2019 RENEWABLE ENERGY NARRATIVE TRENDS

Analysis of more than 2,300 news and opinion articles from 2019 related to renewable energy— sourced from LexisNexis and Google News. Articles came from national and state outlets, as well as online and trade publications.

Purpose of the research was to understand how the media covers renewable energy, in particular to determine if funding gaps in climate philanthropy are also leading to a gap in media coverage of local leaders and innovations. To what extent would articles quote women as spokespeople, reference issues of equity, or talk about communities of color?

Percentage of clean energy news articles quoting women doubled …

Solar with Justice: Strategies for Powering Up Under-Resourced Communities and Growing an Inclusive Solar Market

Under-resourced communities face a disproportionate share of societal burdens and lack access to many of the benefits other communities enjoy. Participation in the solar economy can help ease these burdens and provide low-and middle-income households with economic relief.

This report, “Solar with Justice: Strategies for Powering Up Under-Resourced Communities and Growing an Inclusive Solar Market,” aims to accelerate the implementation of solar in under-resourced communities in ways that provide meaningful, long-lasting benefits to those communities. The recommendations in the report set a path forward for increasing solar deployments that result in significant economic, equity, and environmental improvements.…

Energy as a Source of Economic Growth and Social Mobility

The CSIS Energy Program assessed the existing academic literature, commissioned new research papers, convened an expert summit, and compiled the findings to produce Energy in America: Energy as a Source of Economic Growth and Social Mobility. This report analyzes the ways energy contributes to the challenges and opportunities facing ordinary Americans, covering the impacts of production, distribution, and consumption of energy products in the United States.

The report highlights the new, extra-energy objectives that energy policy is increasingly expected to advance and evaluates their historical efficacy. We conclude that while deliberate U.S. energy policy interventions have hitherto achieved mixed results, …

Protecting States in the New World of Energy Federalism

In a trilogy of recent cases, the Supreme Court has launched a quiet revolution in energy federalism. With little fanfare, it has abandoned its decades-long effort to divide electricity regulation into mutually exclusive spheres of federal and state authority. Instead, it has embraced a more sophisticated concurrent jurisdiction model—against the wishes of Justice Scalia, who opposed this transformation in his final published dissent.

This Article explores the ramifications of this revolution, particularly for state energy regulators. The shift to concurrent jurisdiction is long overdue. The historic model of the local vertically integrated utility has long been
replaced by regional, complex, …

Energy efficiency, green technology and the pain of paying

It is well-known from the mental accounting literature that consumers would rather pay up-front for a luxury good like a vacation, but pay later for a durable good like a dishwasher. This occurs because the hedonic benefits and monetary costs enter differently in the mental accounts. But how does the mental accounting process change if the durable good saves money over time, as with an energy efficiency upgrade, or signals wealth and “green status”, like a rooftop solar panel or an electric car? In this paper, we derive a mental accounting model of energy efficient and green durable investment that …

National Patterns in Environmental Injustice and Inequality: Outdoor NO2 Air Pollution in the United States

Just Energy Policies: Model Energy Policies Guide

This report proposes model policies that provide guidelines for state and local energy policies. Based on industry analysis, these standards are rigorous, yet attainable. If adopted nationwide, these policies will help to prevent climate change, as well as protect the well-being of communities.…

Evaluation of Future Strategic and Energy Efficient Options for the U.S. Capitol Power Plant

The U.S. Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C., comprises some of the most historic, symbolic, and heavily used buildings in the nation. Among these are the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the House and Senate office buildings, the U.S. Botanic Gardens, the Capitol Visitors Center, and various support facilities. Within these buildings, public policy is made, legislation is enacted, and priceless artifacts and documents are stored and displayed. They are the workplaces of 535 congressional representatives, the justices of the Supreme Court, their staffs, the staff of the Library of Congress, and others and are the destination …

Income Verification Strategies for Income-Based Solar Programs

The Inflation Reduction Act has created substantial new programs that support adoption of solar power by low-income households, including the $7 billion Solar For All program and the Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program, which increases the investment tax credit for certain types of deployment. In addition, a growing number of states are using solar programs to reduce energy burdens and create energy justice opportunities for low-income households and disadvantaged communities.

Verifying the income of participating customers is an important component of these programs. Program managers are seeking strategies to verify a large number of subscribing customers in an accurate, timely, …

Principles for Equitable Transmission Planning

Energy justice is gaining traction in the planning processes that govern the generation and supply of electric power in the U.S., with a growing number of federal and state authorities applying it as a framework to ensure that the benefits of a clean energy future extend to all levels of society. However, the principles of energy justice have not yet been integrated into electric transmission planning processes, which are designed to meet established reliability criteria and have not historically considered externalities like social inequities.

This paper presents a review of transmission planning requirements in the U.S. and existing literature on …