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By Emilio Mateo
Llama in front of Ausangate, the highest peak in Peru’s second largest glaciated system, Cordillera Vilcanota.
Mountain glaciers and polar ice caps are experiencing extensive and increasingly fast loss rates as global temperatures warm. The well-documented retreat of mountain glaciers will have severe ecological and societal costs as the shift to a post-glacial landscape represents one of the largest and fastest ongoing ecosystem changes.
A recent report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services states that approximately one million plant and animal species are under threat of extinction worldwide due to human-induced climate change.
As new landscapes and ecosystems emerge from the loss of glacier coverage, scientists are trying to understand what the consequences are for biodiversity in these regions, and what can be done to increase the adaptation potential of biodiversity. Emerging research underscores that we are at a critical juncture for decisions to be made about the protection and adaptation of post-glacial ecosystems.
Figure 1. “Schematic of glacier retreat and the emergence of post-glacial ecosystems. Changes are illustrated for mountain (top) and polar (bottom) regions in a climate that is unfavorable to glaciers, as experienced globally since 1900. Different types of post-glacial biome, in which diverse ecosystems may emerge, are shown.” Source: Bosson et al., 2023.
Modeling post-glacial ecosystems
In a recent article published in Nature, J.B. Bosson and a team of French and Swiss researchers modeled future glacier evolution through 2100 (Figure 1). They projected that the global extent of ice-free areas will grow by 149,000 km2 (the area of Nepal) to 339,000 km2 (the area of Finland) by the end of this century.
They also calculated subglacial (below glacier) topography from modeled high-resolution ice thickness, providing information such as terrain slopes as well as where water might accumulate in topographic depressions as ice melts. They then combined this information with mean annual air temperature projections in order to examine future ecological conditions. The study established four habitat categories: extreme (cold and either steep or deep water accumulation), two levels of intermediate (either cold or steep, or cold or deep water accumulation), and mild (either temperate and flat or temperate and shallow water accumulation).
Bosson et al. determined that post-glacial ecosystems will store between only 0.4 percent to 5 percent of the water currently stored in glaciers. Moreover, invertebrates that currently live exclusively on glaciers or in glacial streams, such as glacier ice worms and stoneflies, will continue to lose habitat and may not be able to survive in post-glacial ecosystems.
Biodiversity tradeoffs
While the loss of glaciers poses an existential threat to certain species, this analysis suggests that some of the deglaciated habitats will emerge as “diverse biomes and represent rare pristine terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems when natural areas are globally largely modified or degraded (especially in freshwater and coastal environments).”
Specifically, in regions where mild or intermediate habitat conditions are projected to emerge, such as Iceland, the Andes, and New Zealand, numerous terrestrial and aquatic species should be able to adapt to the new post-glacial ecosystems. In mild habitats, as categorized above, new plant growth may even capture and store significant amounts of carbon through growing biogeochemical processes and biomass (Figure 2).
In order to fully understand the biodiversity tradeoffs in post-glacial habitats, the authors note that their model estimates and the environmental impacts will need to be further explored on a local scale.
Figure 2. “Characteristics of emerging land in deglaciated areas in 2100. Glacier location and individual regions are shown on the basemap. For each region and globally, half circles in the center refer to the modeled emerging land area in 2100 for the SSP-1-1.9 (low-emission scenario) on the left and 5-8.5 (high-emission scenario) on the right. On their left and right, the relative distribution of habitats and carbon storage potential in emerging soils are shown in 2100 for the SSP-1-1.9 and 5-8.5, respectively. Basemap originates from www.naturalearthdata.com.” Source: Bosson et al., 2023.
Plotting llamas
A closely related article led by Anaïs Zimmer, published in Nature Scientific Reports at the end of September, explored a single post-glacial ecosystem in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca region from 2019 to 2022. The aim of this study, conducted by a multinational team of researchers from the United States, Peru, and France, was to assess whether native llamas influence soils and vegetation following the retreat of the Uruashraju glacier (Figure 3). Taking place 24 to 40 years post-glacierization, this study was set up at the opportune time to measure the changes occurring in this environment. It’s an example of exactly the kind of place-based local research that is required to ground-truth model outputs like those published by Bosson and colleagues.
Figure 3. “Location and study site set-up. Map of location with respect to the Santa River watershed (a), and Río Negro sub-watershed (b). Map of the experiment within the Uruashraju glacier foreland (c). The glacier retreat outlines were produced and provided by the ANA (Área de Evaluación de Glaciares y Lagunas, Autoridad Nacional del Agua, Huaraz) based on topographic field surveys of the glacier fronts since 1948, and analysis of photographs. Maps generated by authors with licensed software ArcGIS Pro 3.0.2 (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-pro/).” Source: Zimmer et al., 2023.
Within four llama inclusion plots and four control plots, the authors collected soil samples, measured plant diversity and productivity, and sampled llama dung piles (Figure 4). The plots with llamas were shown to have greatly increased soil organic carbon and soil nitrogen, along with a 57 percent increase in vascular plant cover during the final two years studied. In the llama plot, the authors also identified four new species that were not present prior to 2019. Some of these results were attributed to the fact that llamas can carry seeds from lower elevations or other valleys to post-glacial ecosystems, potentially initiating this regrowth.
Figure 4. “Experimental design and in situ surveys. Design of the experiment (a), Llama glama within a llama plot (b), 1m² vegetation subplot (c), seedling germinated from llama feces found within the experiment in June 2022 (d).” Source: Zimmer et al., 2023.
Following three years of field data collection and statistical analyses, Zimmer and colleagues found that “the presence of llamas had a substantial impact on the primary vegetation succession at the Uruashraju glacier foreland.” In other words, post-glaciated areas where llamas were active on the landscape had significantly more biodiverse plant communities than those without.
In Peru, local communities are beginning to re-introduce llamas and other Andean camelids (vicuña, alpaca, and guanaco) at high elevations, confirming local knowledge of the benefits these mammals can provide. Importantly for similar regions around the world, the study findings provide insight into the possible future management and conservation of these newly exposed post-glacial ecosystems through rewilding interventions of other large mammal species that can play a critical role in the spread and germination of seeds.
Climate adaptation strategies
A review article published in 2022 by Thomas Ranius and colleagues compiled recommendations from 74 research papers for how to adapt current conservation strategies of protected areas, such as wilderness areas and national parks, in the face of climate change. While the article does not focus on post-glacial landscapes, its findings are relevant to glacial areas, most of which are found in protected areas.
The authors found that research conducted in this space produced recommendations that fell mostly into five main categories: “(i) Ensure sufficient connectivity; (ii) Protect climate refugia; (iii) Protect a few large rather than many small areas; (iv) Protect areas predicted to become important for biodiversity in the future; and (v) Complement permanently protected areas with temporary protection.” These recommendations could be applied individually or collectively, depending on the climate adaptation needs at the local scale of each protected area.
When considering these recommendations in the context of a glacial and post-glacial environment, the most important suggestion is to protect areas predicted to become important for biodiversity in the future. The paper recommends extensive monitoring of regions that implement one or more of these recommendations to evaluate their effectiveness and to determine if further climate adaptation strategies are necessary. With post-glacial ecosystems so rapidly expanding in a changing climate, the authors underscore the urgent need for greater research and monitoring of these habitats to help inform conservation decision-making.
Ultimately, local managers of protected areas will need to decide which climate adaptation strategies are best suited for their environments. Locally relevant adaptation strategies, such as the reintroduction of llamas in the Peruvian Andes, helped to boost biodiversity. Elsewhere, the five recommendations from the scientific literature discussed here could be used to protect biodiversity in newly ice-free habitats.
Cumulatively, these articles urge further study and monitoring of current climate adaptation strategies at the base of mountain glaciers. Recent news articles also call for future environmental policies that consider adaptation strategies for both biodiversity loss and climate change together, instead of approaching them separately.
We cannot fully stop glaciers from receding, but through better stewardship of the exposed novel ecosystems, we can help them succeed in being more productive carbon sinks and better habitats for diverse flora and fauna.
The post When The Glaciers Are Gone: Managing For Biodiversity appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.
