By Emilio Jack-Scott and Liz Carver

Winter is coming, and people across the country have started turning on their heat to take the edge off the cold. With clear memories of last winter’s high heating costs and this season’s prices predicted to remain at near-record levels, many are resisting as long as possible before finally flipping the switch on their thermostats.

The impacts on both psychological and physical health and the economic toll of insufficient heat in winter is staggering and leaves an intergenerational wake. Household members, especially children and the elderly, suffer more from poor health (including an uptick in respiratory illnesses), have higher rates of anxiety and depression, and incur more trips to the hospital. Children are more likely to exhibit rule-breaking behaviors, such as skipping school. Physical and financial stress compound, and domestic disturbances and abuse rise. And the most extreme cases of energy insecurity result in injury or death due to unsafe temperatures or from using ovens or stoves as primary or secondary heat sources.

The energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents a critical opportunity to rectify this energy injustice. But to realize that potential, recent research calls upon policymakers to pay attention to important gaps in the ways heating energy burden and poverty are measured, and how policy prescriptions can be designed and implemented to address energy burden inequities, lest they inadvertently exacerbate energy insecurity in the transition.

Who is impacted by home energy poverty?

An uptick in research over the last decade has confirmed what many households have known for decades: low-income households pay a much higher percentage of their income on heating costs than higher-income households.

The energy burden of heating and cooling is often based on the percentage of a household’s income spent on energy. Many assistance programs categorize energy burdens as low (<6 percent income), high (>6 percent), and severe (>10 percent), as defined by a 2020 report published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). According to the report, 12 percent of the U.S. population spent between 6 and 10 percent of their income on energy, and a whopping 13 percent of the population spent more than 10 percent of their income on energy (which constitutes a “severe energy burden”)—that’s nearly 16 million people in this the U.S. paying over a tenth of their limited income on energy costs.

The report also illustrates the disproportionate distribution of energy burden by income level, race and ethnicity, age, and housing type. Inequities in energy burden are shouldered by low-income households (even more pronounced among low-income seniors and those with disabilities); Native American, Black, and Hispanic households; renters; and low-income multifamily housing units and manufactured homes (both of which have notoriously poor weatherization) (Figure 2).

Historical policies and social context strongly influence today’s distribution of energy poverty. Redlining policies that limited mortgages for communities of color, especially Black Americans, have a lasting legacy evidenced in today’s heating inequities. In a 2022 paper in Energy Research and Social Science led by Benjamin Goldstein, the authors examined household energy usage intensity and carbon emissions against household race and historical policies.

They found that energy use intensity is significantly higher in historically redlined districts, which are still predominantly African American neighborhoods. African Americans are also more likely to be renters than homeowners and are more likely to be in energy-inefficient housing. There have been very few incentives for landlords to invest in efficiency or weatherization programs, since the utility cost for heating and cooling is usually the responsibility of renters (what is frequently referred to as the “split-incentive” problem).

How energy poverty is measured

So how can we ensure the accountability of policies and programs aimed at reducing energy poverty and addressing these inequities?

Another recent paper published in Energy Policy, led by author Luling Huang, points to the critical need to more accurately quantify levels of energy poverty. Traditional approaches to assessing energy poverty have largely fallen into two buckets: 1) asking consumers to self-assess the financial burden of heating and cooling their homes, or 2) using indicators or proxies such as how much energy is consumed, how much consumers spend on energy, building energy efficiency, and household income.

But as Huang’s findings confirm, both of these approaches fail to adequately capture the extent to which households limit their heating energy usage in order to reduce costs. Huang and colleagues measured heating and cooling usage in direct response to temperature changes, and analyzed consumption patterns against census income data to assess inequities. They found that a significant percentage of households exhibited dangerous levels of “energy limiting behavior” each year, but were not being captured by traditional metrics.

Huang and colleagues found low-income households frequently turn on heating units earlier in the winter than their higher-income counterparts (Figure 3). While this may seem counter to the assumption that low-income households are more apt to limit their heating due to financial constraints, the authors point to the substandard insulation and efficiency of many affordable housing options, which necessitate earlier and longer winter heating periods, as the likely cause.

Despite the poor building efficiency of many low-income homes, consumers actually use significantly less energy per square foot throughout the heating season compared to high-income homes, which consume 52 percent more heat per square foot annually. Furthermore (and despite significant energy-limiting behaviors), low-income households consistently end up shouldering “high” and “severe” energy burdens (spending between 6 percent and 10 percent, or more than 10 percent, of their income on energy, respectively) throughout the heating season (Figure 4).

In Figure 4, the “heating balance point” on the x-axis indicates the outdoor temperature at which households were compelled to turn on heating units throughout winter. Note the significant number of households (each dot) that have heating units on when the outside temperature is in the 30s and 40s, but are consuming very little electricity (y-axis). When a household is in this situation, they are clearly rationing heating electricity and suffering the psychological, health, and socio-economic impacts of insufficient heating.

