FREE

  • About Us
    • Mission & Purpose
    • Organizational Structure
    • Free Team
      • Board of Directors
      • Financial Advisors
      • Staff
      • Research Team
      • Co-Founders
  • PennSEF
    • About
    • Participating
    • Documents
    • Current Indicative Borrowing Rates
    • Financing
    • Webinars
  • The SEU
    • About / The Model
    • FREE and the SEU Initiative
    • Education and Advisory Service
  • Research
  • News & Blog
    • Announcements
    • FREE Thoughts Blog
    • In the Media
    • Media
  • Library
    • Policy Briefs
    • Publications
    • Videos
  • Contact Us
  • Donate
You are here: Home / Archives for Climate Change

November 3, 2022

Simply Switching to Electric Vehicles Today is Not Enough to Address Climate Change

By: Deborah Bleviss

There is no doubt that purchasing an electric vehicle (EV) is quite chic right now, and it is indeed true that non-fossil-fuel-based vehicles will play an increasingly important role in achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Moreover, focusing on personal vehicles makes sense; they account for almost 60 percent of the GHG emissions from transportation today in the US, with transportation making up the largest sectoral share of US GHG emissions, 27 percent (EPA, Transportation GHG Emissions).

But simply buying and using EVs today is not enough. Here are the reasons why:

  1. Electricity generation is still overwhelmingly from fossil fuels. Indeed, fossil fuels generated more than 60 percent of utility-produced electricity in 2021 (EIA, Electricity Generation by Source). Hence, EVs are not GHG free when tracing electricity back to how it is generated. But they are better than a fossil-fueled vehicle. A typical gasoline vehicle produces over 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions per year. In comparison, a fully electric vehicle produces less than 4,000 pounds, while a plug-in hybrid (runs on gasoline and electricity) produces less than 6,000 pounds. A typical fossil fuel hybrid produces not much more than a plug-in hybrid, just over 6,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent emissions (DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center, Vehicle Emissions).
  • Electric vehicles remain outside the affordability scale for most Americans. Their prices continue to be higher than fossil-fueled vehicles. As of June 2022, the average cost of an electric vehicle was $54,000 compared with the average price of a fossil-fueled vehicle of $44,400; both have risen sharply since the beginning of the year, 22 percent for EVs and 14 percent for fossil-fueled vehicles (Inside EVs, EV Prices). Moreover, the dominant electric vehicle brand on the market today is Tesla, whose models all exceed the average price of a fossil-fueled vehicle, ranging from $47,000 to over $200,000 (Motortrend, Price of a Tesla). Hence, while demand for EVs has increased, they remain a small fraction of overall personal vehicle sales, estimated at just over 5 percent (Car and Driver, EV Sales ).
  • Price aside, electric vehicles have other issues that make their potential purchase a problem for would-be buyers. First, their ranges are generally less than for fossil-fueled vehicles, especially high-efficiency vehicles. Lower-priced EVs, in particular, tend to have lower ranges. Ranges for EVs today typically are 200 to 300 miles, with some still getting less than that and a few, generally with price tags over $100,000, getting ranges in the 400-to-500-mile range (Inside EVs, EV range). In contrast, the 2022 hybrid Toyota Camry LE, with a combined fuel economy of 52 miles per gallon, a base price just below $28,000, and a CO2 equivalent emissions of 5,600 pounds per year, has a range of 686 miles (fueleconomy.gov). Added to this problem is the limited infrastructure enabling electric vehicle owners to fuel up when their fuel supply is low. There are 46,000 public EV charging stations in the US today, of which 41,000 are slow-charging level 2 chargers that can take 4 to 10 hours to charge a fully electric vehicle (US News, Charging Stations). In contrast, there are 145,000 fossil fuel service stations in the US, and refueling takes minutes (American Petroleum Institute, No. of Service Stations ).
  • Using electric vehicles instead of fossil-fueled vehicles in congested urban conditions does nothing to relieve the traffic congestion that exacerbates fossil fuel use and thereby increases greenhouse gas emissions. While EVs do not directly consume more fossil fuel in traffic congestion and do not add to local emissions, their usage in urban congested areas only adds to the number of vehicles in those areas. As a result, everybody slows down and is subjected to stop-and-go conditions that cause fossil-fueled vehicles to consume more fuel and emit more greenhouse gas emissions. Not using personal vehicles at all—electric or fossil fuel—in congested urban conditions and instead using public transportation is the best strategy for reducing GHG emissions in these areas. The National Academy of Sciences has recently estimated that a person taking public transportation results in a 55 percent reduction in their CO2 equivalent emissions compared with driving or ride-hailing (NAS, Update on Public Transportation’s Impact on GHG Emissions ).

