The public health benefits of insulation retrofits in existing housing in the United States

BACKGROUND: Methodological limitations make it difficult to quantify the public health benefits of energy efficiency programs. To address this issue, we developed a risk-based model to estimate the health benefits associated with marginal energy usage reductions and applied the model to a hypothetical case study of insulation retrofits in single-family homes in the United States. METHODS: We modeled energy savings with a regression model that extrapolated findings from an energy simulation program. Reductions of fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) emissions and particle precursors (SO(2 )and NOx) were quantified using fuel-specific emission factors and marginal electricity analyses. Estimates of population exposure per unit emissions, varying by location and source type, were extrapolated from past dispersion model runs. Concentration-response functions for morbidity and mortality from PM(2.5 )were derived from the epidemiological literature, and economic values were assigned to health outcomes based on willingness to pay studies. RESULTS: In total, the insulation retrofits would save 800 TBTU (8 × 10(14 )British Thermal Units) per year across 46 million homes, resulting in 3,100 fewer tons of PM(2.5), 100,000 fewer tons of NOx, and 190,000 fewer tons of SO(2 )per year. These emission reductions are associated with outcomes including 240 fewer deaths, 6,500 fewer asthma attacks, and 110,000 fewer restricted activity days per year. At a state level, the health benefits per unit energy savings vary by an order of magnitude, illustrating that multiple factors (including population patterns and energy sources) influence health benefit estimates. The health benefits correspond to $1.3 billion per year in externalities averted, compared with$5.9 billion per year in economic savings. CONCLUSION: In spite of significant uncertainties related to the interpretation of PM(2.5 )health effects and other dimensions of the model, our analysis demonstrates that a risk-based methodology is viable for national-level energy efficiency programs

Public/Private Sector Cooperation to Promote Industrial Energy Efficiency: Allied Partners and the US Department of Energy

Since 1996, the US Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies (USDOE) has been involved in a unique voluntary collaboration with industry called the Allied Partner program. Initially developed under the Motor Challenge program, the partnership concept continues as a central element of USDOE's BestPractices, which in 2001 integrated all of USDOE's near-term industrial program offerings including those in motors, compressed air, pump, fan, process heating and steam systems. Partnerships are sought with end use industrial companies as well as equipment suppliers and manufacturers, utilities, consultants, and state agencies that have extensive existing relationships with industrial customers. Partners are neither paid nor charged a fee for participation. Since the inception of Allied Partners, the assumption has been that these relationships could serve as the foundation for conveying a system energy-efficiency message to many more industrial facilities than could be reached through a typical government-to-end-user program model. An independent evaluation of the Motor Challenge program, reported at the last EEMODS conference, attributed US $16.9 million or nearly 67 percent of the total annual program energy savings to the efforts of Allied Partners in the first three years of operation. A recent evaluation of the Compressed Air Challenger, which grew out of the former Motor Challenger program, attribute additional energy savings from compressed air training alone at US$12.1 million per year. Since the reorganization under BestPractices, the Allied Partner program has been reshaped to extend the impact of all BestPractices program activities. This new model is more ambitious than the former Motor Challenge program concerning the level of collaborative activities negotiated with Allied Partners. This paper describes in detail two new types of program initiatives involving Allied Partners: Qualified Specialist Training and Energy Events. The Qualified Specialist activity was conceived as a way of engaging the supply side of industry, consultants, and utilities to greatly increase use of decision making software developed by USDOE to assist industrial facilities in assessing the energy efficiency of their energy-using systems. To date, USDOE has launched Qualified Specialist training with member companies of the Hydraulic Institute (HI) and with distributors and consultants associated with the Compressed Air Challenge. These activities train and qualify industry professionals to use and to train customers to use USDOE's Pumping System Assessment Tool (PSAT) and AIRMaster + software programs, respectively. The industry experts provide a public benefit by greatly increasing customer access to the software and assessment techniques. Participating Specialists anticipate a business benefit by providing a valuable service to key customers that is associated with USDOE. The Energy Event concept was developed in 2001 in cooperation with the California Energy Commission in response to the state's energy crisis and has been extended to other geographic areas during 2002. The three California events, named ''Energy Solutions for California Industry,'' relied on Allied Partners to provide system-based solutions to industrial companies as both speakers and exhibitors. These one-day events developed a model for a serious solutions-oriented format that avoids the typical trade show atmosphere through strict exhibitor guidelines, careful screening of speaker topics, and reliance on case studies to illustrate cost- and energy-saving opportunities from applying a systems approach. Future plans to use this activity model are discussed as well as lessons learned from the California series

