Cities and region­al author­i­ties play a cru­cial role in dri­ving cli­mate action to lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5°C. Despite their crit­i­cal impor­tance, sig­nif­i­cant obsta­cles in data col­lec­tion and vari­abil­i­ty in […]

Electricity is essential to modern healthcare. Perhaps nowhere is this more keenly felt than in Goma — the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province — where armed conflict has persisted through more than three decades of state and non-state organized violence across the African Great Lakes region.

The bot­tom line. The exten­sion of elec­tric­i­ty into rur­al areas has been the main focus of efforts to achieve uni­ver­sal access to reli­able, afford­able, and mod­ern ener­gy by 2030. On […]

Accel­er­at­ing the uptake of clean fuel sources for cook­ing is an urgent inter­na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty under Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal 7 to “ensure access to afford­able, reli­able, sus­tain­able and mod­ern ener­gy for all”. The […]

Spot­light Kam­pala is a mul­ti-insti­tu­tion­al research col­lab­o­ra­tion of uni­ver­si­ties and com­mu­ni­ty advo­cates that aims to high­light the inequities that infor­mal urban com­mu­ni­ties face in access­ing and using elec­tric­i­ty. This report […]

We hope that Spotlight Kampala’s work will aid policymakers in understanding the unique barriers faced by Kampala’s informal communities, and guide constructive discussions towards the shared objective of more inclusive electricity services for all in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7 as well as Uganda’s Vision 2040.

Achiev­ing uni­ver­sal access to elec­tric­i­ty in Uganda’s cities is chal­lenged by the country’s rapid urban­i­sa­tion. Each year, the urban pop­u­la­tion grows by 300,000 peo­ple, with a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of these set­tling […]

Over one bil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly are now esti­mat­ed to live in slums or infor­mal set­tle­ments.1 This pop­u­la­tion is grow­ing as con­flicts, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and cli­mate change fuel fur­ther dis­place­ment from rur­al areas. […]

Accel­er­at­ing the rate of renew­able ener­gy deploy­ment in Small Island Devel­op­ing States is crit­i­cal to reduce depen­dence on expen­sive fos­sil fuel imports and meet emis­sions reduc­tions goals. Though many islands […]

New analysis from University of California, Berkeley researchers finds that China is the only nation on track to triple its renewable capacity by 2030, a key goal for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Amid continuing geopolitical tensions, climate change remains a key area of collaboration between the United States and China. Ahead of last November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Presidents Biden and Xi reaffirmed their commitment to work jointly—and together with other countries—to address the climate crisis and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Central to the agreement, now known as the "Sunnylands Statement,” is a commitment to supporting efforts to triple the global production of renewable energy by 2030. That goal, which is the only quantitative target in the agreement, was previously identified as a key target by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) and agreed to by G20 leaders during their September 2023 meeting. A study published today in Environmental Research Letters by UC Berkeley researchers finds that the global growth rate of renewable and low-carbon energy capacity is insufficient to meet this target. Using historical data from IRENA and the IEA, the authors project that China is by far the closest to triple its capacity by 2030, while the five remaining regions—the U.S., European Union, the African continent, Central and South America, and the rest of the world—will fall short. “The climate crisis is now an emergency of inaction on a true energy transition,” said co-author Daniel Kammen, the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. “While some specific policies and the actions of some nations show that a clean, green energy future can be achieved, we must be more systematic, holistic, and aggressive in our actions.” China’s renewable energy capacity tripled during the last decade, a historic trend projected to continue through 2030. While developers of renewable energy projects in China may face difficulty securing financing and integrating their projects onto the grid, the country regularly surpasses its conservative targets and is more capable of leveraging other policies to facilitate necessary growth. By comparison, the U.S. would need to significantly raise its renewable ambitions to achieve this target. The authors point to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized $369 billion in new government spending on clean energy and climate mitigation over the next decade, as one successful policy intervention capable of bringing the U.S. closer to its target. While they estimate that IRA-linked renewable energy projects will increase the domestic renewable energy capacity by a factor of 2 or 3, the U.S. would need to more than quadruple current projections to meet its stated targets. “It’s heartening to see the exponential deployment of the past decade, and 2023 saw by far the biggest gains yet,” said co-author Ari Ball-Burack, a PhD student in ERG. “Moving forward, the U.S. and China have a responsibility to concretely facilitate renewables deployment worldwide.” Co-author Xi Xi, a graduate student in ERG, notes that the greatest challenge the U.S. and China face will be facilitating and supporting efforts toward tripling renewable energy capacity elsewhere. Renewable energy deployment and power sector expansion are crucial to Africa’s sustainable development goals, yet so much of the continent’s energy development has been historically under-invested. The IEA estimates that more than $200 billion per year of investment by 2030 is required to achieve key energy goals and facilitate a just and inclusive climate transition. Comparable levels of investment are also needed in Central and South America and across the rest of the world. “The U.S. and China operate within a global context and must proactively acknowledge and incorporate global perspectives, particularly from the Global South, and actively contribute to climate mitigation efforts worldwide,” she said. The researchers assert that although the two countries’ joint declaration sets an optimistic framework with which to build lasting international climate cooperation, much work remains to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. They propose four actionable steps to ensure the Sunnylands tripling commitment is met: ● The commitments must transform into delivered funds, with actionable plans to assemble and distribute funds committed to addressing challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation. ● Subnational and informal collaborations between the two countries and the rest of the world should accelerate technology and knowledge transfer to provide appropriate, effective, and efficient solutions. ● The two countries should prioritize collaboration over competition. A competitive mindset could hinder the development of globalized supply chains, significantly increasing renewables costs. ● Fostering an inclusive and collaborative climate discourse internationally is crucial for a speedy, just transition toward the net zero world and can facilitate and accelerate reforms in multilateral institutions to ensure just and viable institutional and financial mechanisms for renewables development in the Global South.