By Emilio Mateo Mountain glaciers and polar ice caps are experiencing extensive and increasingly fast loss rates as global temperatures warm. The well-documented retreat of mountain glaciers will have severe ecological and societal costs as the shift to a post-glacial…
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This post is the second in a series titled “Real Talk on Reliability,” which will examine the reliability needs of our grid as we move toward 100% clean electricity and electrify more end-uses on the path to a climate stable future. It was written by Sara Baldwin, senior director of the Electrification Program at Energy Innovation, with featured contributor Dr. Michael Milligan. A shorter version of this article was published in Utility Dive.
In 2000, the electricity grid earned the distinction as the top engineering achievement of the twentieth century by the National Academy of Engineering. Even with this badge of honor, the grid needs help as the country transitions from relying on fossil fuels to clean electricity. While a clean energy future is necessary, it comes with its own challenges as aging fossil field plants retire and new resources come online. Just as the introduction of the first smart phone prompted skepticism about its future in a world dominated by landlines, so do these new resources . This is especially true when it comes to their ability (and incentives) to provide essential reliability services (ERS).
The transformation to new, clean energy resources is already underway, and reliability considerations must change apace. Luckily, these new resources are more than capable of providing ERS. Now, grid operators must gain confidence that the reliability services from these clean, renewable resources are available when needed, and regulations and market signals must align with these needs.
The Reliable Operation of the Grid is Apple Pie, Reliability Services Are the Slices
Grid reliability during real-time operation is determined in large part by the deployment of reliability services, or grid services, which depend on the attributes and responsive characteristics of different energy resources. If reliable operation of the grid is apple pie, reliability services represent the slices of the pie.
The electricity grid is subject to the laws of physics, which means electricity supply and demand must always be kept in balance to maintain relatively constant frequency and voltage. During normal operations, relatively small changes occurring in each moment must be matched by corresponding changes in resource output to maintain balance.
If the supply-demand imbalance becomes too large, this imbalance could lead to emergency grid operations. In the extreme, something more severe, including rolling outages or damage to equipment or appliances, could occur. Think of a cup of water filled to the brim or a tightrope walker maintaining equilibrium at great heights. In either case, any amount of disturbance beyond a nominal amount will result in a spill. Such is the grid.
Source: The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) provides a useful real-time graph a grid operating at a nominal frequency of 60 Hz. The x-axis is time, the y-axis is frequency in hertz (Hz), which measures the number of wave cycles passing through a given point in a second.
Much like the ingredients in an apple pie recipe, every machine, technology, and software operating to supply electricity has different characteristics that enable them to respond to the laws of physics and provide different contributions to grid reliability. Importantly, not every resource must provide all types of reliability services, but the entire pie, or portfolio, must be able to respond appropriately to bring the grid back to balance and resume “normal” operating conditions.
To maintain stability, each grid service available in the portfolio acts in a particular time frame. For example, fast frequency response occurs in the seconds immediately following a disturbance to slow decline, and is followed by primary frequency response, which stabilizes frequency. Economic dispatch, which as the name suggests is grounded in economics, typically operates at a five-minute time step, and longer time steps are typically managed by automatic or manual dispatch through market mechanisms. The entire portfolio must have some level of flexibility to provide all of these in a changing environment.
When more major disturbances occur, the pie must have sufficient disturbance ride-through capabilities to maintain frequency and voltage to keep resources on-line through moments of instability. In the case of a generator tripping offline the grid’s entire portfolio must be capable of providing reliability services to avoid a more severe cascading effect, illustrated in the image below.
Source: Milligan Grid Solutions
Similarly, the voltage of the grid must be maintained at nominal levels continuously and be able to respond in response to a disturbance. Maintaining stable voltage is critical to keeping the lights on and avoiding equipment damage, and it requires a different set of capabilities, such as reactive power control, allowing for voltage control in the alternating current (AC) network.
Ma Bell, Meet Smart Phone
Grid operators traditionally obtained reliability services from large thermal units and rotating machines (e.g., coal-fired, nuclear, and hydro-electric power plants) because the physical attributes of those machines provided the grid services needed. Their large, spinning mass provides inertia, which helps contribute to grid stability as supply and demand fluctuate. Coal plants are designed to be synchronized with the grid, so if the frequency drops, the rotating inertia of the coal plant will provide upward “pressure” on the frequency drop, but it will gradually slow down (like taking your foot off the accelerator in your car). This “coasting” bolsters the grid frequency so that other resources can respond, bringing the frequency back up to the right level (in slightly longer time frames). Inertia on its own is not capable of restoring frequency but does help to stabilize it.
The imminent retirement of dozens of coal plants, which have historically provided inertial response during a grid disturbance, is prompting new questions about the ability of renewables and storage to provide this inertia.
Such a task is not as straightforward. Grid reliability expert and former NREL Principal Researcher at the Electric Systems Integration Facility Dr. Michael Milligan explains that “new resources behave differently than incumbent resources.” For example, IBRs can provide nearly instantaneous fast frequency response (FFR), which results in a steeper slope of the initial decline, but frequency can be arrested much sooner than in the traditional case. Therefore, the decline in inertia caused by large thermal retirements and replacement by IBRs does not necessarily pose a problem for the grid; but ongoing studies evaluate these tradeoffs.
Renewable energy, such as solar and wind, for example, connect to the grid via inverters which convert the direct current (DC) they generate to AC flow of the grid. Unlike their rotating machine predecessors (also called synchronous resources), these are asynchronously connected to the grid and either partially or completely interface through power electronics. They can be programmed via their inverter and digital software to provide reliability services, but not always in the same way. Also known as inverter-based resources, or IBRs, they ramp up and down much more quickly than a conventional power plant, making them more responsive to changing grid conditions. During the hottest summer on record, states and electric grids with more renewables and energy storage have fared well. These resources have helped balance the grid during times of spiking demand for cooling combined with the stresses of extreme temperatures on grid infrastructure. Nonetheless, while “there is an emerging recognition that inverter-based resources can provide certain grid services,” says Milligan, “greater awareness is needed [on how].”
Fortunately, we’re learning that even in the absence of most or all inertial response, IBRs can respond nearly immediately after the triggering event. With sufficient IBRs, the frequency drop can be arrested more quickly, and the IBRs can even act quickly to help restore the nominal frequency. However, the technical characteristics and benefits of this fast frequency response are not as well understood as the traditional incumbents, and doubt remains that IBRs will provide fast frequency response. More collaborative research and investigation into these capabilities is warranted now, before the retirements occur. One such study compared the grid services from a wind plant, a gas plant, and a coal plant and found that wind could provide certain services faster. See illustrative example in figure below.
Comparison between a wind plant and gas turbine after grid disturbance. Source: FERC Docket EL23-28, Exhibit A
In addition, there must be a greater focus on strategies to integrate renewables into markets and compensate them in such a way that reflects their ability to respond. For example, renewable energy developers may be disinclined to program their resources to ride through a voltage event if such a setting could compromise their asset. Going forward, utilities and grid operators should be working to quantify and understand how IBRs can respond during a grid emergency—in some cases the IBRs may be capable of providing a superior response, but they must be sufficiently compensated for doing so.
Batteries, one of the fastest growing new resources, are untapped sources of reliability services. New advanced controls allow batteries to provide stability that has traditionally delivered by conventional synchronous generators (known as grid forming). As these new battery resources come online, there is a ripe opportunity for evaluating their performance. In fact, batteries are already showing their value – a recent grid reliability event in Texas saw a large frequency decline that risked outages stabilized by largely by energy storage. Demand-side technologies also represent an untapped source of ERS.
Addressing Uncertainties About Clean Energy Technologies
Yet, while IBRs are moving quickly to adapt their programming to enhance their grid performance, some recent incidents with IBRs have raised concerns among reliability experts. For example, ERCO has seen large amounts of solar and wind trip offline in response to a grid fault. The largest of them, the Odessa Disturbance 2 incident in June 2021 involved 14 solar facilities and resulting in the loss of over 1.5 gigawatts of solar power.
