEA 2015). For this reason, the IEA calls EE the …
View Full ResourceThis report, a five-year update of California’s energy efficiency progress, shows California is ahead of schedule to reach its 32,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) goal of using efficiency to cut emissions by 2020 and help the state meet its total pollution reduction target under the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), but a significant ramp-up is needed to meet California’s long-term climate and energy goals.2
Since the plan for implementing AB 32 was launched in 2008, California has saved enough electricity to cut its annual climate-warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 8 million metric tons, equivalent to the annual …
View Full ResourceQuestions have been raised about whether renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) resources can provide substantial emission reductions at reasonable cost under EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan (CPP). These concerns reflect fundamental misperceptions about the performance and cost of today’s renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, rooted in outdated information and perpetuated by inaccurate official market projections. This report shows that RE and EE are competitive resources in today’s marketplace that will not only be cost-effective mechanisms for CPP compliance but should also be expected to grow strictly on the basis of competitiveness.…
View Full ResourceConventional wisdom suggests that energy efficiency (EE) policies are beneficial because they induce investments that pay for themselves and lead to emissions reductions. However, this belief is primarily based on projections from engineering models. This paper reports on the results of an experimental evaluation of the nation’s largest residential EE program conducted on a sample of more than 30,000 households. The findings suggest that the upfront investment costs are about twice the actual energy savings. Further, the model-projected savings are roughly 2.5 times the actual savings. While this might be attributed to the “rebound” effect – when demand for energy …
View Full ResourceEnergy efficiency and renewable energy can, and do, reduce air pollution that would otherwise be emitted from power plants on the electricity grid. Although the grid operates as a large integrated network—with hundreds of individual generating units dispatched to meet constantly changing customer demand on a continuous (second‐to‐second) basis—it is possible to understand and estimate the impacts of energy efficiency and renewable energy on grid operations. Typically, energy efficiency and renewable energy displace operations from a mix of generating stations that burn coal, natural gas, and occasionally oil to generate electric power. “Displacement” occurs when a new energy efficiency or …
View Full ResourceThe U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program was a program operated by DOE from 2009 to 2015 that provided grants and technical assistance to local governments, states, and territories to support a wide variety of energy efficiency and renewable energy activities. It was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and was a one-time program. The purpose of the EECBG National Evaluation was to develop independent estimates of key program outcomes attributable to the program and perform a brief exploration of possible organizational and operational factors influencing program performance.…
View Full ResourceRecent changes to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards have created new opportunities for lowering the cost of meeting strict new standards through provisions for credit banking and trading. In this paper, we explore these new markets for reductions in both fuel consumption (fuel economy) and greenhouse gases (GHGs). We examine the two separate credits markets for fuel economy as regulated by NHTSA and for GHG gases under EPA and find that there are some important differences between them. For example, the market for NHTSA fuel economy credits has an effective credit price ceiling while the market for EPA …
View Full ResourceIn 2007 Illinois established itself as a national clean energy leader when it passed a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and an energy efficiency portfolio standard (EEPS) requiring investor-owned utilities to supply 25 percent of their electricity from renewable energy resources by 2025 and achieve annual reductions in energy demand equal to two percent of the previous year’s sales.
But progress toward meeting the RPS and EEPS targets has been hampered by flaws in the policies. For example, problems in the current RPS law have limited long-term planning of energy resource investments that would enable sustained renewable energy development. Consequently, renewable …
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