For Immediate Release, October 9, 2024 Leading Scientists Warn Energy Permitting Reform Act Spells Climate Disaster WASHINGTON— In a letter to Congress, more than 100 scientists warn that the Energy Permitting Reform Act, or EPRA, will worsen the climate crisis and harm community health. The bill, introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) in July, seeks to significantly expand fossil fuel extraction, infrastructure and exports within other provisions related to clean energy development. The letter, co-signed by 118 scientific experts, says increases in carbon emissions from the bill’s fossil fuel buildout would undermine or even cancel out the potential emissions cuts from its renewable energy and transmission improvements. The letter urges Congress to oppose the bill. “This bill is a Trojan horse for fossil fuel interests,” said Daniel Kammen, Ph.D., Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley. “The potentially modest emissions reductions don’t come close to justifying the guaranteed explosion of emissions from fossil fuel exports. When we’ve got back-to-back superstorms battering the Southeast, we have to be clear about the guaranteed fossil fuel fiasco this bill represents.” Global greenhouse gas emissions will increase as more U.S. fossil fuels are extracted and exported overseas, undercutting domestic emissions decreases in the power sector due to replacement by renewables. “The climate crisis demands an immediate and rapid reduction in greenhouse emissions globally, so it is not enough to reduce emissions domestically while exporting our emissions footprint abroad,” the letter says. By failing to account for the full lifecycle of emissions from fossil fuel exports, modeled results claiming emissions benefits of the EPRA are likewise misleading and undercut by planned and pending fossil fuel infrastructure projects. The United States is already the world’s top exporter of fossil gas and petroleum products, a trend that would be further locked in under the bill. The EPRA would mandate additional fossil fuel leases on tens of millions of acres of public lands and hundreds of millions of acres of offshore waters. It would expedite approvals for LNG gas export projects and additional coal leasing on public lands with enormous consequences for the climate. For example, five major LNG projects that would likely proceed because of the bill would result in annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants. The bill’s fossil fuel buildout would come at the expense of people’s health and welfare. Fossil fuel infrastructure, including additional LNG export facilities, would cost billions in additional health costs every year, with harms largely centered on Black and Latino communities in the U.S. Gulf Coast region.

Cook­stove car­bon off­set projects can progress mul­ti­ple Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), includ­ing cli­mate, ener­gy, health, gen­der, pover­ty and defor­esta­tion. How­ev­er, project emis­sion reduc­tions must be accu­rate­ly or con­ser­v­a­tive­ly esti­mat­ed to avoid […]

  Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies play a sig­nif­i­cant role in unlock­ing the poten­tial of inno­v­a­tive financ­ing mech­a­nisms across the util­i­ties sec­tors in Africa and Asia. Across these sec­tors, access to cap­i­tal is […]

Energy researchers have historically studied how power systems can provide cheap, clean, and reliable energy. While these three attributes are critical for clean energy transitions, the energy justice movement supports an equally necessary focus on equity and justice. In recent years, research has sought to understand how decision-making and infrastructure design can enable fair socio-technical changes in energy systems, from production to consumption to retirement. Stemming from the environmental justice and fuel poverty scholarship and advocacy that emerged in the 1970s in the United States and the United Kingdom, the energy justice research space has consolidated and evolved since the 2010s. Over the past decade, the energy justice literature has highlighted how the design and operation of energy systems can have unequal socio-spatial impacts and has illuminated opportunities toward more inclusive energy services. A critical review is required to map out the obstacles and opportunities in this field at a time when a confluence of economic, social, and political trends have brought issues of equity and justice to the fore (e.g., US Executive Order 14008). In this article, we explore three challenges the energy justice field faces as it engages with research on clean energy transitions in the US: setting boundaries for its research agenda; developing generalizable metrics to assess energy justice claims; and implementing those metrics to inform policy. We identify promising developments in these areas and make suggestions for future work.

We present a case study of successful uptake of a productive use of electricity (PUE) co-located at an off-grid clinic powered by OffGridBox in Rwanda. We develop a techno-economic analysis of the standardized, modular, and redeployable power supply technology, characterizing cost components, revenue considerations, and key challenges. We present a technical characterization of system utilization based on remote monitoring of electricity consumption, power reliability, and power quality at a PUE intervention site, estimating system reliability at 81% over the study period. Lastly, we characterize socio-economic costs and benefits from the productive user’s perspective drawing on mixed-method interviews. We find that relatively low amounts of electricity consumption (10–30 kWh per month) command a high revealed willingness to pay (~$3 per kWh) for the solar-powered displacement of diesel-based welding, significantly improving the unit economics of the deployed system. This analysis and data provides a resource model for the standardization of mini-grid hardware, performance and cost frameworks, and metrics to assess off-grid, under-grid and ultimately grid interactive distributed generation systems. These models are urgently needed to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal SDG 7 commitment to achieve universal energy access by 2030.