While these incidents are uncommon, they spotlight the need for appropriate responses to avoid their occurrence in the future. ERCOT has established an IBR working group make recommended improvements and mitigate future potential risks. The North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) has formed an IBR performance task force working to address innovative solutions. Another notable collaborative network for research and emerging practices is the Energy Systems Integration Group, as well as numerous efforts being spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Energy and various national laboratories.
Early efforts to achieve consensus around technical performance and any accompanying standards will aid grid operators eager for near-term solutions and new approaches.
Operating a reliable grid requires institutional reforms
Numerous factors impact reliability that must evolve apace of the technologies themselves. For example, energy market rules and economic incentives (often subject to government policies and regulatory requirements), dictate how the energy resources and technologies can (and will) operate on the grid. Ideally, a combination of carrots and sticks can effectively influence grid reliability and performance. They should reflect the real-world operating characteristics of various technologies, allowing and encouraging resources to “show up” with the requisite grid services and in the quantities required by the laws of physics.
Similarly, grid operators, working diligently to ensure the technologies available today are ready and available to provide the necessary grid services, have a role to play in facilitating needed changes: whether through programming a device or piece of equipment, or ensuring the settings allow for certain characteristics to be made available. Shifting how the grid is operated requires more awareness of the dynamic capabilities of IBRs, and appropriate rules and market signals to call on those capabilities during times of need. As IBRs replace traditional resources, inadequate market mechanisms may result in fewer grid services, which could result in a combination of higher prices or strain grid reliability.
Those tasked with grid planning must evaluate the full potential of new resources to ensure the grid of the future can provide needed services based on new and emerging technologies. Such plans should evaluate the real and potential risks (including those caused by climate change-induced extreme weather). In the face of so many emerging and pervasive threats, grid planning is taking on a new level of importance. “If you can’t plan a reliable system, you can’t possibly operate a reliable system,” says Dr. Milligan.
And, as utilities and grid operators deal with mounting challenges in the face of more intense storms, solutions should aim to “make the grid larger than the storm,” says Milligan. This could include more transmission between grid market regions, better coordination between grid systems on emergency response, and planning, and working to ensure market rules sufficiently incentivize IBRs from providing grid services. Investments in grid hardening will also play a role in adaptation to climate change.
A New Recipe for the Pie, Aligned with the Laws of Physics
If essential reliability services are the slices of the pie, it means that adapting to changes already requires an update to the recipe. IBRs can provide much – and perhaps all – of what we need, but new approaches and thinking are needed. Beyond efforts to understand and embrace new technological capabilities, we need to also be asking better questions, such as “how can fast frequency response replace inertia? How do we incentivize resources to provide needed services? Will market designs prevent or inhibit these incentives?” says Milligan. Collaborative research can help, but acceptance of findings and adoption of new approaches can facilitate an expedited evolution.
The post The Future Of Operational Grid Reliability Can Be Bright With Clean Energy appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.
This post is the second in a series titled “Real Talk on Reliability,” which will examine the reliability needs of our grid as we move toward 100% clean electricity and electrify more end-uses on the path to a climate stable…
The post The Future Of Operational Grid Reliability Can Be Bright With Clean Energy appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
Energy Innovation partners with the independent nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) to provide climate and energy research updates. The research synopsis below comes from AGCI’s Tanya Petach. A full list of AGCI’s updates is available online.
Aerial view of floating photovoltaic panels on a lake. Image credit: Solar AquaGrid
In arid river basins around the globe, substantial water supply is lost through evaporation. A recent estimate of global reservoir evaporative losses found that annual water volume loss was equivalent to 70 percent of all global municipal water withdrawals in 2010. Nearly one-third of all reservoirs evaporative losses in the world occur in Canada and the United States. Evaporation rates in the United States are especially high, due in part to the fact that the two largest U.S. reservoirs (Lake Powell and Lake Mead) are located in the hot, dry deserts of the Southwest. And evaporation doesn’t just impact reservoirs—it also desiccates irrigation canals, ditches, and holding ponds.
Lake Powell and Lake Mead, both on the Colorado River, have experienced long-term drying trends since the turn of the millennium. Due to a combination of prolonged drought, water overuse, and warming temperatures, these reservoirs lost 61 percent of their full storage volume from January 2000 to April 2023. While this year’s hefty Rocky Mountain snowpack helped alleviate the impacts of the last 23 years of drought, one good snow year isn’t enough to bail the Colorado River out of long-term drought.
Lake Mead water elevation from 1970 to present. The vertical red line represents the start of the Millennium Drought in 2000. Lake Mead reached peak capacity in 1983; in August 2023, Lake Mead was 33 percent full at 1,061 ft. Data source: Bureau of Reclamation.
As water availability decreases in the Colorado River Basin, water use is more highly scrutinized. Alongside municipal, agricultural, and industrial users, evaporation is a stealth water consumer. The Southern Nevada Water Authority recently estimated that approximately 12 percent of the Colorado River’s total annual flow is lost to evaporation and other system elements (e.g., infiltration into ditch banks). In a water-stressed basin where the federal government pays billions of dollars for modest water savings, 12 percent loss adds up to a lot of water. Currently, these losses aren’t well accounted for in the Lower Colorado River, but some experts are urging policymakers to do just that.
While reservoir evaporation contributes to water scarcity in the Colorado River and other arid river basins, water managers are beginning to focus on mitigating evaporative losses. One approach to attenuating this loss is to cover reservoirs and irrigation ditches in shading materials such as the 96 million “shade balls” that were deployed in 2015 to shade Los Angeles Reservoir in California. In recent years, focus has shifted to shading reservoirs and irrigation infrastructure in dual-purpose materials such as photovoltaics, or PV. Pairing PV with water infrastructure has centered around two techniques: floating PV and PV-covered irrigation canals.
Floating photovoltaics involve the installation of solar panels on top of foam, buoys, and other structures that float on the surface of reservoirs, lakes, and ponds. These systems tend to produce energy more efficiently than land-based PV, due in large part to the cooler temperatures of PV over water bodies than on land. As a result, pairing PV with water infrastructure has gained momentum in recent decades as a technique to decrease reservoir evaporation and increase renewable energy production.
Floating photovoltaics are thriving in Asia, which hosts 97 percent of globally installed floating PV, primarily in China, Japan, and Korea. This win-win technology is enticing to reservoir operators, power companies, and municipalities. Project locations include Alicante, Spain, where seven percent of a small irrigation reservoir was covered in floating PV to offset agricultural power needs; the United Kingdom, where six percent of the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir was covered in floating PV for municipal power generation; and Colorado, where the town of Walden is using floating PV to offset power requirements for water treatment.
These plants are relatively new, so energy yields and water savings are far below their full global potential. Theoretically, covering 30 percent of the 100,000 reservoirs around the globe with floating PV has the potential to yield 9,434 terawatt-hours annually, according to a Nature Sustainability article by Yubin Jin and colleagues published earlier this year—the equivalent of approximately 40 percent of global electricity use in 2021. Since reservoirs are often located near communities and metropolitan areas, floating photovoltaics have the potential to produce large quantities of power close to energy consumers. This co-location strategy can decrease transportation and line losses, increasing the overall efficiency of the system. Jin and colleagues estimate that over 150 metropolitan areas could become self-sufficient with local floating PV plants. Globally, producing energy with floating PV on reservoirs could potentially save 106 cubic kilometers of water from evaporative losses each year, a volume equivalent to almost 25 percent of annual household water use in the United States.
The two major reservoirs in the Lower Colorado River remain part of this theoretical future yield. Neither Lake Powell nor Lake Mead has yet tapped into floating PV to curb reservoir evaporation—though studies suggest that 10 percent coverage of Lake Mead could yield enough water savings and power production for Las Vegas and Reno combined.
While the sunny Southwest is slow to adopt floating PV on reservoirs, there is a healthy appetite for PV-covered irrigation canals. Inspired by a University of California, Merced study by Brandi McKuin and colleagues that highlighted potential water savings and energy production from PV-covered irrigation canals in the region, the Turlock Irrigation District in California’s Central Valley is poised to break ground on a project deploying PV over its irrigation canals this fall. The Turlock Irrigation project is a partnership between the irrigation district, a private solar company (Solar AquaGrid), the California Department of Water Resources, and a research group at the University of California, Merced. In a similar vein, the Gila River Indian Community in central Arizona received funding this year from the Bureau of Reclamation for water conservation infrastructure, including PV-covered ditches and canals. And the appetite for PV-covered irrigation infrastructure is far from sated. A letter to the Secretary of the Interior in July, 2023, from a variety of advocacy organizations, requested urgent action to deploy more photovoltaics over irrigation canals.