Huang and colleagues calculated the percentage of the study households living in these conditions totaled a whopping 24 percent of the study population, the majority of whom would not have been captured by traditional energy burden metrics. Because these households had so severely limited their electricity consumption, their costs wouldn’t have exceeded the traditional threshold of “low energy burden” (less than 6 percent income spent on energy).

What are U.S. policymakers doing to try to reduce energy poverty in the transition to renewable energy?

These nuances in who endures energy poverty and how that burden is tracked are critical for improving existing policies and creating new policies that seek to reduce both energy insecurity and carbon emissions.

For instance, both Huang and Goldstein spotlight hidden energy burdens, which could be used to broaden eligibility requirements for existing assistance programs like the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), or the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). LIHEAP is a federal- and state-funded effort to provide assistance for home energy bills, and WAP can provide whole-house weatherization resources for low-income households, but eligibility for both is currently based on income level. The same is true for many state-funded energy assistance programs.

Huang and colleagues encourage policymakers to go beyond using household income as the only eligibility criteria for assistance programs, since this can result in the oversight of compounding factors of housing type, race, and the nuances of financial stress, regardless of income. Huang suggests installing and using smart meters to properly monitor heating burden and insecurity within households. Energy assistance programs can then receive alerts when energy limiting behaviors reach levels of concern, and better tailor their support to vulnerable households.

The landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 includes $391 billion for a variety of programs, incentives, and tax credits to accelerate a clean energy transition, decarbonize the economy, and mitigate climate change. Several of these programs can help reduce energy poverty by making energy-efficient home upgrades and renewable energy adoption more accessible to low- and middle-income families.

As Goldstein and colleagues underscore in their paper, one of the biggest barriers for the communities most affected by energy insecurity is limited availability of upfront capital to invest in energy-saving upgrades or renewable installations, and insufficient tax liability to benefit from tax credit incentives. Policies that decrease upfront costs through direct consumer incentives, such as instant rebates, are especially helpful.

In response to this need, the IRA allocated nearly $9 billion for states and Tribes to design and implement two Home Energy Rebate Programs to accelerate the adoption of residential energy efficiency and renewable energy systems. The Home Efficiency Rebates program provides instant rebates to homeowners and landlords of single- and multi-family homes for performance-based, whole-home energy efficiency and electrification upgrades, without income restrictions.

The Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program provides direct rebates of up to 100 percent to help low- and middle-income households purchase and install energy-efficient electric appliances, such as heat pumps, water heaters, and stoves. Huang and colleagues specifically point to the IRA’s rebate programs as “a major step forward to help households (especially low-to-middle-income households) to improve energy efficiency at home.”

Beyond the direct rebate programs, the IRA allocates $3 billion for Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants, which can be used to fund community-led projects in historically underserved communities, including initiatives to reduce energy costs through renewable energy or energy efficiency. Another IRA program provides $1 billion in funding to increase energy efficiency in affordable housing.

As these new programs are rolled out, it is critically important to ensure that they truly benefit energy insecure households. Policymakers at the metro, state, and federal levels will need to hold landlords accountable to make sure that subsidized energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements don’t result in “renovictions,” as energy upgrade costs are passed along to renters, making rents unaffordable. Goldstein points to possible solutions, such as allowing tenants (and landlords) to pay for retrofits through monthly utility payments (as long as energy savings outweigh improvement costs), or providing compensation to landlords dependent on renewal of leases with prior tenants at comparable rates when renovations have been completed.

Energy burden, insecurity measurements of household income spent on energy expenses, and energy limiting behaviors must also be closely monitored to ensure that weatherization, efficiency, and renewable energy projects effectively reduce energy insecurity for vulnerable communities.

Goldstein et al. and Huang et al. both point to the need to expand investment at the federal and state levels to mitigate the impacts and drivers of energy poverty. In addition to assistance programs, Huang and colleagues point to the need for general investment in infrastructure and jobs to address the root of inequitable energy burdens and improve everyday living conditions.

Featured research:

Drehobl, A., Ross, L. and Ayala, R., 2020. How high are household energy burdens. An Assessment of National and Metropolitan Energy Burdens across the US.

Goldstein, B., Reames, T.G. and Newell, J.P., 2022. Racial inequity in household energy efficiency and carbon emissions in the United States: An emissions paradox. Energy Research & Social Science, 84, p.102365.

Huang, L., Nock, D., Cong, S. and Qiu, Y.L., 2023. Inequalities across cooling and heating in households: Energy equity gaps. Energy Policy, 182, p.113748.

The post Living In The Cold: Addressing The Inequalities Of Heating Energy Poverty In Winter appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.

