PR100 One-Year Progress Summary Report

The Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100) is a 2-year study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Grid Deployment Office and six national laboratories to comprehensively analyze stakeholder-driven pathways to Puerto Rico’s clean energy future. 

In Year 1 of the study, the PR100 team rigorously modeled and analyzed scenarios that meet Puerto Rico’s renewable energy targets and achieve short-term recovery goals and long-term energy resilience. This report, which summarizes PR100 progress in Year 1, provides considerations that can inform potential funding and implementation decisions by key federal and local agencies and stakeholders. …

Emerging Sustainable Technologies 2023

The success of any carbon neutral energy transition requires orchestrating a complex network of different technologies that will all be integrated. In all this, energy efficiency and circularity will remain important, and more thought must be given to how the waste of one industry can serve as input for another. This industrial symbiosis will not only require technical solutions but also non-technical ones such as regulatory frameworks. No doubt electricity will play a crucial role and a much bigger one than today. It will be integrated not only from a demand-side management point of view: ie. matching consumption with production …

Unlocking New Value Streams with Multi-Asset Virtual Power Plants

For decades utilities have used demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DERs) to reduce peak demand, reduce coincident peaks, manage circuit-specific issues, and support the grid during emergencies. In this new energy economy, virtual power plants (VPPs) enable energy companies to integrate multi-asset DERs into wholesale markets. This strategic shift from offense to defense opens opportunities for additional value streams, greater flexibility, better reserve margins, and reduced emissions. This whitepaper details how VPP platforms seamlessly orchestrate disparate DERs into single dispatchable resources.…

The Limits to Green Energy

The consensus is that grid instability and power cost increases will occur as renewable penetration increases, though there is no consensus on what level of renewable penetration will be the threshold of serious problems. While the United States currently has 20% renewable energy penetration, NREL’s latest study predicts 57% RE penetration by 2050 while EIA predicts 37% by
2050. The difference between the two predictions is indicative of the gamble currently playing out over the U.S. power grid. Going well beyond the current 20% penetration of VRE is a risk, with skyrocketing electricity prices and grid instability as
consequences.

The …

Promoting Cost-Effective Grid Modernization

State legislatures must preserve and enhance the authority of RTOs to ensure that new regional transmission lines are cost-effective. Rather than tightening the grip that incumbent monopolies have over transmission, state legislatures should promote cost-effective grid modernization by encouraging state regulators to work with RTOs to implement robust planning and competitive bidding processes for new regional transmission line projects. Adding project milestones and performance metrics to the regional transmission line bidding process can help to ensure that the best projects are selected to be developed and built in areas that need them, in a manner that is the most cost-effective …

Demand Flexibility within a PerformanceBased Regulatory Framework

The jointly formed National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO)-National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) Working Group released the report Roadmapping: A Tool for States to Advance Load Flexibility and Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings in 2021. The 2021 report explored various tools available for states to advance load flexibility and GEBs, aimed at State Energy Offices, Public Utility Commissions (PUCs), and other state and local agencies. This paper builds on past insights with a closer examination of demand flexibility (DF) barriers and implementation within a performance-based regulatory framework. As more complex forms of DF are introduced, …

End-to-End GHG Reporting of Logistics Operations Guidance

Action on logistics emissions is needed but the transparency challenge needs to be resolved first. To limit global warming and reach the Paris Agreement climate targets, supply chains need to be decarbonized. Logistics operations are a central part of all supply chains and play a crucial role in achieving the necessary emissions reductions across industries. Companies are therefore under increasing pressure to calculate, monitor, and report their emissions from logistics operations.

However, companies face an emissions transparency challenge: a lack of granular, verifiable, and consistent emissions data from logistics operations. While standards like the Global Logistics Emissions Council (GLEC) Framework …

A Supply Chain Road Map for Offshore Wind Energy in the United States

In this report, the authors describe how a fully domestic offshore wind energy supply chain could develop. We summarize the major barriers that could prevent or delay supply chain expansion and present potential solutions that could help overcome these challenges. We describe the major factors that need to be considered to develop resilient, sustainable, and equitable manufacturing capabilities in the United States. Finally, we present a scenario for a domestic supply chain that estimates the number of required major component manufacturing facilities, ports, and vessels that would need to be developed by 2030 to support an annual deployment of 4–6 …

50 States of Electric Vehicles Q4 2022 and Annual Report Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to provide state and local lawmakers and regulators, electric utilities, the electric power industry, the transportation industry, and other energy stakeholders with timely, accurate, and unbiased updates about how states are choosing to study, adopt, implement, amend, or discontinue policies associated with electric vehicles. This report catalogues proposed and approved legislative, regulatory, and utility rate design changes affecting electric vehicles during the most recent quarter, as well as state and investor-owned utility proposals to deploy electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.…

The Power of Optimism – Energy Industry Insights 2022

Discover what’s driving optimism among energy leaders and what’s holding back progress on the transition, and explore how the energy industry is managing key challenges in scale, complexity, and timing. Energy industry leaders say the energy transition is accelerating faster than ever, and that 2022 is set to be a strong year for industry growth.

DNV’s global report The Power of Optimism: Managing scale and complexity as the energy transition accelerates, draws on a survey of more than 1,000 senior energy professionals and in-depth interviews, to explore the outlook from across the energy industry for 2022, including power and renewables, …