2024 Aspen-Columbia Global Energy Forum Report

The 2024 Aspen-Columbia Global Energy Forum, held June 5–7 in Rio de Janeiro, convened leaders from government, industry, civil society, and academia to address the urgent challenges of achieving a fair and affordable clean energy transition amid rising energy security and geopolitical pressures. Organized by the Aspen Institute and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, the forum underscored the importance of North-South collaboration in tackling the climate crisis.

Against a backdrop of intensifying climate events and a shifting energy landscape, the forum explored critical topics, including financing the energy transition in emerging markets, the role of green industrial policy …

Economic Performance in US Fossil Fuel Communities

Rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to address the severe threats of climate change requires economic transformations that pose challenges for regions heavily dependent on coal, oil, natural gas, or other carbon-intensive industries. The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas and the fourth-largest producer of coal, and communities across the country depend heavily on fossil fuel industries for jobs, investments, and public revenues that fund schools and other critical services. These communities will need considerable support to successfully navigate a global transition away from fossil fuels, and a better understanding of their …

Electrification of U.S. Industry: Applying Lessons from Denmark

Electric technologies are essential for decarbonizing industrial process heat, which is a major source of emissions in the U.S. They are also critical for reducing energy costs, improving modularity of heating to meet specific temperature requirements, and boosting the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers.

This white paper looks toward electrification-enabling strategies that are in place or being pursued internationally, where there is more experience. It describes the political, economic, and energy landscapes that have allowed the uptake of electric technologies in the industrial sector, and the suite of policies and approaches that can be appropriated for the U.S. to the same …

Off-Grid Renewable Energy Statistics 2024

Off-grid electricity production from renewables, although largely unrecorded in most countries, is believed to be expanding rapidly. By combining information from surveys, administrative data and desk research, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has attempted to illuminate major trends in off-grid renewable energy deployment.

This publication presents statistics for the period 2014-2023 in trilingual tables, covering off-grid solar, hydro, bioenergy and wind power capacity, biogas production and numbers of people using off-grid power and biogas for cooking and lighting. Off-grid renewable power can come from various sources, ranging from large isolated power grids to solar lights and solar home systems. …

Recycling and Innovation

On October 23, 2024, OurEnergyPolicy hosted a discussion on developments in recycling and innovation in critical minerals as part of the Terranaut Minologues series on meeting critical mineral demand for our energy transition.…

Solar Market Insight Report

In Q3 2024, the US solar market installed 8.6 GWdc of capacity, continuing the trend of record-setting quarterly volumes this year. While installations declined 13% quarter-over-quarter, they increased 21% compared to Q3 2023.

Solar accounted for 64% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid through Q3 2024. US solar now produces enough electricity annually to power over 37 million homes.

Domestic module manufacturing capacity increased substantially again in the third quarter, by over 9 GW to nearly 40 GW. At the end of Q2 2022, prior to the passage of domestic manufacturing and procurement tax credits, module …

Weather- and Climate-Driven Power Supply and Demand Time Series for Power and Energy System Analyses

Reaching net-zero carbon emissions requires large shares of intermittent renewable energy and the electrification of end-use consumption, such as heating, making the future energy system highly dependent on weather variability and climate change. Weather exhibits fluctuations on temporal scales ranging from sub-hourly to yearly while climate variations occur on decadal scales. To investigate the intricate interplay between weather patterns, climate variations, and power systems, we developed a database of time series of wind and solar power generation, hydropower inflow, heating and cooling demand using an internally consistent modeling framework. Here we focused on the European continent and generated country level …

Transition from Operation to Decommissioning: Outcomes of the CDLM-5 Topical Session

The NEA Committee on Decommissioning of Nuclear Installations and Legacy Management (CDLM) was created in 2018 following a request from NEA member countries to enhance NEA focus on nuclear decommissioning and the remediation of legacy sites. The creation of the CDLM reflects the NEA goals of providing governments and other interested stakeholders with authoritative and reliable information on the political, strategic, regulatory and social aspects of decommissioning activities and the management of legacy and complex sites.

The NEA CDLM addressed the subject of the “Transition from operation to decommissioning” in a topical session during its fifth plenary meeting on 24 …

SEPA and NRECA Resilience Planning Playbook for Electric Cooperative Utilities

Electric cooperatives (co-ops) across the U.S. are navigating an evolving energy landscape shaped by increased electrification, the adoption of distributed energy resources, policy-driven decarbonization goals, and the growing impact of extreme weather events. Recognizing the evolving energy landscape, SEPA and NRECA developed the Resilience Planning Playbook for Electric Cooperative Utilities as a resource for other electric cooperatives to navigate new approaches to resilience planning.

This report includes case studies, best practices, and real-world insights from cooperative utilities developed through a workshop and several interviews. This report focuses on the resilience planning approach identified in SEPA’s Resilience Planning Playbook for States …

Guidance on Incorporating Building and Transportation Electrification into Long-Term Load Forecasts

The guide presents a framework for developing a long-term electricity load forecast
that accounts for the impacts of building and transportation electrification. The framework identifies key modeling decisions and provides examples from recent Berkeley
Lab technical assistance. In particular, the framework focuses on how to use publicly available end-use load profiles for eforecasting building and transportation electrification.

For each step in the framework, they provide:
• Guiding questions for users to answer and suggestions for users to follow.
• Examples from technical assistance Berkeley Lab provided to two municipal utilities,
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) in California and Fort Collins …