As gov­ern­ments and non-state actors strive to min­i­mize glob­al warm­ing, a pri­ma­ry strat­e­gy is the decar­boniza­tion of pow­er sys­tems which will require a mas­sive increase in renew­able elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion. Lead­ing […]

Leverage the IRA for Global Clean Energy Leadership David Williams & Daniel M Kammen The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a profound step in advancing climate leadership particularly from a deeply divided nation. Now is the time to show how this step leads to progress, profits and jobs where we are not divided: advancing US overseas engagement and climate leadership. To do, Congress could extend the IRA tax credits for US firms working internationally. The US has much work at home to do to usher in the clean energy revolution. We need to act globally, however, or domestic progress will mean very little. We can achieve this by extending proven tax incentive tools to unlock the necessary investment across Africa, Asia and Latin America. This will build markets and create jobs for the clean energy sector in the US. Developers will have an entirely new pool of sophisticated investors and the capital necessary to match the scale of the climate challenges. While many bemoan the dominant role China plays in investing in emerging economies, extending US tax credits for clean energy projects provides US companies a means to build markets and accelerate global decarbonization. Take a look at the opportunities in Africa. The number of unelectrified Africans has remained nearly unchanged at over 600 million for over a decade, despite efforts aimed at achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG7) to provide global energy access by 2030. At COP26 in Glasgow last November, the international community made a commitment of $100 billion to industrializing nations. This is an order of magnitude smaller than what is needed on an annual, ongoing, basis to build decarbonized, affordable, and resilient energy future. Clean energy is now cheaper to build and simply operate than existing fossil fuel projects. Africa needs massive and sustained financing for new, bankable projects. The Africa electrification story is complex because ‘bankable’ projects are dependent not only on designing good projects but also on the twin constraints of sustaining capital from investors and then also able to navigate complex local regulatory issues. Sub-Saharan African projects are often held up because of a lack of ‘First loss capital’ (high risk) funding that leverages bank and central government investments. Providing risk-tolerant ‘first-loss’ capital at scale leverages hundreds of billions in a global renewables industry. Operationally this could be done by extending the IRA to specific projects in Africa. This would strengthen investment by US firms and support the geopolitical goals of the US. This tax credit would afford the same incentives across to the border that already include investments in solar, wind, geothermal, sustainable hydropower, energy efficiency upgrades, and transmission and distribution projects. Tax incentive investing works. The US Investment Tax Credit is responsible for the dramatic successes of solar across the US since its launch in the Energy Policy act of 2005. The program has been highly popular and an economic engine creating over 230,000 jobs in every state with an annual private investment of over $30 billion all while making renewable energy more affordable than conventional energy sources. The program has challenges but is resoundingly successful by relying on private companies to make good investments. The economic needs for African energy are tremendous and aid is simply not enough. At COP26 the US and European Partners committed $7.5 billion in aid for the ailing South African energy sector. Nigeria has publicly stated a request for a comparable amount. These investments are critically needed to upgrade or build grid transmission assets, invest in new clean energy projects, reduce methane (CH4) fugitive emissions, invest in energy access, and launch electric vehicle markets. $400 billion are needed beyond business as usual for each country to achieve a clean energy transition. That is almost a trillion dollars of investment opportunity for US companies to support Just Energy Transitions in just two nations. Rewarding US companies for investing in commercial clean energy projects in Africa will enable a transition that cannot be achieved with public sector funds alone. This can be launched quickly and can be in place November COP27 meeting in Egypt. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Polity found that at least 55 of the largest corporations in the US paid no federal corporate income taxes on their 2020 profits. Over $8 billion in avoided tax a year is in complex offshore structures. The tax incentive we propose correct this by providing the private sector a clear means to back up their public statements of commitment to a Just Energy Transition via direct investments in the neediest and fastest growing markets. This ‘simple’ solution requires only a modest change to the US investment Tax Credit program to extend eligibility to certain international projects. The US direct aid and web of supporting wrap-around services certainly make a difference but are not enough. Extending proven US policy would be a significant catalyst for capital directed to industrializing energy markets. In the past year we have seen multi-billion-dollar investments in solar, storage, and electric vehicles in Angola, plans in Kenya to move from a 4 GW national grid to 100 GW by mid-century, and both Nigeria and South Africa commit to going carbon-free if investment flows to solar, wind, energy storage, electrified transportation, and green hydrogen. The markets are there, the time is now, and what is most needed is a means to move capital. The world’s climate-vulnerable are susceptible to the impacts of climate change, and are the most affected by weaponizing energy. This is a unique moment where political will can bring incremental tax code changes that democratize, de-carbonizes, and decreases the conflict costs of energy around the world. This just might be the match that lights renewable solutions for the rest of the world.   David Williams is a Senior Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He serves as Sir Edmund Hillary for New Zealand and is Chief Operating Officer for Valta Energy. He is a renewable energy developer with over 20 years of experience on projects worldwide. Daniel Kammen is the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as Science Envoy in the Obama-Biden Administration and currently serves as Senior Advisor for Energy & Innovation in the US Agency for International Development. Twitter: @dan_kammen Hyperlinks in the text: Mathis, Will (2021) “Building New Renewables Is Cheaper Than Burning Fossil Fuels“, Bloomberg News. June 23. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-23/building-new-renewables-cheaper-than-running-fossil-fuel-plants#xj4y7vzkg US Aid and Assistance to Africa: https://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-africa

BY SYLVIA EARLE AND DANIEL KAMMEN OCTOBER 25, 2022 1:15 PM EDT Seldom do we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop an envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis before it begins. This is one of those […]

A pro-health fuels and stoves agen­da based on the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion stan­dards can realign lagging progress toward meet­ing the Unit­ed Nations Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goal 7’s call for uni­ver­sal ener­gy and […]

