Reclaiming Hydrogen for a Renewable Future: Distinguishing Fossil Fuel Industry Spin from Zero-Emission Solutions

The fossil fuel industry has helped generate enormous interest around hydrogen, making it difficult for policymakers to tell how much they can rely on hydrogen to meet climate goals. Too often, companies that profit from our reliance on fossil fuels invoke the vague promise of “clean,” “renewable,” or “green” hydrogen to derail action today. To avoid this trap, policymakers must scrutinize claims about hydrogen and think critically about where it can be a meaningful part of real climate solutions. To reclaim hydrogen for a renewable future, policymakers should explore opportunities to produce hydrogen from renewable electricity and use it to …

Clean Heat Pathways for Industrial Decarbonization

Most heat energy industry uses today comes from fossil fuel combustion, accounting for about 10 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. In the United States, the industries using the most heat include petroleum refining, paper, chemicals, cement, and steel. Unless industries change course, U.S. industrial emissions are expected to rise significantly by mid-century. Identifying and deploying clean heat solutions will be essential.

This brief first provides an overview of the current status of industrial heat in a range of sectors. It then lays out the key criteria for evaluating or characterizing clean heat technologies and describes some of the challenges …

Insights on Emissions Reduction among U.S. States

From 2005 to 2018, the United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector by 12 percent, but the national average masks wide variation in performance across states. Declines in emissions were dramatic in some states; in others, emissions changed little or even grew. What explains this variation? What might policymakers learn from the states reducing emissions?

To answer these questions, the CSIS Energy Security and Climate Change Program investigated state policies that aim to reduce emissions or boost low-carbon energy. This report focuses on 16 U.S. states that are representative of the country.

The first section of …

Early Deployment of Direct Air Capture with Dedicated Geologic Storage: Federal Policy Options

To avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world must not only flatten its current greenhouse gas emissions trajectory, but accelerate toward net-zero emissions by roughly mid-century – and most-likely sustain net-negative emissions in the latter half of the century. In recent years, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology has moved from theoretical concept to pilot scale, producing a handful of potentially scalable approaches for generating negative emissions by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. This CO2 can then be permanently sequestered in the geosphere or put to use in such industrial processes as cement …

Banking Beyond Climate Commitments: Transforming Client Engagement and Products & Services for a Net-Zero Emissions Future

Banks are gradually setting different types of targets: sustainable finance (green) commitments, science-based targets (SBTs), and net-zero commitments. In the financial sector, a sign of growing momentum behind climate action is the launch of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and the Net-Zero Banking Alliance in April 2021. Increased engagement in the Science Based Targets initiative is another sign of growing engagement from the banking sector in Paris alignment. Currently, 78 banks are working on their SBTs, and the number of participating banks is on the rise.

This paper explores how banks can best shape their client engagement with …

Legacy Asset Redeployment: How to Lower Costs, Avoid Stranded Asset, and Accelerate the Clean Energy Transition

The U.S. is taking a multilateral approach in addressing climate change and is focusing on how to accelerate the journey to “net zero” carbon emissions, especially in hard-to-abate industries. To mitigate the time and cost of decarbonization one option is to re-use already paid-for energy delivery assets and retrofit them to continue to add value within a new pro-climate context – an approach we call Legacy Asset Redeployment. Legacy Asset Redeployment has the potential to become an important technical and economic enabler of climate solutions for hard-to-abate sectors. Legacy Asset Redeployment initiatives can and should be the focus of new, …

Electrifying Transportation in Municipalities: A Policy Toolkit for Electric Vehicle Deployment and Adoption at the Local Level

Vehicle electrification can help cities, towns, and counties achieve many top objectives, including reductions in climate emissions, improvements in public health and sustainability, advances in equity, economic development, job growth, and the EV market, and improved energy security. Local governments across the United States have proven to be effective leaders in the transition to electric vehicles(EVs), implementing policies to spur electrification faster than their surrounding states and the nation as a whole.

This report is designed to support local policymakers and advocates by providing a summary of the top transportation electrification policies that local agencies should consider. The intended audiences …

Land-Based Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition

A record 16,836 megawatts (MW) of U.S. wind capacity was installed in 2020, bringing the cumulative total to 121,955 MW. Wind power installations outpaced those in solar power for the first time in several years and represented $24.6 billion of investment. Wind provides more than 10% of electricity in 16 states, and over 30% in Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

Improvements in the cost and performance of wind power technologies, along with the Production Tax Credit, have driven wind energy capacity additions, yielding low-priced wind energy. Wind turbines continued to grow in size and power, with the …

Electric Vehicle Reimbursement Rate for Colorado State Employees

The Colorado Energy Office tasked Atlas Public Policy to conduct an analysis that will inform a state policy allowing employees to be reimbursed for electricity used for State-issued EVs charged at home. This report recommends a per kilowatt-hour reimbursement rate and estimates bill impacts to EV drivers and their agencies.…

Potential Impact to Surface Water and Sediment from the Transport of Produced Water by Barge Along the Ohio River for Disposal in Class II Injection Wells

Produced water (i.e., oil and gas wastewater) from the Marcellus and Utica Formations in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia is currently transported by tanker truck, railroad, and pipeline transport. Anticipating cost savings, industry in the region is securing permits to transport produced water down the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers by barge.

To understand the potential impacts of transporting produced water by barge, PSE researchers conducted a review of peer-reviewed literature, government reports, and grey literature on the effects of produced water spills on surface waters and sediments, as well as produced water discharges on surface waters.

The objective of …