How Virginia Can Meet Its Clean Power Plan Targets

In August 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants. The CPP builds on progress already under way to move the country toward a cleaner electricity system, including rapidly falling prices of renewables and increased deployment of moneysaving energy efficiency measures. The plan enables states to use a wide range of options to meet their standards, such as existing clean energy policies and power plants (the focus of this analysis), other tools to cut electricity use and increase the use of renewables, and broader initiatives such as participation in a capand- trade program or use of a carbon tax.This fact sheet examines how Virginia can use its existing policies and infrastructure to meet its emission standards under the Clean Power Plan while minimizing compliance costs, ensuring reliability, and harnessing economic opportunities

How Pennsylvania Can Meet Its Clean Power Plan Targets

This fact sheet examines how Pennsylvania can meet -- and even exceed -- its CPP standards through expanding its clean energy policies and making better use of existing power plants while minimizing compliance costs, ensuring reliability, and harnessing economic opportunities in clean energy. Pennsylvania's existing clean energy policies put the state's power plants in good position to make carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions that will help the state meet its CPP targets. Existing policies that promote renewable development and improve energy efficiency through 2020 -- 21 will help Pennsylvania meet its initial targets. If extended and expanded, these policies could provide a basis to meet the targets through 2030

How Michigan Can Meet Its Clean Power Plan Targets

This fact sheet examines how Michigan can use its existing policies and infrastructure to meet its emission standards under the Clean Power Plan while minimizing compliance costs, ensuring reliability, and harnessing economic opportunities

Prospects for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles in the United States and Japan: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/)The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) may offer a potential near term, low carbon alternative to today's gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. A representative vehicle technology that runs on electricity in addition to conventional fuels was introduced into the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model as a perfect substitute for internal combustion engine (ICE-only) vehicles in two likely early-adopting markets, the United States and Japan. We investigate the effect of relative vehicle cost and all-electric range on the timing of PHEV market entry in the presence and absence of an advanced cellulosic biofuels technology and a strong (450ppm) economy-wide carbon constraint. Vehicle cost could be a significant barrier to PHEV entry unless fairly aggressive goals for reducing battery costs are met. If a low cost vehicle is available we find that the PHEV has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions, refined oil demand, and under a carbon policy the required CO2 price in both the United States and Japan. The emissions reduction potential of PHEV adoption depends on the carbon intensity of electric power generation and the size of the vehicle fleet. Thus, the technology is much more effective in reducing CO2 emissions if adoption occurs under an economy-wide cap and trade system that also encourages low-carbon electricity generation.BP Conversion Research Project and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change through a consortium of industrial sponsors and Federal grants

Expected Changes in the Workforce and Implications for Labor Markets

[Excerpt] While many have written about possible effects of the baby boom on the U.S. economy, few have recognized that this demographic transition provides analysts with a unique and valuable opportunity to investigate how the labor market works. Specifically, as baby boomers move up the age distribution, they impart a one-time shock to the supply of potential workers in each age bracket. Because this change is exogenous, many of the tools labor economists typically apply can be utilized to predict how the aging of the baby boom will alter key labor market outcomes. Theoretical and empirical models which (either implicitly or explicitly) hold constant structural parameters in order to work through the effects of an exogenous shock are well-suited to address this issue

Climate policy costs of spatially unbalanced growth in electricity demand: the case of datacentres. ESRI Working Paper No. 657 March 2020

We investigate the power system implications of the anticipated expansion in electricity demand by datacentres. We perform a joint optimisation of Generation and Transmission Expansion Planning considering uncertainty in future datacentre growth under various climate policies. Datacentre expansion imposes significant extra costs on the power system, even under the cheapest policy option. A renewable energy target is more costly than a technology-neutral carbon reduction policy, and the divergence in costs increases non-linearly in electricity demand. Moreover, a carbon reduction policy is more robust to uncertainties in projected demand than a renewable policy. High renewable targets crowd out other low-carbon options such as Carbon Capture and Sequestration. The results suggest that energy policy should be reviewed to focus on technology-neutral carbon reduction policies

How Missouri Can Meet Its Clean Power Plan Targets

This fact sheet examines how Missouri can use its existing policies and infrastructure to meet its emission standards under the Clean Power Plan while minimizing compliance costs, ensuring reliability, and harnessing economic opportunitie

Potential Climatic Impacts and Reliability of Very Large-Scale Wind Farms

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).Meeting future world energy needs while addressing climate change requires large-scale deployment of low or zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission technologies such as wind energy. The widespread availability of wind power has fueled legitimate interest in this renewable energy source as one of the needed technologies. For very large-scale utilization of this resource, there are however potential environmental impacts, and also problems arising from its inherent intermittency, in addition to the present need to lower unit costs. To explore some of these issues, we use a threedimensional climate model to simulate the potential climate effects associated with installation of wind-powered generators over vast areas of land or coastal ocean. Using windmills to meet 10% or more of global energy demand in 2100, could cause surface warming exceeding 1oC over land installations. In contrast, surface cooling exceeding 1oC is computed over ocean installations, but the validity of simulating the impacts of windmills by simply increasing the ocean surface drag needs further study. Significant warming or cooling remote from both the land and ocean installations, and alterations of the global distributions of rainfall and clouds also occur. These results are influenced by the competing effects of increases in roughness and decreases in wind speed on near-surface turbulent heat fluxes, the differing nature of land and ocean surface friction, and the dimensions of the installations parallel and perpendicular to the prevailing winds. These results are also dependent on the accuracy of the model used, and the realism of the methods applied to simulate windmills. Additional theory and new field observations will be required for their ultimate validation. Intermittency of wind power on daily, monthly and longer time scales as computed in these simulations and inferred from meteorological observations, poses a demand for one or more options to ensure reliability, including backup generation capacity, very long distance power transmission lines, and onsite energy storage, each with specific economic and/or technological challenges.This study received support from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is funded by a consortium of government, industry and foundation sponsors