Rendering of future photovoltaic-covered canal in the Turlock Irrigation District, California. (Image Source: Solar AquaGrid)
While the potential from floating PV on reservoirs and PV-covered canals is massive, the technology remains relatively unproven. Environmental concerns include metal leaching, ecosystem impairment, and decreased light intensity in aquatic ecosystems under the installations. Results from a pilot study on Oostvoornse Lake in the Netherlands show that floating photovoltaics reduce light intensity by 70 to 100 percent under installations, with potential cascading impacts on lake ecosystems. Yet researchers note that traditional PV installations also cause considerable environmental impacts, and direct comparisons are complex. In addition to environmental risks, floating photovoltaics have higher installation costs and raise more maintenance concerns than land-based solar.
Despite these challenges, pairing PV and water infrastructure has enormous potential to help re-stabilize water supplies in the Colorado River and other drought-stricken regions around the planet. In the arid Southwest, intensified scrutiny on evaporative losses, requests for increased federal interest for paired water infrastructure-PV systems, and bold exemplar projects like the PV-covered canal systems in the Turlock Irrigation District and Gila River Indian Community are ushering in a new approach to water management, with massive potential for expansion. As reservoir evaporation continues to squander large quantities of water in arid regions worldwide, it is time to keep the momentum moving forward toward next-generation sustainable solutions at the water-energy nexus.
The post More Water And More Energy: The Potential Win-Win Of Floating Photovoltaics appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.
Energy Innovation partners with the independent nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) to provide climate and energy research updates. The research synopsis below comes from AGCI’s Tanya Petach. A full list of AGCI’s updates is available online. In arid river basins…
The post More Water And More Energy: The Potential Win-Win Of Floating Photovoltaics appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
This piece was authored by Muhammad Abdullah, an 2023 summer Transportation Policy intern with Energy Innovation and Energy Innovation’s Chris Busch, Director Transportation and Senior Economist.
Ella Kissi-Debrah was born, raised, and died a tragically early death in south London, a hot spot for motor vehicle pollution. Ella’s autopsy found that at even at nine years old, her death was triggered by chronic exposure to the nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter from motor vehicle exhaust.[1] Per the coroner’s report, “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.” [2]
Vehicle pollution contributing to an untimely death is all too common of a story. Commercial freight vehicles cause much of this damage because of their diesel engines, which are well-suited for hauling commercial loads but also create more hazardous pollution.
Diesel exhaust contains 40 cancer-causing substances as well as high levels of particulate matter, or fine soot.[3] As a result, diesel truck emissions are particularly harmful to human health, contributing to respiratory disease, hospitalization, cancer, and even premature deaths like Ella’s.[4] Motor vehicle exhaust causes an estimated four million new asthma cases in kids each year, or 11,000 per day, according to the World Health Organization.[5] Globally, transportation – cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships – are responsible for around 360,00 deaths each year, where diesel-fueled vehicles are responsible for almost half (47 percent) of this premature death toll.[6]
Fortunately, technological advances mean cleaner alternatives are increasingly available. But further policy action is needed to speed their adoption.
MORE AMBITIOUS POLICY TO CAPITALIZE ON GROWING MOMENTUM
The International Energy Agency’s climate roadmap concludes zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) trucks have the fifth largest potential for greenhouse gas reductions of any technology, across all economic sectors.[7] Today, freight carrying ZEVs are on the rise, owing to growing technological maturity and steady market gains.[8] Globally, ZEV truck sales doubled in 2022, reaching 1.2 percent of sales,[9] and are expected to double again in 2023.[10] Meanwhile, from 2021 to 2023, the number of ZEV trucks available on the market jumped from 200 to 350 models.[11] Such trends make a rapid transition to zero-emission trucks possible, but depend on policymakers creating stronger measures to support ZEV truck adoption.
Divergence of Zero-Emission Truck Sales with Current vs. Recommended Policy
Current trends show ZEV truck sales falling short of the levels needed to fully realize their potential. Today, ZEVs are forecasted to grow to 9 to 13 percent of truck sales in 2030 as shown above. To reach our climate goals, global ZEV trucks sales should reach at least 30 percent, according to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Energy roadmap.[15] A 30 percent ZEV truck sales target has also been adopted by the Commercial Drive to Zero initiative, a coalition including 27 countries as well as major companies and financial institutions.[16]
Policymakers should aim for ZEV trucks to grow to at least 45 percent of 2030 sales, according to the respected International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).[17] ICCT recommended this level to members of the ZEV Transition Council commits members to an accelerated ZEV transition and includes nations representing more than half of global new vehicles sales.[18] The 45 percent ZEV truck sales target is recommended due to expected widespread “commercial availability” as well as “cost of ownership projections,” pointing to electric trucks being cheaper in the 2030s.[19]
CALIFORNIA AT THE FOREFRONT ON ZERO EMISSION TRUCK POLICY
California has been at the forefront on zero-emission truck policies over the past two years, spurred by growing opportunities for scaling ZEV trucks up and diesel’s continued public health toll. Though California has been a leader in clean transportation for decades, diesel exhaust is estimated to be responsible for 70 percent of the cancer risk for the state’s residents attributable to toxic air contaminants, causing around 1,400 premature deaths each year.[20]
California’s ZEV truck policy is state-of-the-art with the recent Advanced Clean Fleet policy, adopted in April of this year.[21] This policy sets a 2036 timeline for a 100 percent transition to zero emission technology in new truck sales.[22] Another Advanced Clean Fleets policy innovation is that it phases in increasing ZEV purchase requirement for commercial vehicle fleets, providing the demand-side of the ZEV transition while freeing up scare public revenue for other investments.[23]
WHAT NEXT
New vehicle sales standards are vital for an effective policy strategy. Considering the magnitude of the stakes and the opportunity, other major markets for new trucks need to increase their 2030 ambition, ideally targeting 45 percent ZEV truck sales in that year. Proposed policy in Europe would reach this level, requiring greenhouse gas reductions of 45 percent in 2030 and increasing to 90 percent in 2040.[24] The recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposal is not quite as ambitious and is expected to lead to 2032 new trucks sales of 43 percent ZEVs.[25] Of the largest markets China’s adoption of heavy trucks has been fastest, but China has not set out quantitative targets for ZEV trucks so far.[26]
New vehicle sales standards on their own are insufficient and must be supported by a comprehensive portfolio of policies. We suggest a portfolio that includes consumer incentives, industry standards development, charging infrastructure adequacy, economic development, and equity considerations, such as ensuring smaller trucking operations can access ZEV technology.[27]
Development of a West Coast electric trucking corridor along the I-5 interstate from San Diego to British Columbia began in 2020. Recently, Tesla proposed a high speed truck charging corridor connecting the south Texas border (Laredo) with northern California (Freemont in the Bay Area) leveraging inflation reduction act incentives.
Inflation Reduction Act Spurs Plans for a Zero-Emission Trucking Corridor
Source: Bloomberg [28]
For officials, it can be challenging to formulate policy amidst technology and market change. Still, considering the available climate, health, economic, and equity benefits, policymakers should prioritize the accelerated transition for ZEV trucks to fully realize their potential.
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This piece was authored by Muhammad Abdullah, an 2023 summer Transportation Policy intern with Energy Innovation and Energy Innovation’s Chris Busch, Director Transportation and Senior Economist. Ella Kissi-Debrah was born, raised, and died a tragically early death in south London,…
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This piece was authored by Paulina Vazquez Robles
The U.S. has some of the world’s best offshore wind resources, but we’ve barely begun to tap into them– to date, only seven offshore wind turbines are spinning in U.S. waters. But harnessing the country’s tremendous offshore wind potential is necessary to hit our climate targets while creating huge numbers of jobs and building a 21st century clean energy economy.
