Energy Policy Commons^™

U.S. Regulatory Regimes And Offshore Energy Production, Jeffery R. Ray

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

This paper shows that offshore wind is an emerging key resource that should comprise a greater portion of our national energy fuel mix. Energy security, as a new process of security to our economic and military might in the modern world, has become an intrinsic issue of national security. This paradigm is constrained by the knowledge and experience regarding the harmful effects of producing energy. The harm not only to human health and safety, but also to substantive sections of the respective environment and ecology that is geographically situated in proximity to extraction or production locations. Perhaps the most relevant …

Policy Meltdown: How Climate Change Is Driving Excessive Nuclear Energy Investment, Ashley Hardy, Dontan Hart

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

The United States is currently experiencing what some have labeled a nuclear energy renaissance. This so-called renaissance responds in part to growing concerns about global warming and the need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity production. A growing number of policymakers and scholars view nuclear energy development as one of the most promising means of slowing climate change because nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. They are increasingly advocating that nuclear energy receive policy treatment at least as favorable as that afforded to renewable energy strategies such as wind and solar energy. Some state governments …

Lignocellulosic Biorefineries In Europe: Current State And Prospects, Shady S. Hassan, Gwilym A. Williams, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

Lignocellulosic biorefining processes plant-derived biomass into a range of bio-based products. Currently, more than 40 lignocellulosic biorefineries are operating across Europe. Here, we address the challenges and future opportunities of this nascent industry by elucidating key elements of the biorefining sector, including feedstock sourcing, processing methods, and the bioproducts market.

Transitioning Montana To A Renewable Energy Future: The Social And Economic Impacts, Jacqueline O. Sussman

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana is home to the second-largest coal-fired power plant in the West, the Colstrip Generating Station. The value and demand for coal both domestically and globally is quickly diminishing, while the renewable energy industries of wind and solar are booming. As utilities in the Northwest transition their investments from coal to renewable energy, Montana faces a critical decision on the future of its energy system that will impact the lives of generations of Montanans to come.

This five-part report aims to aid in the discussion and decision-making process by reviewing the most up-to-date economic data on renewable energy; discussing the …

Not Waiting For Washington: Climate Policy Adoption In California And New York, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

In the absence of strong U.S. national climate change policy, California and New York, among other states, adopted relatively comprehensive and ambitious policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions during the 2000s. They adopted these policies despite political-institutional and other structural barriers similar to those found nationally, which shows that political actors have significant scope for taking effective action even under structural constraints. This article explains the adoption of climate policies in these two leading states by using a windows of opportunity approach, which analyzes how the convergence of problem and political events produces policy windows and hence opportunities for advocacy …

Wisconsin Non-Industrial Private Forest Landowners And Wood-Based Bioenergy, Jennifer L. Dunn

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wood-based bioelectricity production is expanding due to its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fossil fuel resources. U.S. non-industrial private forest landowners (NIPFs) are key to the production of wood-based bioelectricity since they own 59% of the forestland in the country that could supply bioelectricity feedstocks (The National Association of State Foresters 2018). This is particularly important in states like Wisconsin with a mandatory renewable portfolio electricity standard (RPS). My dissertation focuses on issues around Wisconsin bioelectricity production including related NIPF views and the creation of the state’s sustainable biomass harvesting guidelines. In Chapter Two, I present …

Addressing Policy Challenges To Woody Biopower Production: Social Acceptance, Biomass Certification And Limited Policy Support, John B. Barnett

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Forestlands have been identified as a valuable resource to mitigate climate change due to the biome’s capacity to both sequester greenhouse gases and substitute for fossil fuels. Woody biomass has been proposed as a substitutable input for coalgenerated electricity as economies attempt to transition to renewable power while addressing economic development goals. However, increasing the intensity of forest management for energy production has the potential to result in significant ecological, economic and social consequences at local, regional and global scales. In this context, my dissertation explores the capacity of existing policy frameworks to stimulate and support sustainable power production from …

Technical Feasibility And Life Cycle Cost Assessment Of A Photovoltaic Array On Trinity Dam, Trinity County, Ca, Caleb Aaron Patrick

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Public lands owned by the Bureau of Land Management are increasingly being used for photovoltaic (PV) system development. Although numerous policies support PV deployment on public lands, those managed by the Bureau of Reclamation have not been considered for PV development. Hydro-electric embankment dams, both publicly and privately owned, may have the potential to be development sites for distributed PV systems. A technical feasibility report was conducted for a case study of a PV installation on Trinity Dam, Trinity County, CA, and found embankment dams could potentially be feasible development sites. A mounting analysis found that a concrete slab reinforced …

A Review Of Unsupervised Statistical Learning And Visual Analytics Techniques Applied To Performance Analysis Of Non-Residential Buildings, Clayton Miller, Zoltán Nagy, Arno Schlueter

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Measured and simulated data sources from the built environment are increasing rapidly. It is becoming normal to analyze data from hundreds, or even thousands of buildings at once. Mechanistic, manual analysis of such data sets is time-consuming and not realistic using conventional techniques. Thus, a significant body of literature has been generated using unsupervised statistical learning techniques designed to uncover structure and information quickly with fewer input parameters or metadata about the buildings collected. Further, visual analytics techniques are developed as aids in this process for a human analyst to utilize and interpret the results. This paper reviews publications that …

Wyoming Sage-Grouse Working Groups: Lessons Learned, Thomas J. Christiansen, Lorien R. Belton