Women and low-income households experience a disproportionate burden of energy poverty and have different capabilities to utilize access to energy. Despite this, many electrification plans insufficiently address gender and low-income households. Off-grid solar has and will continue to play a role in expanding access to electricity in rural Sub-Saharan Africa; however, off-grid solar is rarely examined across gender. We draw on a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews from a case study in rural Tanzania to investigate the energy justice implications of off-grid solar. We are the first article to evaluate and compare the primary goods approach and the capabilities approach for off-grid solar. We ask how the distributional benefits of off-grid solar are mediated by gender and class, filling a key gap in the literature of off-grid solar's impact. We find little evidence of gender differentiation from a primary goods approach, suggesting equality within off-grid solar usage, but inequity through a capabilities approach lens. Solar home systems remain out of reach for the lowest-income households. In our case study, off-grid solar is used both as a primary source for low-and-middle-income households, and as a back-up source for middle-and higher-income households. We find that solar energy is under-used as a means of income generation and that payment schemes may not be the key to achieving energy justice. We provide concrete recommendations for rural energy policy and global tracking frameworks to ensure that women and low-income households have not only equal, but equitable access to obtain the capability benefits of off-grid solar.

The impe­tus for build­ings to decar­bonize and move towards rad­i­cal ener­gy and water effi­cien­cy is increas­ing­ly strong and iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­i­ty with­in the green building sec­tor. The tiny house move­ment […]

Accu­rate wind pow­er fore­cast­ing is essen­tial to reduce the neg­a­tive impact of wind pow­er on the oper­a­tion of the grid and the oper­a­tion cost of the pow­er sys­tem. Day-ahead wind […]

Abstract: 2.9 billion people lack access to clean cooking fuels and technologies. This review analyzes the literature on affordability as a barrier to adoption and consistent use of clean cooking stoves and fuels. We find diverse frameworks, definitions and metrics in use, and frequent discussions on stove price, fuel costs, microfinance, and smaller procurement quantities. We recommend that financing strategies to mitigate unaffordability be based on how low-income households actually earn, spend, and save their money, and that affordability frameworks be expanded to account for gender divides, rural/urban divides, and stove stacking behavior. Our review thus aims to reflect the nuances of a low-income household's ability to pay for clean fuels. Affordability must make sense within the lived experiences of the poor if clean cooking is to achieve universal access.

As California and other municipalities set off on the path to zero-carbon energy economies, there is a worldwide search for ways to provide clean, ever-ready power to the grid to balance intermittent sources of renewable electricity such as wind and solar. In general, there are three ways to provide what is being described as “clean firm power” to balance the load: (1) create methods of storing solar and wind power for long periods, (2) produce clean power from nuclear or geothermal generation, or (3) retrofit existing fossil fuel power plants to capture the carbon they produce.

Accel­er­at­ing the rate of renew­able ener­gy deploy­ment in Small Island Devel­op­ing States is crit­i­cal to reduce depen­dence on expen­sive fos­sil fuel imports and meet emis­sions reduc­tions goals. Though many islands […]

Elec­tric­i­ty and water sys­tems are inex­tri­ca­bly linked through water demands for ener­gy gen­er­a­tion, and through ener­gy demands for using, mov­ing, and treat­ing water and waste­water. Cli­mate change may stress these […]

The cli­mate emer­gency increas­ing­ly threat­ens our com­mu­ni­ties, ecosys­tems, food pro­duc­tion, health, and econ­o­my. It dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impacts low­er income com­mu­ni­ties, com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, and the elder­ly. Assess­ments since the 2018 IPCC […]

We study the cost and lock in of car­bon inten­sive tech­nolo­gies due to weak medi­um-term poli­cies. We use SWITCH WECC—a pow­er sys­tem capac­i­ty expan­sion opti­miza­tion mod­el with high tem­po­ral and […]

Accu­rate wind pow­er fore­cast­ing is essen­tial to reduce the neg­a­tive impact of wind power on the oper­a­tion of the grid and the oper­a­tion cost of the pow­er sys­tem. Day-ahead wind power fore­cast­ing […]

Lack of access to mod­ern forms of ener­gy ham­pers efforts to reduce pover­ty. The pro­vi­sion of elec­tric­i­ty to off-grid com­mu­ni­ties is there­fore a long-stand­ing devel­op­men­tal goal. Yet, many off-grid elec­tri­fi­ca­tion projects […]

In this paper we present an alter­na­tive approach to address­ing the prob­lem of ener­gy pover­ty. The pri­vate and com­mu­ni­ty own­er­ship in elec­tric­i­ty fac­tors of pro­duc­tion, eco­nom­ic cal­cu­la­tion, and the incen­tive […]

Lack of access to mod­ern forms of ener­gy ham­pers efforts to reduce pover­ty. The pro­vi­sion of elec­tric­i­ty to off-grid com­mu­ni­ties is there­fore a long-stand­ing devel­op­men­tal goal. Yet, many off-grid elec­tri­fi­ca­tion […]

In brief Our study explores how the ener­gy tran­si­tion is unfold­ing in the west­ern Unit­ed States and the role of stor­age to help pro­vide grid flexibility. Col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty […]

Chi­na has enact­ed a series of poli­cies since 2015 to sub­sti­tute elec­tric­i­ty for in-home com­bus­tion for rur­al res­i­den­tial heat­ing. The Elec­tric Heat­ing Pol­i­cy (EHP) has con­tributed to sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in […]