A new report– the 2035 and Beyond: Abundant, Affordable Offshore Wind Can Accelerate Our Clean Electricity Future report—examines offshore wind’s potential benefits and what we need to do to bring them to fruition. Investing in offshore wind could diversify power supply, bring economic growth, and cut climate pollution. In fact, by 2050 offshore wind could create up to 390,000 new jobs and supply 10 to 25 percent of the country’s electricity. But the next decade is critical for laying the groundwork for offshore wind’s growth.
Getting steel in the water
For an ambitious offshore buildout to be feasible, federal and state governments must support the growth of a domestic supply chain and facilitate offshore wind development. Ensuring access to the equipment needed to build an offshore wind farm and revitalizing ports to be suitable for offshore wind construction are key.
State governments can aid in the transportation and construction of offshore wind turbines by investing in ports, making them accessible for offshore wind. The offshore wind site identification process is also an area where federal and state governments can provide assistance. Facilitating the permitting process through additional funding and increasing baseline data collection before leasing can help provide certainty for developers, environmental organizations, and fisheries to support the industry’s growth.
Stages of timeline for offshore wind development as discussed in the 2035 and Beyond Offshore Wind Report by Energy Innovation
Soliciting stakeholder feedback will also play an important role in harnessing the country’s offshore wind resources. Federal and state governments should take deliberate steps to include nearby communities in the planning process. Coastal areas, Tribes, fishing groups, and environmental organizations, among others, should take advantage of opportunities to provide input on proposed offshore wind projects, and the federal government should provide funding to help underrepresented groups participate. Including these voices in the early stages of planning will help ensure successful projects while ensuring strong community support.
Training an offshore wind workforce
Offshore wind can also play an important role in a just energy transition by providing new opportunities for legacy fossil fuel workers. Federal and state governments can help facilitate this transition by creating training programs to provide the needed skills and knowledge to workers for offshore wind jobs. Offshore oil and gas workers can play an important role in offshore wind construction, as they have many transferable skills and knowledge needed to build ocean energy infrastructure.
Offshore wind career pathways include registered apprenticeships, particularly through unions, workforce readiness programs that partner with registered apprenticeships, community colleges, and transfer from the maritime and oil and gas industries from 2035 and Beyond Offshore Wind Report by Energy Innovation
Reaping offshore wind’s benefits
The benefits of establishing an offshore wind industry to the U.S are abundant. Investing in offshore wind would diversify U.S. electricity supplies, helping to create a more reliable and resilient grid and helping us meet our climate goals. As the demand for electricity grows, it’s important to have different sources of energy to reduce risks. Offshore wind complements solar and land-based wind well by generating significant power particularly at times when the sun is going down and consumers increase electricity use. It also blows strong and steady, with many offshore wind sites so productive that they can generate electricity at their maximum output more than half the time. This output is on par with or even exceeds that of many fossil fuel plants – in 2021, coal plants on average only produced their maximum power 46% of the time for land-constrained states on the East Coast, it also offers opportunities to harness clean energy that don’t otherwise exist.
Offshore wind also offers a generational economic opportunity, as it can create jobs for both local communities and in land-locked states where offshore wind components can be manufactured—there could be up to 390,000 offshore wind jobs by 2050. Much of that comes from building a domestic supply chain– dozens of new manufacturing facilities are needed to support a robust U.S. offshore wind industry.
Facilities required for domestic offshore wind manufacturing capacity needed to support 250,500 and 750 GW of offshore wind by 2050 from 2035 and Beyond Offshore Wind Report by Energy Innovation
Investing in offshore wind could help the U.S accomplish its energy goals, provide economic growth, and help to diversify power supply. However, to attain these benefits both state and federal governments need to support offshore wind development, and the coming decade is key for laying the foundation for a growing industry. Our economy will lose out on this opportunity and our climate goals are at risk if we don’t take action now.
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This piece was authored by Paulina Vazquez Robles The U.S. has some of the world’s best offshore wind resources, but we’ve barely begun to tap into them– to date, only seven offshore wind turbines are spinning in U.S. waters. But…
The post Harnessing U.S. Offshore Wind Is A Generational Opportunity To Create Jobs And Cut Climate Pollution appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
With a significant uptake in electric vehicles (EVs) hitting the road, drivers will need to learn a new skill: determining how much it costs to fill up their EV. Unlike gasoline prices that are clearly displayed on roads nationwide, most people don’t know the cost of electricity in their state or city, let alone what a kilowatt hour is. Most EV fill up calculators require users to enter this information or enter the battery size of their vehicle. Additionally, gas-powered vehicles average over 400 miles on one fill up, while average EV range hit 291 miles last year. Comparing the cost to fill up a gas-powered vehicle to an electric vehicle isn’t an apple-to-apples comparison. The EV Fill Up Tool is designed to remove these barriers for a driver (or potential driver) of an EV. The tool knows the average gasoline and electricity prices in a selected state. It also knows a vehicle’s average range on a fully charged battery or tank of gas. It will give the user a true comparison of what it costs to fill up a gas-powered vehicle when compared to EV alternatives.
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With a significant uptake in electric vehicles (EVs) hitting the road, drivers will need to learn a new skill: determining how much it costs to fill up their EV. Unlike gasoline prices that are clearly displayed on roads nationwide, most…
The post EV Fill Up Savings appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
Energy Innovation partners with the independent nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) to provide climate and energy research updates. The research synopsis below comes from AGCI James C. Arnott. A full list of AGCI’s updates is available online at https://www.agci.org/resources?type=research-reviews.
Image by czu_czu_PL via pixabay
The U.S. Surgeon General recently made a stunning announcement proclaiming a national epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Alongside his pronouncement came a report with a chilling takeaway that lacking social connection can equal the health impacts of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The report documents alarming trends: loneliness among young people has increased every year since 1976, and Americans across the age spectrum spend 24 hours more per month alone than they did in 2003.
Beyond health impacts, such isolation can erode a community’s capacity to build social capital and cohesion, vital capacities for responding to the shocks of extreme weather and climate-related disasters. Surprisingly, the words “climate” or “climate change” do not appear even once in the Surgeon General’s report, even though it explores wide-ranging implications of and solutions for social isolation, including “natural hazards.” Several recent social science and interdisciplinary studies, however, have started to explore aspects of this connection.
Late last year, two health researchers from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, André Hajek and Hans-Helmut König, reported an association between climate anxiety and perceived social isolation. They surveyed over 3,000 people living in Germany, using questions designed to test levels of loneliness, isolation, and climate anxiety. Respondents also provided demographic and lifestyle details, such as age, gender, location, and alcohol/smoking habits. When these factors are included, the survey data analysis found an association between climate anxiety and both loneliness and social isolation. Higher levels of loneliness and isolation were significantly associated with higher levels of climate anxiety for the overall population and for those between the ages of 18–64.
Interestingly, the study found no significant association for respondents aged 65–74, and the actual magnitude of association (i.e., effect size), even when statistically significant, was low to moderate. Furthermore, while the study demonstrated a correlation, it was unable to explain whether loneliness breeds climate anxiety, or whether climate anxiety or some other factor may be driving loneliness and isolation.
Even with these limitations, the extent to which climate anxiety might depress action on climate solutions—thereby fueling a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle—raises concerning questions about the broader relationship between social disconnection and environmental action.
To get at this question, two Australian psychologists, Madelin Duong and Pamela Pensini of Monash University, examined the relationship between connectedness and pro-environmental behavior (PEB)––the actions an individual may take to try to minimize or reverse negative impacts on the environment. Their work, which was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, draws on an online survey of 632 Australian adults who self-rated their connectedness to their community, nation, all humanity, and nature. Respondents also answered 22 questions about whether they had performed various kinds of PEBs in the previous six months as well as 10 items aimed at understanding respondents’ underlying orientation toward “prosocial behaviors” (e.g., one item read “Having a lot of money is not important to me.”).
Based on the responses, the authors constructed a statistical model to predict the likelihood of an individual performing PEBs (see Figure 1). They found that prosocial tendencies (described in Figure 1 as “Honesty-Humility”), along with connectedness to nature, community, and humanity, are significant positive predictors of PEB; that is, the more self-reported feeling of connectedness, the higher probability a respondent would have reported PEBs. Connectedness to nature was the largest positive predictor, but connectedness to community was also significant. Interestingly, connectedness to nation was shown to be a negative predictor, even though it was positively associated with prosocial behavior.
