An official website of the United States government
In the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the United States (U.S.) Congress placed a major bet on the importance of household actions, and the incentives for these actions may yield disproportionately large emissions reductions. Modeling estimates from Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit (REPEAT) suggest that the IRA's $331 billion investment can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 4% below a 2005 baseline by 2030, assuming a low-friction economic environment. To evaluate the role of household actions, we use a two-part method: 1) Policy analyses of the IRA and IIJA to identify household incentives; 2) Secondary data analysis of REPEAT's policy models to identify the potential for emissions reductions associated with household action. We find that $39 billion, or 12% of climate and energy funds in the IRA and $4.3 billion or 5.7% of clean energy and power funds in the IIJA, target voluntary household actions, and that these actions contribute 40% of the cumulative emissions reductions under the IRA and IIJA, assuming a mid-range scenario for uptake. The importance of household actions to achieving IRA and IIJA's emissions reduction goals suggests that actual impacts will likely vary by behavioral plasticity, and that program design should reflect social and behavioral science insights.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on April 29, 2026
Trump and the US energy transition
Abstract The US electricity grid has seen a rapid increase in the amount of renewable energy over the last decade, with many renewable advocates viewing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 asthecatalyst to move the grid towards 100% clean energy. The 2024 elections, however, have significantly muddied the path. In this commentary, I posit what the Trump administration—and related Republican control of both houses of the US Congress—means for the US electricity system. I begin by briefly outlining the contours of federal and state electricity governance, the design of Inflation Reduction Act, the existing drivers of renewable energy growth in the United States, and the potential for electricity demand growth in the United States. I continue by briefly pointing to likely outcomes for the predominant fossil fuels on the grid—natural gas and coal—before pointing to the potential for continuing growth in renewable energy. In the conclusion, I argue that while renewable energy will not cease to be developed, four years of Trump increases the certainty that the clean energy transition will continue to be patchy and, sadly, all too slow.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1951102
- PAR ID:
- 10656975
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Geographical Journal
- Volume:
- 191
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0016-7398
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Although hydropower produces a relatively small portion of the electricity we use in the United States, it is a flexible and dispatchable resource that serves various critical functions for managing the electricity grid. Climate-induced changes to water availability will affect future hydropower production, and such changes could impact how the areas where the supply and demand of electricity are balanced, called balancing authority areas, are able to meet decarbonization goals. We calculate hydroclimate risk to hydropower at the balancing authority scale, which is previously underexplored in the literature and has real implications for decarbonization and resilience-building. Our results show that, by 2050, most balancing authority areas could experience significant changes in water availability in areas where they have hydropower. Balancing areas facing the greatest changes are located in diverse geographic areas, not just the Western and Northwestern United States, and vary in hydropower generation capacity. The range of projected changes experienced within each balancing area could exacerbate or offset existing hydropower generation deficits. As power producers and managers undertake increasing regional cooperation to account for introducing more variable renewable energy into the grid, analysis of risk at this regional scale will become increasingly salient.more » « less
-
With commercial and residential buildings accounting for approximately 40% of the energy and 70% of the electricity consumption in the United States, there are substantial opportunities to improve energy efficiency in these buildings. Similarly, buildings also account for the large majority of electricity demand, particularly during peak use hours. As the electric grid becomes increasingly supported by renewable energy, buildings are ideal for supporting demand-side management, allowing for the electricity demand to meet the variable levels of electricity supply. Integrated controls of various building energy system components, including HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning), lighting, and shading devices, combined with advanced sensor and control technologies, can help to optimize system operations. This research aims to study the impact of integrated HVAC, lighting, and shading device controls, to estimate energy and demand saving in typical small office buildings in the U.S. This is achieved through a multi-step modeling process, including daylight simulation using Radiance to evaluate available daylight for each zone, then EnergyPlus to develop and implement various controls and estimate energy and demand savings using the Radiance results as input. The result of this work provides insights for a variety of stakeholders in the building, utility and grid operator industries and quantifies the potential benefit of integrated systems.more » « less
-
Space cooling constitutes >10% of worldwide electricity consumption and is anticipated to rise swiftly due to intensified heatwaves under emerging climate change. The escalating electricity demand for cooling services will challenge already stressed power grids, especially during peak times of demand. To address this, the adoption of demand response to adjust building energy use on the end-user side becomes increasingly important to adapt future smart buildings with rapidly growing renewable energy sources. However, existing demand response strategies predominantly explore sensible cooling energy as flexible building load while neglecting latent cooling energy, which constitutes significant portions of total energy use of buildings in humid climates. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate the demand response potential by adjusting latent cooling energy through ventilation control for typical medium commercial office buildings in four representative cities across different humid climate zones, i.e., Miami, Huston, Atlanta, and New York in the United States (US). As the first step, the sensible heat ratio, defined as sensible cooling load to total building load (involving both sensible and latent load), in different humid climates are calculated. Subsequently, the strategy to adjust building latent load through ventilation control (LLVC) is explored and implemented for demand response considering the balance of energy shifting, indoor air quality, and energy cost. Results reveal that adjusting building ventilation is capable of achieving 30%–40% Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning (HVAC) cooling demand flexibility during HVAC operation while among this, the latent cooling energy contributes 56% ~ 66.4% to the overall demand flexibility. This work provides a feasible way to improve electricity grid flexibility in humid climates, emphasizing the significant role of adjusting latent cooling energy in building demand response.more » « less
-
Abstract Green hydrogen produced using renewable electricity could play an important role in a clean energy future. This paper seeks to analyze the techno-economic performance of integrated wind and hydrogen systems under different conditions. A co-located wind and hydrogen hybrid system is optimized to reduce the total system cost. We have adopted and improved a state-of-the-art techno-economic tool REopt, developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), for optimal planning of the integrate energy system (IES). In addition to wind and electrolyzer components, we have also considered battery energy storage, hydrogen tank, and hydrogen fuel cell in the IES. The results show that (i) adding electrolyzers to the grid-connected wind energy system could reduce the total system cost by approximately 8.9%, and (ii) adding electrolyzers, hydrogen tank, and hydrogen fuel cells could reduce the total system cost by approximately 30%.more » « less