Recent news reports have focused on the so-called col­lapse of coal, which indeed is in free-fall in many nations. And it’s not lim­it­ed to the news media; an Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy […]

This piece by Annelise Gill-Wiehl and Daniel Kam­men is fea­tured in The Beam #11 – Pow­er in Peo­ple. Sub­scribe now to read more on the subject.   “Each time [the […]

ABSTRACT: Mobil­i­ty on-demand vehi­cle (MODV) ser­vices have grown explo­sive­ly in recent years, threat­en­ing tar­gets for local air pol­lu­tion and glob­al car­bon emis­sions. Despite evi­dence that on-demand auto­mo­tive fleets are ripe for elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, […]

This Should Have Been a Problem, Not a Pandemic By Daniel M. Kammen AS OF THIS WRITING (EARLY APRIL 2020), more than 1 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide are sick with COVID-19, 20 per­cent […]

Mobil­i­ty on-demand vehi­cle (MODV) ser­vices have grown explo­sive­ly in recent years, threat­en­ing tar­gets for local air pol­lu­tion and glob­al car­bon emis­sions. Despite evi­dence that on-demand auto­mo­tive fleets are ripe for […]

COVID-19 has caused an unprece­dent­ed pub­lic health cri­sis and eco­nom­ic shock to the glob­al econ­o­my. While many coun­tries were affect­ed, regions with an old­er pop­u­la­tion and weak­er pub­lic health inter­ven­tions […]

To lis­ten to the pod­cast on clean ener­gy and the path to a car­bon free econ­o­my, click here.

A Green Stimulus to Rebuild Our Economy An Open Letter and Call to Action to Members of Congress Green Stim­u­lus Proposal If you agree with us, please click here to […]

Region­al tree die-off events gen­er­ate large quan­ti­ties of stand­ing dead wood, rais­ing con­cern over cat­a­stroph­ic wild­fire and oth­er haz­ards. Gov­ern­men­tal respons­es to tree die-off have often focused on incen­tiviz­ing bio­mass ener­gy […]

To spur action, the perception of discarded plastics must change from burdensome waste to a physical store of non-renewable resources. Major investment in developing catalysts, processes, and infrastructure for energetically efficient chemical recycling is critical. It is time for governments to commit to “mining” plastics.

IPCC's 2018 Special Report is a stark and bracing reminder of climate threats. Yet literature, reportage, and public discourse reflect imbalanced risk and opportunity. Climate science often understates changes' speed and nonlinearity, but Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and similar studies often understate realistic mitigation options. Since ~2010, global mitigation of fossil CO2—including by often-uncounted modern renewable heat comparable to solar-plus-wind electricity—has accelerated to about the pace (if sustained) needed for a 2 °C trajectory. Mitigation has uncertainties, emergent properties, feasibility thresholds, and nonlinearities at least comparable to climate's, creating opportunities for aggressive action. Renewable electricity's swift uptake can now be echoed as proven integrative design can make end-use efficiency severalfold larger and cheaper, often with increasing returns (lower cost with rising quantity). Saved energy—the world's largest decarbonizer and energy 'source' (bigger than oil)—can then potentiate renewables and cut supply investments, as a few recent efficiency-centric IAMs confirm. Optimizing choices, combinations, timing, and sequencing of technologies, urban form, behavioral shifts, etc could save still more energy, money, and time. Some rigorous engineering-based national studies outside standard climate literature even imply potential 1.5 °C global trajectories cheaper than business-as-usual. A complementary opportunity—rapidly and durably abating hydrocarbon industries' deliberate upstream CH4 releases from flares and engineered vents, by any large operator's profitably abating its own and others' emissions—could stabilize (or more) the global methane cycle and buy time to abate more CO2. Together, these findings justify sober recalibration of the prospects for a fairer, healthier, cooler, and safer world. Supported by other disciplines, improved IAMs can illuminate this potential and support its refinement. Ambitious policies and aggressive marketplace and societal adoption of profitable new abatement opportunities need not wait for better models, but better models would help them to attract merited attention, scale faster, and turn numbing despair into collectively powerful applied hope.

The need for tran­si­tion­ing towards low-car­bon ener­gy sys­tems, and the recent boom in avail­able data, allows for a con­stant re-eval­u­a­tion of glob­al elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor decar­boniza­tion progress, and its under­ly­ing the­o­ret­i­cal […]

Cur­rent­ly, there are upwards of one mil­lion Rohingya refugees liv­ing in Cox’s Bazar. For all the talk of mov­ing the Rohingya else­where, such as Bashan Char Island, or repa­tri­at­ing them […]

Bold actions are necessary to unlock the potential for economic empowerment by eradicating energy poverty (UN Sustainable Development Goal 7) by 2030. This will require a sustained commitment to significant levels of new investments. Delivering on the promise of universal energy access and improved life quality has eluded policy-makers and governments over the past seven decades. Affordability of energy services for every global citizen, spanning vastly diverse regions and local contexts, requires the development and massive diffusion of technologies that offer ``point-of-use'' options combined with new business models. Social innovations and flexible governance approaches will also need to be integrated with technological advances. The scope and scale of developmental change span large-scale grid systems to decentralized distributed resources at community levels to the households. We recommend a global network of ``energy access innovation centers'' dedicated to providing a dynamic ``extension service'' that bolsters the entire supply chain of talent and expertise, design and operational requirements of system deployment and capacity to embed low-cost, high-performance next-generation technological solutions in the field. To meet the needs of those at the base of the economic and social pyramid, the dual challenges of economic development and transition to a low-carbon energy future make clean energy access the quintessential challenge of the 21st century.