This study reinforces an intuition many environmental advocates may already hold––that a meaningful connection to community or nature provides individuals a compelling sense of relevance or motivation to act. The survey results suggest that connection to one’s nation may not actually facilitate, or could even hinder, PEB. While these interpretations are interesting, the study design and context mainly construct a framework of PEB that requires further testing beyond the confines of a single online survey in one country.
Figure 1 The model describing the relationship between Honesty-Humility and Pro-Environmental Behaviour (PEB) mediated by Connectedness to Nature, Connectedness to Humanity, Connectedness to Community, and Connectedness to Nation. Alpha and beta (a, b) values indicate the relative magnitude of connection between constructs, and p-values evaluate their statistical significance.
How individuals are connected to their community and the attributes of community cohesion also affect how people are impacted by natural, or increasingly human-made, climate disasters. A recent U.S. multi-author study in Environment International led by P. Grace Tee Lewis of Environmental Defense Fund makes explicit the social and community factors that shape widely varying levels of climate vulnerabilities in the United States. Creating a “Climate Vulnerability Index” (CVI), the authors build on efforts dating back to a landmark 2003 paper led by Susan Cutter, which first attempted to map the social factors contributing to environmental hazard vulnerability (Cutter, Boruff, & Shirley, 2003). That paper created the first ever Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), which explicitly considered how variables like socioeconomic status, family structure, and local infrastructure shape how communities experience the physical impacts of a disaster.
Tee Lewis and colleagues draw upon an updated version of the SoVI and numerous other datasets to formulate their CVI, which is intended to help pinpoint, down to the census tract level, opportunities for investing in historically low-income communities, such as through the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative, which prioritizes such regions to receive at least 40% of the benefits of federal climate and clean energy investments.
The CVI incorporates 200 health, socioeconomic, infrastructure, and climate risk variables, including some specifically related to social connectedness, such as the number of civic and social organizations in a community and self-reported mental health. When these factors are incorporated, even areas that expect relatively lower physical impacts from climate change, such as many parts of Alaska, can still experience harm based on their baseline vulnerabilities.
Figure 2. Maps of overall CVI and components for all 50 US states and District of Columbia (n = 3,221 counties). Spatial distribution of county median CVI score for (a) all 184 indicators (overall index score), (b) limited to Baseline Vulnerability domains (n = 139 indicators), and (c) Climate Change Impact indicators (n = 45 indicators), and individual category domains (d-j). Higher index scores correspond to higher vulnerability or risk. Source: Tee Lewis et al., 2023.
Integrated geospatial datasets like the CVI are limited by relying solely on datasets that can be uniformly applied (and even then, this study relies on sparse data for Alaska and Hawaii). But the CVI can help pinpoint potential social drivers of vulnerability in a specific context and thus inform more tailored capacity-building actions. For instance, a look into the top three most vulnerable census tracts of Harris County (encompassing Houston, Texas) express similarly high levels of climate variability but owe their vulnerability to different combinations of health, socioeconomic, and climatic stressors (Figure 3).
Figure 3 Census Tract Level Climate Vulnerabilities in Harris County, Texas. Colors assigned to each census tract indicate the overall CVI score. The top three ranking census tracts are highlighted by their FIPS code, score, and percentile rank, along with the ToxPI visualization of the category domain scores. For the top ranked census tract, the scores for subcategory components within each category domain are also visualized using ToxPI. Source:
Several recent studies featured here suggest that the impacts of loneliness and social disconnection may have direct relevance for our individual perceptions and actions on climate change. Yet there are real limitations to how we measure, collect, and analyze this information to draw conclusions. These studies simply provide a starting point to consider how we might link concern about loneliness and isolation, among other social variables, to climate action.
Doing so provides a real opportunity to consider the many opportunities for multi-solving, where one strategy or a combination of strategies simultaneously address multiple problems. Whether aimed at coinciding root causes or solutions with multiple co-benefits, multi-solving may reveal novel configurations of ideas or interest groups, or new ways to deploy solutions more efficiently. In the case of social disconnection amid a climate crisis, for instance, a philanthropist who wants to help restore local community vitality could consider how such an interest might dovetail with local pro-climate solutions.
The Surgeon General’s report identifies six pillars to advance social connection:
Strengthen social infrastructure in local communities
Enact pro-connection public policies
Mobilize the health sector
Reform digital environments
Deepen our knowledge
Cultivate a culture of connection
Taken at face value, these provide many jumping off points to explore what kinds of resilient, well-informed, and wellbeing-enhancing climate solutions could also help restore connection and cohesion within our nation’s communities.
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Energy Innovation partners with the independent nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) to provide climate and energy research updates. The research synopsis below comes from AGCI James C. Arnott. A full list of AGCI’s updates is available online at https://www.agci.org/resources?type=research-reviews. The…
The post Loneliness, Isolation, And Climate Solutions: Is There A Connection? appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
This article is the first in a series entitled “Real Talk on Reliability,” which will examine the reliability needs of our grid as we move toward 100% clean electricity and electrify more end-uses on the path to a climate stable future. It was written by Michelle Solomon, a senior policy analyst in the Electricity Program at Energy Innovation.
The beginning of summer brings with it sunshine and vacations for many, but increasingly these warm months are accompanied by extreme heat, a symptom exacerbated by climate change. As a result of widespread heat-waves, people and businesses crank their air conditioners for relief, increasing electricity demand and adding stress to the grid. At the same time, this electricity is getting cleaner – in 2022 the United States generated 40 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources. Fifteen percent was generated from wind and solar energy, both of which are now the cheapest sources of electricity, and the fastest growing.
To help prepare the nation’s electricity grid for the season ahead, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) —the non-profit regulatory authority whose mission is to assure the effective and efficient reduction of risks to the reliability and security of the North American grids—recently released its annual summer reliability assessment.
Their report examined both the United States and Canada’s ability to meet expected summer electricity demand, including an evaluation of the risks associated with wildfires and drought, and provided short-term recommendations on how to overcome any potential shortfalls.
NERC’s findings follow a trend of the last several years, highlighting that while electricity supply is sufficient across the country under normal summer conditions, during extreme heat several regions are at risk for supply shortfalls. NERC cited the retirement of aging and expensive fossil fuel power plants as a factor in this dynamic, but also found that “increased and rapid deployment of wind, solar, and batteries make a positive difference this year,” highlighting that one of the most important tools bolstering reliability is adding new, clean generation capacity.
As we move toward a cleaner electricity system, reliability is of increasing focus for policymakers, utilities, system operators, and electricity consumers alike, and for good reason – lives depend on the power staying on.
Changing reliability considerations with the energy transition
Our grid is undeniably in transition. The shift to clean electricity and electric end-uses is picking up pace in response to federal policy and incentives, state clean energy goals, and utility leadership. In 2022 wind and solar accounted for 74 percent of new utility-scale generating capacity, while new natural gas capacity made up only 25 percent. Battery storage has also seen a meteoric rise with the addition of 4 gigawatts (GW) across the country last year in a near doubling of storage capacity. This fast-growing addition of renewables and storage is welcome as electricity demand increases and uneconomic fossil fuel plants retire. Other demand-side resources and operational changes are also in the toolbox as grid operators work quickly to manage the transition without impacting grid reliability, safety, and affordability.
With all of these changes to the physical system, we need to also evolve the way we think about reliability. Ric O’Connell, Executive Director of GridLab, highlights that one of the biggest misconceptions in the energy transition is the need for baseload power, or plants that are expensive to build but cheap to operate and therefore run almost all the time. O’Connell explains that “we know we need a portfolio of resources on the grid that, working together, can provide resource adequacy, or energy when we need it, but that portfolio does not necessarily need to include baseload or 24/7 resources.”