By Emilio Jack-Scott and Liz Carver Winter is coming, and people across the country have started turning on their heat to take the edge off the cold. With clear memories of last winter’s high heating costs and this season’s prices…
The post Living In The Cold: Addressing The Inequalities Of Heating Energy Poverty In Winter appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Featured research:

Bosson, J.B., Huss, M., Cauvy-Fraunié, S. et al. Future emergence of new ecosystems caused by glacial retreat. Nature 620, 562–569 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06302-2

Ranius, T., Widenfalk, L.A., Seedre, M. et al. Protected area designation and management in a world of climate change: A review of recommendations. Ambio 52, 68–80 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-022-01779-z

Zimmer, A., Beach, T., Riva Regalado, S. et al. Llamas (Llama glama) enhance proglacial ecosystem development in Cordillera Blanca, Peru. Scientific Reports 13, 15936 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41458-x

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…
The post When The Glaciers Are Gone: Managing For Biodiversity appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Featured Research

Bax, V., van de Lageweg, W. I., Hoosemans, R., & van den Berg, B. (2023). Floating photovoltaic pilot project at the Oostvoornse lake: Assessment of the water quality effects of three different system designs. Energy Reports, 9, 1415-1425.

Essak, L., & Ghosh, A. (2022). Floating photovoltaics: A review. Clean Technologies, 4(3), 752-769.

Fleck, J., & Kuhn, E. (2023). An Historical Perspective on the Accounting for Evaporation and System Losses in the Lower Colorado River Basin. Science Be Dammed Working Paper, 4.

Hayibo, K. S., Mayville, P., Kailey, R. K., & Pearce, J. M. (2020). Water conservation potential of self-funded foam-based flexible surface-mounted floatovoltaics. Energies, 13(23), 6285.

Jin, Y., Hu, S., Ziegler, A. D., Gibson, L., Campbell, J. E., Xu, R., … & Zeng, Z. (2023). Energy production and water savings from floating solar photovoltaics on global reservoirs. Nature Sustainability, 1-10.

McKuin, B., Zumkehr, A., Ta, J., Bales, R., Viers, J. H., Pathak, T., & Campbell, J. E. (2021). Energy and water co-benefits from covering canals with solar panels. Nature Sustainability, 4(7), 609-617.

Pimentel Da Silva, G. D., & Branco, D. A. C. (2018). Is floating photovoltaic better than conventional photovoltaic? Assessing environmental impacts. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 36(5), 390-400.

Ramasamy, V., & Margolis, R. (2021). Floating photovoltaic system cost benchmark: Q1 2021 installations on artificial water bodies (No. NREL/TP-7A40-80695). National Renewable Energy Lab.(NREL), Golden, CO (United States).

Schmidt, J. C., Yackulic, C. B., & Kuhn, E. (2023). The Colorado River water crisis: Its origin and the future. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, e1672.

Sen, A., Mohankar, A. S., Khamaj, A., & Karmakar, S. (2021). Emerging OSH issues in installation and maintenance of floating solar photovoltaic projects and their link with sustainable development goals. Risk management and healthcare policy, 1939-1957.

Tian, W., Liu, X., Wang, K., Bai, P., Liu, C., & Liang, X. (2022). Estimation of global reservoir evaporation losses. Journal of Hydrology, 607, 127524.

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

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.

Featured research:

[1] Sandra Laville, “Air Pollution a Cause in Girl’s Death, Coroner Rules in Landmark Case,” The Guardian, December 16, 2020, sec. UK news, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-death-contributed-to-by-air-pollution-coroner-rules-in-landmark-case.

[2] Laville.

[3] Research Division, “Diesel Particulate Matter Health Impacts Summary,” California Air Resource Board, n.d., https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/summary-diesel-particulate-matter-health-impacts.

[4] Research Division.

[5] Pattanun Achakulwisut et al., “Global, National, and Urban Burdens of Pediatric Asthma Incidence Attributable to Ambient NO2 Pollution: Estimates from Global Datasets,” The Lancet Planetary Health 3, no. 4 (April 1, 2019): e166–78, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30046-4.

[6] Susan Anenberg et al., “A Global Snapshot of the Air Pollution-Related Health Impacts of Transportation Sector Emissions in 2010 and 2015” (International Council on Clean Transportation, 2019), https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Global_health_impacts_transport_emissions_2010-2015_20190226.pdf.

[7] International Energy Agency, “Net Zero by 2050” (Paris: IEA, 2021), https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050.

[8] Global Commercial Vehicle Drive to Zero, “Zero-Emission Technology Inventory (ZETI) Data Explorer,” February 24, 2023, https://globaldrivetozero.org/tools/zeti-data-explorer/.

[9] International Energy Agency, “Global EV Outlook 2023” (Paris), accessed August 4, 2023, https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023.