The possibility of installing solar photovoltaics (PV) distributed on rooftops has allowed communities to actively participate in molding the future of sustainable cities. Solar PV owners also experience significant economic benefits in the form of tax credits, rebates, and lower net electricity consumption from utilities, leading to lower electricity bills. It comes at no surprise that the rooftop PV has surpassed 300 GW of installed capacity worldwide, with trends on the rise. In the United States, more than a million rooftops already have solar PV systems on them, with the numbers continuously expanding, contributing to the achievement of bold initiatives to fully decarbonised states’ power sectors, such as those in California, Hawaii and New York.

Increased sens­ing and data col­lec­tion in electric pow­er sys­tems from util­i­ty to min­i­grid to indi­vid­ual household scale are result­ing in an explo­sion of data col­lec­tion about users and providers of elec­tric­i­ty […]

In 2015, ASEAN estab­lished a goal of increas­ing renew­able ener­gy share in its ener­gy port­fo­lio from approx­i­mate­ly 13–23% by 2025. Renew­able elec­tric­i­ty, espe­cial­ly inter­mit­tent and vari­able sources, presents chal­lenges for […]

It is abun­dant­ly clear that ade­quate, reli­able and clean ener­gy ser­vices are vital for the achieve­ment of many of the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals (SDGs). In essence, ener­gy access has come […]

Sup­ple­men­tal data for the paper is avail­able here:   Sunter-Castel­lanos-Kam­men-Solar Dis­par­i­ties by Race-SupplementalOnlineMaterial

The Beautiful Rivers—And the Dammed Advances in solar and wind power mean that hydropower is no longer the only renewable game in town—and that’s good news for the world’s rivers. […]

Recommended Citation for Chapter Marcotullio, P. J., L. Bruhwiler, S. Davis, J. Engel-Cox, J. Field, C. Gately, K. R. Gurney, D. M. Kammen, E. McGlynn, J. McMahon, W. R. Morrow, III, I. B. Ocko, and R. Torrie, 2018: Chapter 3: Energy systems. In Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2): A Sustained Assessment Report [Cavallaro, N., G. Shrestha, R. Birdsey, M. A. Mayes, R. G. Najjar, S. C. Reed, P. Romero-Lankao, and Z. Zhu (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 110-188, https://doi.org/10.7930/SOCCR2.2018.Ch3.

The inte­gra­tion of small-scale Renew­able Ener­gy Sources in the Smart Grid depends on sev­er­al chal­lenges that must be over­come. One of them is the pres­ence of devices with very dif­fer­ent […]

Con­sump­tion-based green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions inven­to­ries have emerged to describe full life cycle con­tri­bu­tions of house­holds to cli­mate change at coun­try, state and increas­ing­ly city scales. Using this approach, how […]

Click on the pub­li­ca­tion link to access the video of the pre­sen­ta­tion. or click here.   For images from the talk, click here.

In the con­text of the civ­il war with no end in sight in South Sudan, this report out­lines how a donor-led shift from the cur­rent total reliance on diesel to […]

For the sup­port­ing online mate­r­i­al, click here.

Distributed photovoltaics (PV) have played a critical role in the deployment of solar energy, currently making up roughly half of the global PV installed capacity. However, there remains significant unused economically beneficial potential. Estimates of the total technical potential for rooftop PV systems in the United States calculate a generation comparable to approximately 40% of the 2016 total national electric-sector sales. To best take advantage of the rooftop PV potential, effective analytic tools that support deployment strategies and aggressive local, state, and national policies to reduce the soft cost of solar energy are vital. A key step is the low-cost automation of data analysis and business case presentation for structure-integrated solar energy. In this paper, the scalability and resolution of various methods to assess the urban rooftop PV potential are compared, concluding with suggestions for future work in bridging methodologies to better assist policy makers.

A flaw in Europe’s clean ener­gy plan allows fuel from felled trees to qual­i­fy as renew­able ener­gy when in fact this would accel­er­ate cli­mate change and dev­as­tate forests   The […]

This dec­la­ra­tion is based on the data and con­cepts pre­sent­ed at the workshop: Health of Peo­ple, Health of Plan­et and Our Responsibility Cli­mate Change, Air Pol­lu­tion and Health Orga­nized by […]

Overview: Ener­gy pover­ty, is arguably the most per­va­sive and crip­pling threat soci­ety faces today. Lack of access impacts sev­er­al bil­lion peo­ple, with imme­di­ate health, edu­ca­tion­al, eco­nom­ic, and social dam­ages.  Fur­ther­more, […]

Mexico's recent energy reform (2013) has provided the foundations for increased private participation in attempts to offset or reverse the country's continued decline in fossil fuel production. This country is currently on path to becoming a net energy importer by 2020. Conversely, in 2015, and for the first time in over 20 years, the United States (US) became a net oil exporter to Mexico. One of the strategies being pursued by Mexico to prevent an impending supply–demand energy imbalance is the development of shale resources using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques. Hence, an evaluation of the inherent risks associated with hydraulic fracturing is crucial for Mexico's energy planning and decision-making process. This paper draws lessons from the recent ‘shale boom’ in the US, and it analyzes and summarizes the environmental, social, economic, and community impacts that Mexico should be aware of as its nascent shale industry develops. The analysis seeks to inform mainly Mexican policy makers, but also academics, nongovernmental organizations, and the public in general, about the main concerns regarding hydraulic fracturing activities, and the importance of regulatory enforcement and community engagement in advancing sustainability. Furthermore, using the US as a case study, we argue that development of unconventional oil and gas resources in Mexico could lead to a short-term boom rather than to a dependable and sustainable long-term energy supply. Our analysis concludes with a set of recommendations for Mexico, featuring best practices that could be used to attenuate and address some of the impacts likely to emerge from shale oil and gas development.