While the shift to this new paradigm presents challenges, we are gaining confidence in the reliability of a clean grid. Previously there was “trepidation about even adding small amounts of weather-dependent power sources like wind and solar to the grid,” said O’Connell. “Now, large, sophisticated grids in the Midwest, Texas, and California regularly run on a 70 percent or higher share of wind and solar for hours at a time.” We have proven examples of smaller grids running at even higher percentages of weather dependent resources – the island of Kauai has been able to run on 100 percent renewable energy for at least nine hours at a time. Multiple studies show that the U.S. grid can run on up to 80 percent clean electricity with technology that is available today.
To build this portfolio, utilities, regulators, and grid operators will need to be able to accurately evaluate each resource’s contribution to resource adequacy and operational reliability. As Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Allison Clements recently said, “Reliability discussions will lead to the more cost-effective solutions if they start with the data-driven analytical work required to understand and quantify the problem that we are aiming to solve.”
The nuts and bolts of reliability
While the grid shifts from a still fossil-heavy system to one that is powered by clean, carbon-free electricity generation, there are three questions we need to answer. First: can a clean, carbon-free grid offer the same or better reliability we have today? Second: can the grid be reliable as we are transitioning? And third: can a clean grid meet the demand from more electrified end-uses without compromising reliability? This series will aim to demonstrate that the answer to these questions is “yes”, but not without the correct planning and policies in place.
Before answering the above questions, it’s helpful to understand the basics of electricity reliability—a term used often, but not always consistently. There are four separate but interconnected pieces to ensuring that power from the grid is reliable. First is resource adequacy, which means having enough energy to meet demand—either in the form of supply-side generation or demand-side distributed resources. Second is reliable operation of the grid, including generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity—the monitoring and control of the system, balancing energy supply to match the demand and ensuring transmission lines and facilities stay within their safe operating limits. Third is resilience, which is the ability of the electricity system and other connected systems – like transportation, health, and safety – to ride-through or bounce back quickly in the face of outages. Connected to resilience is grid hardening, which refers to a myriad technology and operational solutions that help the grid withstand these major events without disruption.
Reliability is a characteristic of the whole electricity system, to which individual resources contribute. Every source of electricity has different characteristics that should complement each other in a balanced portfolio. With respect to resource adequacy, no resource is available 100 percent of the time. For example, solar and wind output vary over the course of the day, year, and with weather conditions, where batteries and transmission and distribution (T&D) lines move energy from when and where it is generated to when and where it is needed. Large-scale nuclear plants are built to provide consistent power but are difficult to ramp up or down to adjust supply when needed. Gas and coal plants are typically considered “dispatchable” or available on demand, but can suffer outages, particularly correlated outages in extreme weather events as seen by recent Winter Storms Uri and Elliott. Maintaining a reliable grid requires valuing every resource’s contribution accurately, and building a generation portfolio that balances supply and demand throughout the day and year.
When electricity supply and demand are matched, the electricity flows through the grid at a constant frequency and voltage but as supply and demand vary throughout the day, frequency and voltage can begin to fluctuate. Grid services are the contributions that different resources provide to maintain stability such as frequency response, voltage regulation, and more. Historically, spinning turbines powered by gas, coal, and nuclear helped ensure stability, though new solutions can compete to fill this role as public acceptance, policy, finance, and economics push conventional resources to retire. The ability of wind, solar, and batteries to provide grid services compared to spinning turbines is detailed in the below figure from Milligan Grid Solutions.
Grid services provided by inverter-based and synchronous resources. Source: Milligan Grid Solutions.
NERC, electricity providers, regulators, and system operators share responsibility for each aspect of reliability. NERC assesses national resource adequacy, sets operational reliability standards, monitors compliance with those standards, and can penalize non-compliant reliability authorities. Electricity providers plan their future resource mix and in the West and Southeast operate their bulk power systems.
In order to maintain reliability and ensure the transition goes as smoothly as possible, policymakers will need to remove barriers to building new, clean resources and connecting them to the grid. With nearly double the current U.S. generating capacity just waiting in interconnection queues across the country, new transmission lines are the “biggest barrier to adding sufficient new clean energy,” according to O’Connell, and “policy plays a critical role in how we plan, permit, and pay for transmission. Good policy means we can get the transmission built in the timeframe we need, so clean energy can come online and maintain reliability.” Additional Federal leadership is essential, but while the recent debt negotiations considered several transmission reform policies, the ultimate outcome lacked substantive action. Distribution system upgrades needed to support more electrified end-uses, such as heat pumps and electric vehicles, can also be hindered by regulatory and utility processes if they aren’t anticipated.
A clean, reliable grid capable of supporting mutual goals of decarbonization and electrification is possible, but it won’t happen on its own. The rest of this series will cover deep dives on key topics in grid reliability including: the future of reliability services with clean energy, supply- and demand-side approaches to keeping the grid reliable, the impacts of extreme weather and climate change, and the need for clean, firm power.
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This article is the first in a series entitled “Real Talk on Reliability,” which will examine the reliability needs of our grid as we move toward 100% clean electricity and electrify more end-uses on the path to a climate stable…
The post It’s Time To Rethink Grid Reliability appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]
Energy Innovation partners with the independent nonprofit Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) to provide climate and energy research updates. The research synopsis below comes from AGCI Program Director Emily Jack-Scott and AGCI Program Associate Devan Crane. A full list of AGCI’s updates is available online at https://www.agci.org/solutions/quarterly-research-reviews.
In some parts of the world, spring brings rains, warmer temperatures, singing birds, and flowering blooms. We tend to think of spring’s arrival as something that just “happens,” but the spring awakening in the plant world is governed by the finely tuned relationship between plants, animals, and Earth’s weather and climate. Cues like precipitation, temperature, day length, and wind induce life events in plants such as bud burst, leaf out, flowering, pollen dispersal, and leaf senescence.
Climate change-induced warmer temperatures are causing many plants in temperate climates to exhibit spring behavior, like blooms and budburst, much earlier in the year. This change in the timing of the annual cycle of plant developmental stages, or phenology, in turn produces massive ripple effects that impact human health, cultural practices, farmer livelihoods, and food security.
Figure 1. The average January-March global air temperatures for select regions (a), and the historical timing of blooms of different plants in those regions (c-g). The thick gray lines represent the ten-year moving average for each plant, shifting earlier in the year in conjunction with a great acceleration in warming average spring temperatures since 1950 (highlighted in yellow). Source: Vitasse et al. 2022.
The influence of climate change on plant phenology and increased pollen loads has significant implications for human health, particularly for individuals with asthma and allergies. Pollen-related medical bills in the United States alone have exceeded $3 billion annually.
Changing phenology also impacts plants with cultural and medicinal significance, some of which have been used for centuries to nourish the body, heal wounds, or aid in ceremonies. With optimal growing conditions rapidly favoring higher latitudes and elevations, plant populations unable to migrate quickly can decline at alarming rates and even face the threat of extinction. This is the case for dozens of medicinal plants in Nepal, where 83 percent of the population relies primarily on herbal remedies. The quality and medicinal properties of such plants can be impacted as well by suboptimal growing conditions.
Shifting plant phenology also affects the distribution and productivity of major food crops. Current research and modeling efforts increase our understanding of plant phenology and allow for informed decision-making and adaptation strategies.
Recent studies have shown that the changing climate alters crop phenology, ultimately affecting crop yields. Warming temperatures are projected to cause global reductions in future crop yields, though the extent of losses will vary by crop and region and depend on whether adaptation strategies are applied. Elevated temperatures are a primary mechanism through which climate change affects crop phenology. As temperatures warm, spring begins earlier in many temperate climates, lengthening the growing season for some crops and shortening the growing season for others.
Development phases like anthesis, the flowering phase of a plant, are also affected by climate-driven phenological shifts. Flowering plants require a certain amount of daily light exposure, or photoperiod, to induce flowering. So while plants may sprout earlier in the year due to warmer temperatures, they still require the same photoperiod to flower, as sunlight is determined by the rotation of the Earth and remains relatively unchanged from year to year. Crops that mature earlier in the year, out of alignment with optimal photoperiods, can be stalled in their development. Overwintering crops sown in the fall may see a longer growing season due to earlier spring or warmer winters and, in turn, may not experience the number of cold hours they need to induce the next phenological phase. When farmers sow their crops earlier to counter earlier warming, all subsequent phases of plant growth and development are affected. One way farmers can realign plant growth with phenological shifts is to choose cultivars with adapted growing requirements, such as high heat tolerances, improved drought tolerance, or later flowering or maturity.