Effect of Roof Slope and Thickness on the Performance of a Saltstone Vault

At the Savannah River Site, low-level radioactive decontaminated salt solution is mixed with slag, flyash, and cement to form a grout-like material called ``Saltstone.`` The Saltstone is poured into concrete vaults constructed at the Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF). The SDF is designed for the release of contaminants in a slow, controlled manner over thousands of years. The impact of SDF on groundwater has been studied in a radiological performance assessment (PA). Groundwater models were used to predict the fluid flow and contaminant transport at SDF. The models predicted a spatial contaminant concentration distribution in groundwater as a function of time. This study focuses on the roof configuration of Saltstone vault, with special interests in cost-effectiveness. We conducted a study to evaluate the effect of roof slope and thickness on the performance of a Saltstone vault. Four roof configurations were simulated. The tool used for the simulation was ECLIPSE, a finite-difference petroleum reservoir engineering code with an environmental tracer option. Nitrate was used as the ``tracer`` contaminant. In this study, ECLIPSE solves the two-phase two-dimensional flow and transport problem up to 10,000 years. This paper describes a modeling study used to evaluate roof design options for the Saltstone vault

Source apportionment of groundwater pollutants in Apulian agricultural sites using multivariate statistical analyses: case study of Foggia province

<p>Abstract</p> <p>The electric grid in the United States has been suffering from underinvestment for years, and now faces pressing challenges from rising demand and deteriorating infrastructure. High congestion levels in transmission lines are greatly reducing the efficiency of electricity generation and distribution. In this paper, we assess the faults of the current electric grid and quantify the costs of maintaining the current system into the future. While the proposed “smart grid” contains many proposals to upgrade the ailing infrastructure of the electric grid, we argue that smart meter installation in each U.S. household will offer a significant reduction in peak demand on the current system. A smart meter is a device which monitors a household’s electricity consumption in real-time, and has the ability to display real-time pricing in each household. We conclude that these devices will provide short-term and long-term benefits to utilities and consumers. The smart meter will enable utilities to closely monitor electricity consumption in real-time, while also allowing households to adjust electricity consumption in response to real-time price adjustments.</p

Assessing the economics of large Energy Storage Plants with an optimisation methodology

Power plants, such as wind farms, that harvest renewable energy are increasing their share of the energy portfolio in several countries, including the United Kingdom. Their inability to match demand power profiles is stimulating an increasing need for large ESP (Energy Storage Plants), capable of balancing their instability and shifting power produced during low demand to peak periods. This paper presents and applies an innovative methodology to assess the economics of ESP utilising UK electricity price data, resulting in three key findings. Firstly the paper provides a methodology to assess the trade-off “reserve capacity vs. profitability” and the possibility of establishing the “optimum size capacity”. The optimal reserve size capacity maximizing the NPV (Net Present Value) is smaller than the optimum size capacity minimizing the subsidies. This is not an optimal result since it complicates the incentive scheme to align investors and policy makers' interests. Secondly, without subsidies, none of the existing ESP technologies are economically sustainable. However, subsidies are a relatively small percentage of the average price of electricity in UK. Thirdly, the possibility of operating ESP as both as a reserve and do price arbitrage was identified as a mean of decreasing subsidies for the ESP technologies