Climate change projections often focus on 2100. But the geological record shows that unless we rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we will be locking in drastic increases in temperatures and sea levels that will alter the earth not just for centuries, but for millennia. BY ROB WILDER AND DAN KAMMEN • SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

This file is the Li+ energy storage data set in excel mode -- for open access use with attribution.

This paper presents the first detailed long-term stock turnover model to investigate scenarios to decarbonize the residential water heating sector in California, which is currently dominated by natural gas. We model a mix of water heating (WH) technologies including conventional and on-demand (tank-less) natural gas heating, electric resistance, existing electric heat pumps, advanced heat pumps with low global warming refrigerants and solar thermal water heaters. Technically feasible policy scenarios are developed by considering combinations of WH technologies with efficiency gains within each technology, lowering global warming potential of refrigerants and decreasing grid carbon intensity. We then evaluate energy demand, emissions and equipment replacement costs of the pathways. We develop multiple scenarios by which the annual greenhouse gas emissions from residential water heaters in California can be reduced by over 80% from 1990 levels resulting in an annual savings of over 10 Million Metric Tons by 2050. The overall cost of transition will depend on future cost reductions in heat pump and solar thermal water heating equipment, energy costs, and hot water consumption.

The Arti­cle reviews the Unit­ed States’ recent deci­sion to with­draw from the Paris Accord and recounts some of the most promi­nent pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing this deci­sion. The Arti­cle goes on […]

Sus­tain­able Design of Communities  Daniel M. Kammen June 26, 2017  Mov­ing beyond a focus on solar roofs for sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes, ambi­tious projects are attempt­ing to join blocks of build­ings into sus­tain­able units […]

This pub­li­ca­tion web­site sup­ports the new paper, in press at Nature Ener­gy, titled: Ener­gy stor­age deploy­ment and inno­va­tion for the clean ener­gy transition as a site where users can down­load […]

This study identifies, characterizes, and values wind and solar electricity resources for 21 countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa Power Pools. We find that many countries possess potential many times their projected demand. However, because the most competitive wind and solar resources are spatially uneven, international transmission could allow the region as a whole to benefit from “no-regrets” or low-cost, low-impact, and highly accessible resources. International energy trade also lowers system costs by reducing the need for conventional power plants and allows lower impact, more accessible renewable energy sites to be cost competitive. Regional interconnections planned around strategic siting opportunities are crucial for realizing no-regrets wind and solar energy development that can be competitive with conventional generation in African countries.

Abstract: Microgrids are a rapidly evolving and increasingly common form of local power generation used to serve the needs of both rural and urban communities. In this paper, we present a methodology to evaluate the evolution of the sustainability of stand-alone microgrids projects. The proposed methodology considers a composite sustainability index (CSI) that includes both positive and negative impacts of the operation of the microgrid in a given community. The CSI is constructed along environmental, social, economic and technical dimensions of the microgrid. The sub-indexes of each dimension are aggregated into the CSI via a set of adaptive weighting factors, which indicate the relative importance of the corresponding dimension in the sustainability goals. The proposed methodology aims to be a support instrument for policy makers especially when defining sound corrective measures to guarantee the sustainability of small, isolated microgrid projects. To validate the performance of the proposed methodology, a microgrid installed in the northern part of Chile (Huatacondo) has been used as a benchmarking project.

The ongoing debate over the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy (RE) and energy efficiency (EE) deployment often hinges on the current cost of incumbent fossil-fuel technologies versus the long-term benefit of clean energy alternatives. This debate is often focused on mature or ‘industrialized’ economies and externalities such as job creation. In many ways, however, the situation in developing economies is at least as or even more interesting due to the generally faster current rate of economic growth and of infrastructure deployment. On the one hand, RE and EE could help decarbonize economies in developing countries, but on the other hand, higher upfront costs of RE and EE could hamper short-term growth. The methodology developed in this paper confirms the existence of this trade-off for some scenarios, yet at the same time provides considerable evidence about the positive impact of EE and RE from a job creation and employment perspective. By extending and adopting a methodology for Africa designed to calculate employment from electricity generation in the U.S., this study finds that energy savings and the conversion of the electricity supply mix to renewable energy generates employment compared to a reference scenario. It also concludes that the costs per additional job created tend to decrease with increasing levels of both EE adoption and RE shares.

Planning the appropriate renewable energy (RE) installation rate should balance two partially contradictory objectives: substituting fossil fuels fast enough to stave-off the worst consequences of climate change while maintaining a sufficient net energy flow to support the world’s economy. The upfront energy invested in constructing a RE infrastructure subtracts from the net energy available for societal energy needs, a fact typically neglected in energy projections. Modeling feasible energy transition pathways to provide different net energy levels we find that they are critically dependent on the fossil fuel emissions cap and phase-out profile and on the characteristic energy return on energy invested of the RE technologies. The easiest pathway requires installation of RE plants to accelerate from 0.12T Wp yr–1 in 2013 to peak between 7.3 and 11.6 TWp yr–1 in the late 2030s, for an early or a late fossil-fuel phase-out respectively in order for emissions to stay within the recommended CO2 budget.