[10] Colin McKerracher, “China’s Electric Trucks May Well Pull Forward Peak Oil Demand,” Bloomberg.Com, October 11, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-11/china-s-electric-trucks-may-well-pull-forward-peak-oil-demand.

[11] Global Commercial Vehicle Drive to Zero, “Zero-Emission Technology Inventory (ZETI) Data Explorer.”

[12] Arijit Sen and Josh Miller, “Emissions Reduction Benefits of a Faster, Global Transition to Zero-Emission Vehicles,” Working Paper 15-2022 (International Council on Clean Transportation, March 2022), https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Accelerated-ZEV-transition-wp-final.pdf.

[13] Commercial Drive to Zero, “Memorandum of Understanding on Zero-Emission Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles,” December 20, 2021, https://globaldrivetozero.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Global-MOU-ZE-MHDVs-signed-20-Dec-21.pdf.

[14] International Energy Agency, “Global EV Data Explorer,” May 23, 2022, https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/global-ev-data-explorer.

[15] International Energy Agency, “Net Zero by 2050.”

[16] Commercial Drive to Zero, “Memorandum of Understanding on Zero-Emission Commercial Vehicles.”

[17] Sen and Miller, “Emissions Reduction Benefits of a Faster Transition to ZEVs.”

[18] “ZEV Transition Council,” International Council on Clean Transportation (blog), 2022, https://theicct.org/initiatives-partnerships/zev-tc/.

[19] Yihao Xie, Tim Dallmann, and Rachel Muncrief, “Heavy-Duty Zero-Emission Vehicles: Pace and Opportunities for a Rapid Global Transition,” ZEV Transition Council Briefing Paper (International Council on Clean Transportation, May 2022), https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/globalhvsZEV-hdzev-pace-transition-may22.pdf.

[20] Research Division, “Diesel Particulate Matter Health Impacts Summary.”

[21] California Air Resource Board, “Proposed Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation Preliminary Language Revisions Workshop – Staff Presentation” (Sacramento, CA, February 13, 2023), https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/acfpres230213_ADA.pdf.

[22] California Air Resource Board, “Appendix A4. 2036 100 Percent Medium- and Heavy-Duty Zero-Emission Vehicle Sales Requirements, Preliminary Draft Regulation Order Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation” (Sacramento, CA, February 13, 2023), https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2023-02/230213prelim100sales.docx.

[23] California Air Resource Board, “Proposed Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation.”

[24] International Council on Clean Transportation, “Europe Proposes World-Leading Decarbonization Targets for Trucks and Buses,” International Council on Clean Transportation (blog), February 14, 2023, https://theicct.org/pr-europe-co2-standards-trucks-feb-23/.

[25] Coral Davenport, “E.P.A. Lays Out Rules to Turbocharge Sales of Electric Cars and Trucks,” The New York Times, April 12, 2023, sec. Climate, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/climate/biden-electric-cars-epa.html.

[26] Lingzhi Jin et al., “Opportunities and Pathways to Decarbonize China’s Transportation Sector during the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan Period and Beyond” (International Council on Clean Transportation, November 2021), https://theicct.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/China-14th-FYP-Report-v8-nov21.pdf.

[27] Chris Busch and Anand Gopal, “Electric Vehicles Will Soon Lead Global Auto Markets, But Too Slow To Hit Climate Goals Without New Policy” (Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, LLC, November 3, 2022), https://energyinnovation.org/publication/electric-vehicles-will-soon-lead-global-auto-markets-but-too-slow-to-hit-climate-goals-without-new-policy/.

[28] “Tesla Wants to Build a Semi Truck-Charging Route from Texas to California,” Bloomberg.Com, August 1, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-01/tesla-semi-truck-charging-route-pitched-at-100-million.

The post Electric Trucks Are A Gamechanger If Strong Policy Leads The Way appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.

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,…
The post Electric Trucks Are A Gamechanger If Strong Policy Leads The Way appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.[#item_full_content]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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 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.

Social Connection 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.

Social Factors That Shape Climate Vulnerability

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.

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).

Advancing Connection

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.

Featured Research

Cutter, S., Boruff, B., & Shirley, W. (2003). Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards. Social Science Quarterly, 84(2). Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002/full

Duong, M., & Pensini, P. (2023). The role of connectedness in sustainable behaviour: A parallel mediation model examining the prosocial foundations of pro-environmental behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 209(March), 112216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112216

Hajek, A., & König, H. H. (2022). Climate Anxiety, Loneliness and Perceived Social Isolation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(22). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192214991

Tee Lewis, P. G., Chiu, W. A., Nasser, E., Proville, J., Barone, A., Danforth, C., … Craft, E. (2023). Characterizing vulnerabilities to climate change across the United States. Environment International, 172(November 2022), 107772. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2023.107772

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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…
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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 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.

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.

The post It’s Time To Rethink Grid Reliability appeared first on Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology.

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]