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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From the mid-1980s through 2010, coal was a leading source of U.S. energy, providing up to half of the country’s annual electricity. Coal-fired electric power production peaked around 2007, when coal-fired electricity generating capacity in the U.S. totaled 313 gigawatts (GW) across 1,470 generators. A decade later, about 70 GW of this capacity was retired. Many of these retirements were concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, the Illinois Basin, and a few in the Midwest and the Four Corners region (northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, eastern Utah, and western Colorado). Of the 237 U.S. coal-fired power plants that are still operational, …
View Full ResourceThe Biden-Harris administration recognizes the historic opportunity and pressing need to address long-standing inequities that people of color continue to face from systemic racism, economic barriers, and environmental health injustices. Climate change is here and threatens to exacerbate inequalities for people of color and low-income households. These are the same populations and communities that for decades have been disproportionately and systematically harmed by pollution.
The objective of this report is to help the Biden-Harris team and other federal decision-makers improve upon state approaches to maximize the benefits of Justice40 effectively and equitably. To do so, …
View Full ResourceIn the United States today, 26 million low-income households burn costly, health-damaging, and climate-disrupting fossil fuels inside their homes. Communities of color are disproportionately overburdened by pollution from burning fossil fuels, as well as energy costs and poor housing quality. This is due in part to structural racism throughout our housing and economic systems. Many of these communities are also highly vulnerable to the extreme weather events brought on by climate change. They lack comparable access to cooling and resilient infrastructure, as well as the financial means to relocate.
In order to meet the country’s climate goals and protect public …
View Full ResourceTraditionally in planning power sector investments, utilities have been focused on two metrics for success: reliability and affordability. These metrics remain important, but they do not effectively account for the climate, environmental, and human impacts of fossil fuels, which disproportionately affect marginalized communities. To address climate and equity challenges, utilities will have to transform the way they plan – ensuring that a full range of resources are considered to meet utility customers’ needs. This should include both supply- and demand-side options, as well as distributed energy resources.
One of the most important opportunities to advocate for such outcomes is via …
View Full ResourceFrom January–July 2021, The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions (NI) and the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) conducted a series of conversations with state leaders and have identified several specific policy priority areas relevant to infrastructure proposals. These policy areas and approaches have been repeatedly highlighted by state leaders contacted by NI and CNEE. This report highlights either emerging areas for states or cross-cutting needs that were consistently cited by states as important. This is not a list of state priorities for programmatic funding—such as how much funding should go to specific public investments—but areas that states …
View Full ResourceGreen hydrogen has generated a lot of interest as a zero-carbon or low-carbon fuel. Its ability to be injected into existing natural gas infrastructure has led to several large oil and gas companies promoting its use to preserve their existing pipeline assets while lowering emissions. However, despite all the hype surrounding green hydrogen, Clean Energy Group has found that there are several reasons to be concerned about its use, particularly in power plants. While hydrogen might have a valid role to play in deep decarbonization of the heavy transport or industrial sectors, runaway plans to use it extensively in the …
View Full ResourceFrom 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 …
View Full ResourceThe 30 Million Solar Homes Implementation Guide is a companion piece to the 30 Million Solar Homes policy platform — developed by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Solar United Neighbors, and the Initiative for Energy Justice — and our recent report, The National Impact of 30 Million Solar Homes. The policy platform identifies new and existing federal policies and programs that could catalyze widespread and equitable adoption of rooftop and community solar, to power the equivalent of one in four households across the United States.
The success of this proposal relies not only on the initial passing of …
View Full ResourceCalifornia has set forth an ambitious goal of generating all of its electricity from clean and carbon-free technologies by the year 2045. The state is planning for this target, outlined in California Senate Bill 100, to be met primarily by several renewable sources like solar, land-based wind, geothermal, along with energy storage and other zero-carbon technologies. Wind energy has long been proven to be a technologically feasible and economically viable option. Moreover, momentum is increasing to include California’s offshore wind (OSW) energy as a complement to the state’s current renewable energy and storage resources.
In this report, we provide a …
View Full ResourceThe 30 Million Solar Homes policies leverage federal power to spark investment that can serve more than 30 million households with rooftop or community solar over the next five years. This decentralized approach to reaching one in four households with solar maximizes and disperses the economic benefits of expanding clean energy in the fight against climate change, directly benefiting as many Americans as possible. More than three-quarters of total federal investment benefits marginalized communities, including low- and moderate-income communities, environmental justice communities, and solar deserts. Over 300 advocacy organizations, solar businesses, and faith communities have signed on in support of …
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