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Expert Insight

A Grand Challenge to Commercialize Energy Storage

Author(s): Faith Martinez Smith
Environmental Permitting Specialist
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; formerly Policy Analyst at ClearPath
Date: March 5, 2020 at 10:12 AM

Note: At the time of this discussion, Faith Martinez Smith was a Policy Analyst at ClearPath, managing the organization’s energy storage, geothermal, and hydropower portfolios.   Grid-scale energy storage is critical for decarbonizing our economy and merits high-profile attention from our policymakers. Storage is technology agnostic—it can be used with any generation technology, provides ancillary services, and can reduce demand charges. As climate change policy continues to take center stage, the commercialization of U.S. energy storage technologies can play a pivotal role in enabling higher integration of variable renewable resources (wind and solar power) and addressing grid reliability. Thus far,… [more]

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Expert Insight

Time for a Price on Carbon

Author(s): Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL-22)
Member
U.S. House of Representatives
Date: February 3, 2020 at 11:29 AM

You don’t have to search hard to find an American community already experiencing, firsthand, the devastating impact of climate change. The question is no longer if, but how to respond. For too long, damaging carbon emissions have been left off the balance sheets of the world’s largest polluters. Instead, we are all paying the price. That’s why we need a market-driven solution that will get us to zero emissions. I introduced a bipartisan plan—the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (H.R. 763)—to put a price on carbon and send a signal across the economy that it is time to switch… [more]

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Realizing the Promise of Offshore Wind

Author(s): Laura Morton
Senior Director, Policy and Regulatory Affairs for Offshore Wind
American Wind Energy Association
Date: December 12, 2019 at 4:19 PM

Offshore wind is the next major source of American energy. Realizing offshore wind’s potential will generate clean electricity near many of the country’s largest population centers, revitalize coastal and port communities, and create thousands of jobs and a new U.S. supply chain. In fact, offshore wind could create 46,000 jobs over the next few years according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and it represents a $70 billion supply chain opportunity. And these jobs aren’t just on the East Coast—offshore wind offers legacy energy firms the chance to diversify. For example, Falcon Global and Gulf Island Fabrication, two Louisiana-based firms… [more]

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Expert Insight

National Council for Science and the Environment

Author(s): OurEnergyPolicy.org

Date: November 21, 2019 at 10:24 AM

The mission of the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) is to improve the scientific basis of environmental decision-making. NCSE fosters collaboration between the institutions and individuals creating and using environmental knowledge, including scientists in higher education and decision-makers at all levels of government, to strengthen the role and increase the use of science in decision-making.

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Expert Insight

Critical Minerals: The Achilles Heel of America’s Clean Energy Future?

Author(s): Morgan D. Bazilian
Director, Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy
Colorado School of Mines
Date: November 4, 2019 at 10:37 AM

In 2017, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 13817, which states “The United States is heavily reliant on imports of certain mineral commodities that are vital to the Nation’s security and economic prosperity. This dependency of the United States on foreign sources creates a strategic vulnerability…” Of the 35 critical minerals designated in a 2018 Department of Interior (DOI) report, the United States is 75-100% reliant on 24 of them. Many of these are essential inputs to clean energy technologies such as lithium-ion batteries, solar modules, and wind turbines. We can expect that the tremendous growth and innovation in resource-dependent… [more]

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Expert Insight

Climate RFI: Decarbonizing Electricity with Standards,Taxes, and Transmission Lines

Author(s): OurEnergyPolicy.org

Date: October 22, 2019 at 12:18 PM

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is requesting information around policies that Congress should adopt to solve the climate crisis and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Committee staff told us they would welcome feedback from OEP experts. Four specific questions from the committee’s request for information are outlined below. We will compile and send to the committee substantive comments posted to this discussion by November 11.     U.S. electricity generation from wind power is more than 7 times higher today than it was in 2017, and U.S. solar power generation is 100… [more]

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Expert Insight

A Framework for The Green Real Deal

Author(s): Ernest J. Moniz
President and CEO
Energy Futures Initiative
Date: October 8, 2019 at 9:00 AM

I recently unveiled the framework for a “Green Real Deal” on behalf of the Energy Futures Initiative at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Energy Innovates conference in Washington, D.C. Building upon several months of analytical work, the Green Real Deal framework offers broad principles that are based on a commitment to realistic, actionable, and meaningful progress towards a low-carbon economy.  The Green Real Deal must be a very pragmatic program data-driven, science-based, and analytically supported. Principles like innovation are at the core of the solution. A wise and just transition to a low-carbon economy, moving as fast as is technically… [more]

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Expert Insight

But First, Energy Efficiency

Author(s): Sabrina Cowden
CEO
Milepost Consulting
Date: September 3, 2019 at 11:42 AM

New and emerging innovations in renewable energy suggest the real possibility—probability even—of a future where everyone has access to abundant clean energy. While supporting these advancements is vital to a sustainable future, it is perhaps more crucial that our legislators create and codify solid energy efficiency standards that can reduce our carbon emissions. In 2018, roughly 69% of energy produced in the United States was lost, most often in the form of waste heat, such as exhaust from cars and furnaces. As we shift to new sources of power generation, policy work around minimizing energy waste will help to show… [more]

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Expert Insight

The Need for Restructured Electricity Markets

Author(s): Robert Dillon
Executive Director
Energy Choice Coalition
Date: August 8, 2019 at 2:45 PM

The rapid evolution of the electricity sector in the United States can offer numerous benefits to consumers while also addressing society’s environmental concerns. The rise of independent energy suppliers and the advancement of information technology are transforming the way we generate and manage our electricity use, allowing consumers to access more affordable, diverse, efficient, and cleaner sources of energy. More than a dozen states have restructured their electricity markets to some degree in order to give consumers, large and small, a greater say in the type of energy they use every day to power their homes and offices. Proper policy… [more]

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Expert Insight

Reducing the Energy Burden on Low-Income Americans

Author(s): Marilyn Brown
Professor of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: August 5, 2019 at 10:30 AM

In an era of U.S. energy abundance, it is troubling that many low-income Americans are persistently paying high energy bills. Even after decades of weatherization improvements, which protect buildings from the elements to reduce energy costs, and bill payment programs to make energy bills more manageable, families with modest incomes still spend a higher percentage of their income on their energy bills than more advantaged income groups. Energy burdens (the ratio of energy bills to income) are especially high in the South, rural America, and minority communities. For instance, among the largest cities in the U.S., the three with the… [more]

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