In a 2022 article in Forest and Agricultural Meteorology authors Jie Zhang and Yujie Liu analyze the impacts of climate change and adaptive management on various phenological phases of cash crops like peanuts, canola, and sorghum. These crops are in increasingly heavy demand in places like China, where rising incomes are leading to dietary shifts that favor their production.
Zhang and Liu grouped phenophases into growth periods for three cash crops: a) the whole growth period from when a seed is planted through its maturation into a harvestable crop; b) the vegetative growth period of the plant before it reaches the reproductive stage; and c) the reproductive growth period, including flowering, pollination, and development of a seed, nut, or fruit. The influence of climate change on phenological shift varies across the different crops (see Figure 2). The maturity date was delayed for sorghum and canola, while it advanced for peanuts. Adaptive management strategies can offset the effects of climate change positively in each crop at different stages.
Figure 2. “Changing trends of phenology caused by climatic factors. Trends are broken down by each crop’s phenological phases and the change of day + or – per year. Central horizontal line: median; white dots: average; box limit: 25th and 75th percentiles; whiskers: minimum and maximum values. WGP – Whole Growth Period, RGP – Reproductive Growth Period, VGP – Vegetative Growth Period – phenophases within each growth period vary by crop.” Source: Zhang and Liu 2022.
So how are farmers responding to the impacts of such dramatic changes in plant phenology?
In a 2023 review paper published in Environmental Research Climate, Asif Ishtiaque comprehensively reviewed published scientific papers on how U.S. farmers are adapting to climate change and preparing for the future; the paper also included farmer perspectives on whether to adapt at all.
Ishtiaque identified five types of adaptation strategies: water management, crop management, nutrient management, technological management, and financial management. While the reviewed studies focused on adaptation to various climate change impacts (e.g., drought, flooding, other hazards), many of the strategies identified have relevance for adapting to the changing phenology of crops.
Ishtiaque found that U.S. farmers are already adapting by planting different crop varieties (or cultivars), diversifying and rotating which crops are grown, shifting planting dates, improving soil health and applying fertilizers, adopting new irrigation practices, trying out new technologies, and investing in crop insurance. These adaptations mirror the strategies Zhang and Liu refer to in their analysis on phenological shifts of cash crops amid adaptive management.
Often, farmers adopt multiple strategies at once to adapt to changing plant phenology. For instance, a farmer may plant earlier in the season; plant a new, hardier cultivar better adapted to a changing growing season; install hail nets to protect the crop during earlier growing conditions; and invest in crop insurance to mitigate potential yield losses from droughts or other hazards stemming from new planting dates and crop varieties.
Some articles in Ishtiaque’s study also underscore the challenge of adaptation. Research finds that U.S. farmers often have taken a reactive approach to adapting to changing phenology and climate impacts more generally. Many U.S. farmers are not connected to, inclined to access, or trained to use climate information about future conditions that could inform longer-term planning. Rather, they respond to weather and climate impacts after they occur.
Farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies also has been heavily tied to whether they believe climate change is human caused and happening now. In addition, farmers with a high level of “techno-optimism” are slower to implement adaptations, believing that technological solutions alone will be sufficient to mitigate crop losses.
Farmers who are disconnected from climate information, or disinclined to believe it, run a greater risk of jeopardizing their own long-term livelihoods as well as future food security.
One takeaway of Ishtiaque’s review is the need to better document adaptation strategies. This same conclusion is emphasized in a 2023 paper published in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability by Aidan Farrell, Delphine Deryng, and Henry Neufeldt on the extent to which crop models currently capture crop adaptations on the ground.
Farrell and colleagues found that crop yield models can represent a few adaptations, like improved fertilizer and water management or planting timelines relatively well, but the vast majority of adaptation options available to farmers are not included in models sufficiently, if at all (see Table 1). In large part, this is because many agricultural models are process driven and require large volumes of data to represent detailed biophysical climate processes and factors that affect crop yields, such as photosynthesis rates; soil, water, and nutrient dynamics; heat and water stress; evapotranspiration; and CO2 effects.
When data is limited, as is the case for many adaptation strategies that are adopted on small scales, there simply isn’t enough information to include the full array of adaptation options available in process-driven models. So these models often can’t analyze scenarios that accurately portray the diversity of adaptations available to farmers, let alone their efficacy in mitigating climate impacts on specific crop yields.
Table 1. “On-farm adaptation options and the frequency with which they are included in modelling studies.” Source: Farrell et al. 2023.
The underrepresentation of farm adaptations in models is important because model scenarios are one of the ways policymakers and other decision-makers assess and prepare for the impacts of climate change on our food systems. Also, using models that do not consider human responses and adaptations can overestimate the impacts of climate change on crops.
One way to address this challenge is to improve data availability on the implementation and evaluation of different adaptation strategies actively used on farms. This would require interdisciplinary collaboration and a more standardized data-gathering process when adaptations are implemented on farms. Big data and machine learning may prove critical in surmounting this barrier.
Another solution could be to include results from other model types alongside the results from process-based models. Integrated assessment models, for example, have more flexible data requirements and modeling approaches, so they can represent a wider array of adaptation strategies, farmer management practices, crop phenological phases and development parameters, and dynamic planting calendars.
Including these parameters in crop models is critical because they can drastically change yield scenarios. Figure 3 shows the benefits to global yield when adaptation strategies are used. “All crops saw increased yields with adaptation strategies and the highest yields were seen when both sowing and cultivar adaptation are combined (except for wheat).”
Figure 3. “Benefits of sowing and cultivar adaptation on global crop yields under the RCP6.0 climate model projections for 2080-2099. Benefits on global yields are reported for all crops aggregated and for each individual crop, along with the uncertainty under different climate scenarios. The four adaptation scenarios indicate different levels of adaptation (adapt.): timely adaptation, sowing dates and cultivars adapted as the climate is changing (2080−2099); cultivar adaptation, sowing fixed at the reference level, only cultivars adapted as in timely adaptation; sowing date adaptation, only sowing dates adapted as in timely adaptation, cultivars fixed at the reference level; delayed adaptation both sowing dates and cultivar adapted but with 20-years delay, to 2060−2079 climate. The global yield of an individual crop is computed as the area- weighted mean yield across all grid cells growing that crop. In grid cells where adaptation of growing periods returned either no benefit or maladaptation (yield difference is equal or larger zero) yield losses were considered equal zero. Bars represent the mean across GCMs (n = 4 GCMs), whiskers display the range across GCMs, and gray symbols refer to individual GCMs.” Source: Minoli et al. 2022.
Several of the study authors mentioned here have proposed priority areas for future inquiry and research application.
Ishtiaque advocates for improved study of under-modeled adaptation strategies. In the meantime, he emphasizes that as policymakers and decision-makers consider on-farm adaptation strategies, it is critical they not minimize the potential of not-yet-to-scale options to be included in models. Farrell and colleagues argue that many of the underrepresented adaptation strategies (such as agroforestry, soil conservation, and crop diversification) have promise and should not be overlooked by policymakers and climate adaptation professionals when giving farmers climate information and guidance on how to plan for food security.
Ishtiaque also calls for better analysis of how farmers’ race and ethnicity factors into their adoption of adaptation strategies, as race and ethnicity greatly influence farmers’ relationships with and trust of public agencies, their access to information, and their access to lines of credit for adaptation investments. Black farmers disproportionately have marginalized land that is more hazard prone, especially in a changing climate.
For all farmers, the financial implications of reactive versus proactive adaptation strategies need to be better understood. Farmer perspectives and psychological barriers should also be better researched and considered as government agencies work to develop messaging and strategies to share information on future climate conditions.
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Climate change-induced warmer temperatures are causing many plants in temperate climates to exhibit spring behavior. This change in the timing of plant development produces ripple effects that impact health, culture, livelihoods, and food security. New research is increasing our understanding of plant phenology and allowing for informed decision-making and adaptation strategies.
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