With dramatic cost declines and performance improvements, both mini-hydropower and solar photovoltaics (PV) now serve as core options to meet the growing demand for electricity in underserved regions worldwide. We compare the net energy return on energy invested (EROI) of mini-hydropower and solar electricity using five existing mini-hydropower installations in northern Thailand with grid-connected solar PV simulations. Both assessments use a life cycle perspective to estimate the EROI. We find that distributed mini-grids with penetrations of solar PV up to 50% of annual generation can exceed the EROI of some fossil-based traditional centralized grid systems. The analysis will help planners and engineers optimize mini-grids for energy payback and utilize local resources in their design. The results suggest higher EROI ratios for mini-hydropower plants than solar PV, though mini-hydropower plants typically yield lower EROI ratios than their large-scale hydropower counterparts.

Media Report 2016 Summit http://​sf​.uschi​na​press​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​0​7​1​5​/​1​0​7​1​7​1​9​.​s​h​tml 美中绿能高峰论坛硅谷圆满举行 2016-07-15 22:14 来源: 金山在线 作者:张苗 字号:【大 中 小】 已有11人浏览   诺贝尔奖获得者、前美国能源部长朱棣文做《气候风险和清洁能源的机遇》主旨报告。 美中绿色能源促进会主席吴锡九。 中国驻旧金山总领事罗林泉（前排左7）、美中绿色能源促进会主席吴锡九（前排左6）、诺贝尔奖获得者、前美国能源部长朱棣文（前排左5）、中国科学院院士、中国电力科学研究院名誉院长周孝信（前排左4）、中国国务院参事、中国可再生能源学会理事长石定寰（前排右3）等人出席“2016美中绿色能源高峰论坛”。 【侨报记者张苗7月15日南湾报道】7月15日，由美中绿色能源促进会携手清华大学、重庆大学、华北电力大学、协鑫新能源国际集团、中国电机工程学会等五家组织，联合主办的“2016美中绿色能源高峰论坛”在硅谷举行。论坛以“构建能源互联网以应对气候变化” 为主题，邀请到中美政府官员，以及美中两国在此三大行业——电力行业、可再生能源行业、信息技术行业暨互联网行业——的领军人物，针对目前中美两国在运用“能源互联网”上的现况和成果提出报告。借此给下一代绿色能源领域及互联网技术，特别是智能电网结合，提供进一步应对气候变化的解决方案。 美中绿色能源促进会主席吴锡九在开幕致辞中表示，经济的高速发展给中国的环境带来压力，中国政府也在积极采取措施，应对气候变化和能源危机；而美国在可再生能源创新方面走在世界前断。相信中美在绿色能源方面的合作，将推动中美友好关系进一步发展。 中国驻旧金山总领事罗林泉出席了论坛。他表示，中美是世界上最大的两个经济体，也是最大的能源消耗国，在减少石化能源使用、降低碳排放和环境保护方面肩负共同责任，面临共同挑战。当前，中国正以“创新、协调、绿色、开放、共享”理念为指导，深入实施创新驱动发展战略，大力推进“大众创业、万众创新”，打造中国经济发展新动力。“我们期待有更多硅谷的科技社团、企业家、投资家、科技人员，积极参与到中美科技交流中来，共同推动中美创新创业领域的交流合作，不断向前发展。” 当天的论坛上，诺贝尔奖获得者、前美国能源部长朱棣文在《气候风险和清洁能源的机遇》主旨报告中提出，为保障未来全球的持续繁荣、可持续性和安全的能源供应，大力发展太阳能、风能等清洁能源和可再生能源是必然选择。 中国科学院院士、中国电力科学研究院名誉院长周孝信在《中国能源革命中电力系统的发展趋势和技术要求》报告中，针对中国能源革命的目标和电力的发展前景，电力系统的发展趋势和技术需求，进行了详细的数据分析。他认为，2050年中国能源转型目标的实现，主要依靠可再生能源发电在电力系统中高比例发展。 中国国务院参事、中国可再生能源学会理事长石定寰，斯坦福大学高级研究员（PEEC和胡佛研究所）格伦娜（Dian Grueneich），清华大学能源互联网研究院院长曾嵘协鑫新能源国际集团首席执行长方朋等，也分别在会上作主旨报告。 据主办方介绍，美中绿色能源促进会是一个501© 3非牟利、非政府组织，于2008年在美国硅谷成立。它的宗旨和目标是通过促进美中两国人民、商业、政府、工业及学术组织之间的合作，来应对全球气候变化。 http://​sf​.uschi​na​press​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​0​7​1​5​/​1​0​7​1​7​2​4​.​s​h​tml 美中绿能高峰论坛与会专家答记者问 2016-07-15 22:29 来源: 金山在线 作者:张苗 字号:【大 中 小】 已有9人浏览 0 【侨报记者张苗7月15日南湾报道】“2016美中绿色能源高峰论坛”硅谷召开期间，为向公众更加全面、客观地介绍当前的气候变化、能源转型等问题，增强各界对绿色能源发展和中美能源合作的正确认识，论坛主办方——美中绿色能源促进会安排与会专家答现场媒体记者问。 美中绿色能源促进会主席吴锡九（左5）、中国科学院院士、中国电力科学研究院名誉院长周孝信（右4）、中国国务院参事、中国可再生能源学会理事长石定寰（右3）. […]

Link to Dan Kam­men’s state­ment on uni­ver­si­ty fos­sil fuel divestment