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Progress and Potential for Electric Vehicles to Reduce Carbon Emissions
December 2020
This report from Resources for the Future reviews current policies that encourage advancements in transportation electrification and identifies the policies, technological upgrades, and infrastructure necessary to accelerate electric vehicle adoption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Policies that incentivize the widespread installation of charging infrastructure and customers to purchase electric vehicles are reviewed at a federal, state, and local level.
Regulatory Solutions for Building Decarbonization: Tools for Commissions and Other Government Agencies
July 2020
This report from Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) identifies the need for regulatory change to advance building electrification and what that change should entail. RMI provides recommendations to state utility regulators that are holistic in their decarbonization approach, take advantage of near-term market opportunities, and help manage the long-term transition to electrification.
Minnesota lawmakers poised to pass updated energy conservation law
May 2020
This article highlights a Minnesota bill currently working its way through the legislative process. Reintroduced in 2021, the bipartisan Energy Conservation and Optimization Act is supported by the state's investor-owned utilities, allows fuel-switching, and would incentivize the sale of electric storage water heaters, air-source heat pumps, and electric vehicles.
Wringing More Value from Building Energy Operations and Upgrades: Monetizing Demand Flexibility in Public and Institutional Buildings
February 2021
This report from NASEO, directed at state agencies, outlines how to tap into monetizable value streams from integrating demand flexibility into building energy services and facility upgrades. Suggested actions to advance demand flexibility in public facilities are also included.
State and Local Building Policies and Programs for Energy Efficiency and Demand Flexibility
February 2021
This report evaluates how to foster the adoption of grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) programs by utilities by examining ways to revamp state and local building policies. The policy revision approaches fall into the following categories: benchmarking and transparency, ratings and labeling, and building performance standards.
Use It When We Have It: How To Use More Clean Energy And Decarbonize The Grid With Demand Flexibility
January 2021
This report from NRDC summarizes the benefits of demand flexibility, the capabilities of relevant technology, and the steps that regulators can take to better facilitate the equitable adoption of demand flexibility enabling technology and the creation of utility-run grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) programs.
NREL Connected Communities: A Multi-Building Energy Management Approach
May 2020
This report introduces the audience to the concept of Connected Communities (CCs) and how they can facilitate deep integration of building appliances with the grid to enable demand flexibility. Examples of CCs across the United States are also included in the report, and their value is assessed.
A National Roadmap for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings
May 2021
This report investigates the barriers to GEB adoption and provides recommendations to transcend those barriers. The report also addresses issues of equity and accessability to GEB technology.
Green Mountain Power Corporation Bring Your Own Device Program
November 2020
This utility program details energy storage and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) tariffs of Green Mountain Power. Program details, like program design can be found within the document.
Measuring Energy Justice
May 2022
The task of tracking and potentially standardizing aspects of justice opens debate over the importance of social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors that may vary by community, class, race, gender, or geography. Policies and programs intended to increase energy equity necessitate accountability mechanisms to verify their success. This report provides an overview of scholarship pertaining to energy justice measurement as well as the small but growing number of efforts by state governments to develop and implement energy justice metrics.
PROGRAM ON TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION: UPDATE ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE OVERVIEW—MAPPING TOOLS AND METRICS
April 2022
The present report provides an overview of EJ tools and metrics, focusing on the updates to and developments in state-level mapping tools. The tools were identified and reviewed by searching the existing literature and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) resources. Tools that are newer or currently under development might not have been captured in this report.
Tools for Equitable Mobility Practices Guide
November 2021
The Barr Foundation commissioned Community Science in partnership with the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) to develop a guide that explores the current landscape of existing equity assessment tools that are applicable to transportation and mobility policy decisions.
Communities in energy transition: exploring best practices and decisions support tools to provide equitable outcomes
January 2022
The U.S. coal industry has been in a state of decline for the past decade, a trend ushered by flat electricity demand, increased regulatory pressure, and market competition from cost-competitive clean energy sources. The receding economic viability of the coal industry has been acutely felt by the communities with immediate economic ties to coal-fired generation. With the energy transition underway, the question of how to engage communities as stakeholders in the decision-making process and address their needs through an equitable and just transition remains unresolved. To that end, this paper explores the economic, environmental, and social challenges presented by the energy transition at the community level, highlighting four case studies from transitioning coal-dependent communities across the United States to ultimately identify best practices in coal plant decommissioning processes. This paper weaves these community identified best practices into two support tools—a decommissioning checklist and a redevelopment decision-making framework—that can be used to engage communities in the power plant retirement decision, the site reclamation phase, and eventual redevelopment of the site and revitalization of the surrounding community.
Using Mapping Tools to Prioritize Electric Vehicle Charger Benefits to Underserved Communities
May 2022
Mapping tools can play an important role in incorporating equity into planning, implementing, and evaluating investments in electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, also referred to as EV chargers or electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Federal, state, and local organizations need methodologies for using mapping tools as they pursue equity-focused goals to ensure that the benefits of investments in EV chargers flow to energy and environmental justice (EEJ) underserved communities. This report provides examples of how to apply mapping tools to identify priority locations for installing EV chargers that may benefit EEJ underserved communities through four EV charger planning approaches: corridor charging, community charging, fleet electrification, and diversity in STEM and workforce development. It also explores various methodologies for calculating low-public EVSE density.
Coal-dependent Communities in Transition: Identifying Best Practices to Ensure Equitable Outcomes
September 2021
The report results highlight the need to recognize that the decommissioning decision-making process must be community-based to be equitable. Each community’s input is key to the transition away from coal power because there is no one-size-fits-all development plan. In other words, each community’s trajectory through the decommissioning process—from the retirement decision-making stage to the final site redevelopment phase—is unique because each community has distinct needs and wants from the energy transition. What is best for one community may not be suited for another. Ultimately, the framework for site development and community revitalization post-decommissioning cannot be universal because each community’s profile—from a social, cultural, and economic perspective—is different
Energy Equity and Environmental Justice Workshop Report
January 2021
On December 11, 2020, 28 PNNL staff members discussed research to advance energy equity and environmental justice at a two-hour internal workshop. The primary purposes of the workshop were to baseline existing efforts at the laboratory and brainstorm future research activities. This report covers the workshop discussion and new research areas and questions, broken into energy system topics. Appendix A lists PNNL staff in attendance and Appendix B contains a full workshop agenda.
Energy Storage as an Equity Asset
May 2021
This review offers a discussion on how energy storage deployment advances equitable outcomes for the power system. It catalogues the four tenets of the energy justice concept—distributive, recognition, procedural, and restorative—and shows how they relate to inequities in energy affordability, availability, due process, sustainability, and responsibility.
Advancing Energy Equity in Grid Planning
March 2022
This presentation explores the increasing role of energy equity in grid planning.
Building diverse and inclusive workplaces: our partnership with the Diversity Employment Network
March 2022
Nova Scotia Power details their partnership with the Diversity Employment Network
Electrification
February 2021
Microgrid Compendium
February 2021
Microgrid controllers are a key component of a microgrid. The microgrid controller is used to optimize, manage, and control the DERs within the microgrid boundary as well as controlling how the microgrid as a whole communicates with the larger grid to provide grid services. The content in this document was developed by Southern Company to compile use cases and functionalities for microgrid controllers and outline how they can be operated to meet different needs.
March 2021
This webpage on the American Public Gas Association (APGA) website provides information about the advocacy issues facing publicly owned natural gas local distribution companies. The page addresses APGA's policy position regarding electrification, direct use of natural gas, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, natural gas vehicles, and the Natural Gas Act. APGA also includes their filed federal comments and federal correspondence on this page.