Human–Wildlife Interactions

The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) has been the subject of multiple status reviews under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Wyoming accounts for approximately 38% of the range-wide population. Since 2000, 2 statewide and 8 local citizen working groups have been established in Wyoming to developed conservation plans and advise state policy. The first statewide plan for the conservation of sage-grouse was formally adopted in 2003. The statewide plan established local sage-grouse working groups charged with developing and facilitating implementation of local conservation plans. Those 8 plans were completed in 2007 and 2008, and updated in 2014. From 2005-2017, …

Mining Electrical Meter Data To Predict Principal Building Use, Performance Class, And Operations Strategy For Hundreds Of Non-Residential Buildings, Clayton Miller, Forrest Meggers

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study focuses on the inference of characteristic data from a data set of 507 non-residential buildings. A two-step framework is presented that extracts statistical, model-based, and pattern-based behavior. The goal of the framework is to reduce the expert intervention needed to utilize measured raw data in order to infer information such as building use type, performance class, and operational behavior. The first step is temporal feature extraction, which utilizes a library of data mining techniques to filter various phenomenon from the raw data. This step transforms quantitative raw data into qualitative categories that are presented in heat map visualizations …

Ensuring The Effective Implementation Of The Monitoring, Reporting And Verification (Mrv) System In Shipping : A Step Towards Making Energy-Efficiency Happen, Abu Hasan Rony

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Coal Power In Zambia: Time To Rethink, Prem Jain

Southern African Journal of Policy and Development

Zambia has until recently relied almost 100% on hydropower for electricity generation. The first coal power plant in Zambian history was commissioned recently in 2016/17. An unprecedented power shortfall in 2016 prompted the Zambian government to diversify its energy sources by planning to go into solar and increased coal power. Coal causes high levels of pollution, degrades the environment, damages people’s health and causes climate change. Solar and other renewable sources of energy are clean. The cost of power from renewable energy is now competitive with that of coal power. Coal power is on the decline worldwide and renewable power …

Predicting Success Of Energy Savings Interventions And Industry Type Using Smart Meter And Retrofit Data From Thousands Of Non-Residential Buildings, Clayton Miller

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper discusses the creation of targeting and segmentation information about non-residential buildings that are equipped with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) meters, or smart meters. Statistics, model, and pattern-based temporal features are extracted from over 36,000 smart meters. They are then merged with a database of past energy efficiency interventions such as lighting, HVAC, and controls retrof its from 1,600 buildings. The buildings are divided into Good, Average, and Poor performing classes according to consumption from before and after the retrofits. Classification models are developed that improve the ability to predict retrofit success and standard industry class by 18.3% and …

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2017, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.

Energy Storage For Pv-Driven Air-Conditioning For An Off-Grid Resort - A Case Study, Christoph Luerssen, Arifeen Wahed, Thomas Reindl, Clayton Miller, David Cheong, Chandra Sekhar

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The current paper presents a case study of a PV-driven air-conditioning system with battery and latent heat storage applied for an off-grid resort in Bintan (Indonesia). The lead-acid battery bank has a nominal energy storage capacity of 47 kWh and the ice storage can store up to 92 kWh latent heat. The entire energy system of the resort was equipped with a comprehensive real-time data acquisition system to measure different parameters such as solar irradiation, temperatures, flow rates and power consumptions. More than 100 parameters are transferred minutely and monitored remotely across country borders. A TRNSYS model has also been …

Portland General Electric’S Adoption Of Distributed Energy Resources, Lennae Misiewicz, Jason Carver, Abdalilah Owaishiz, Stephen Macdonald

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

For over 100 years, people have been searching for ways to make the electric grid more efficient, resilient, and cost effective. Although there have been many improvements over the years, in the past two decades from; increased concern on climate change, innovation in advance technologies, and political will mounting to become energy independent, there has been a shift in how our grid stakeholders talk future grid improvements for the next 100 years. One of the causes behind this shift is due to greater saturation of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) on the grid. This disruptive technology creates many challenges to legacy …

Solarworld Amidst Uncertainty, Palak Goel, Roland Richards, Asawari Kulkarni, Nagarjun Hassan Ranganath, Majed Alshamlani

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Solar energy is turning out to be a widely accepted renewable energy alternative. It is considered as the cleanest and abundantly available source of energy. Adoption of this source for energy generation has been made possible by technological advancements. The United States has realized the potential of the solar energy but hasn’t been able to exploit the technology until recently. Since 2009, the US has seen a significant growth in consumption of solar energy. Efficiency of solar cells, tax credits, state policies, increasing public awareness on environmental pollution have resulted in increasing use of solar energy. Although a key reason …

The Effect Of Warming On Wind Speed And Potential Wind Power In Iceland, Alexei Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Climate change is causing a shift in the temperature and pressure gradient between the Arctic and the Equator, with the Arctic warming at a faster rate than the Equator. This shift has the potential to alter the seasonal wind speeds in the Northern Hemisphere, which could in turn affect the wind power density potential. In this study, a wind model was created to predict future wind speeds and wind power density for 6 weather stations in Iceland. According to the model, winter wind speeds and wind power density potential will either stay the same or increase slightly (0 – 4%), …

Russia's Northern Rook: Nord Stream 2 On The European Energy Chessboard, David E. Wilson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline proposes to connect Germany to the world’s largest natural gas reserves in Russia, allowing the state-owned Russian energy behemoth Gazprom to double its export capacity through the ‘Northern Corridor’ transit route to Europe. This project has been the subject of sharp disapproval from Central and Eastern European countries, as well as the United States, which fear the prospect of increasing dependence on gas imports from a Russia perceived as politically aggressive and unreliable. This paper will identify the geopolitical and geoeconomic implications involved in the construction of Nord Stream 2 by adopting a geostrategic worldview …