So what should consumers, businesses and governments do to reduce greenhouse gases in personal travel?

  1. Buying energy-efficient fossil-fueled cars is a good short- to medium-term strategy. As already noted, a fossil fuel hybrid produces half of the emissions of a typical fossil fuel car. Purchase and use of these vehicles will buy us time to address the price, range, infrastructure, and fossil fuel electricity generation problems facing today’s electric vehicles.
  • To the maximum extent possible, leave your personal vehicle behind—fossil fuel or electric–and use public transportation if you are traveling in an urban area. It is indeed true that public transportation does not function well in some parts of the country. This makes advocacy for investing in functional public transportation systems critical. It is essential to ensure that public transportation systems are inter-connected in an urban area (for example, buses and rail transit systems) and that public transportation users can access this type of transportation from the first mile of their commute to the last.
  • With public transportation so crucial in reducing GHG emissions, prioritize converting public transportation vehicles totally off fossil fuels. Already the percentage of electric buses worldwide, estimated at 13 percent in 2018 (Bloomberg, Electric Buses ), substantially exceeds the percentage of personal vehicles globally that are electrified, estimated at 1.6 percent at the beginning of 2022 (IEA, Electric Vehicles). Being able to plug electric buses into renewably generated electricity goes one step further. Montgomery County, Maryland, is leading the way here, having just started a program that enables county electric buses to recharge through electricity generated by a solar microgrid (Montgomery County, Solar Microgrid for Electric Buses ).
  • Be strategic in driving electric vehicle prices down, including a focus on fleets. Increasing the volume of electric vehicles sold is critical to driving down costs. Focusing on fleets to do this, owned by governments, private companies and car sharing companies such as ZipCar, makes sense. They can purchase en masse rather than buying one at a time. The US federal fleet is under a mandate to green its vehicles and hence can be an important source for increasing the size of the EV market. And among private car-sharing companies, we are already seeing many engaged in demonstrations in cities globally where EVs are among consumers’ choices.
  • Similarly, think creatively about how to increase the range of electric vehicles, not only through better batteries but also by using renewable technologies in the vehicles to capture energy for usage by the vehicle. These may include solar panels on vehicle roofs and wind turbines that capture the energy of air blowing through vehicle grilles. Indeed, Toyota has been testing a rooftop solar system on its Prius Prime since 2019.
  • Invest in solar photovoltaic arrays and potentially other renewable technologies that can directly charge personal EVs. This avoids the usage of the fossil-fuel-intensive electricity grid. These types of investments can start with demonstration programs, potentially in cities with extensive roof infrastructure upon which solar panels can be placed. While these panels should first be used to provide needed energy services for the buildings on which they are placed, by improving the energy efficiency of these buildings, there is the potential for these solar panels to generate more power than is needed for the buildings, power that can then be used to charge EVs.
  • Set clear goals and timelines for converting the electric grid away from fossil fuels across the country. Ultimately, the electric grid will probably remain the major source of electricity for charging electric vehicles. Hence, it is essential that the grid move as quickly as possible to generate electricity from non-fossil sources. This also benefits decarbonization efforts in other sectors that use electricity. But for electric vehicles truly to be fossil fuel-free, the electricity they use must not be generated from fossil fuels.
  • Keep the door open to using other fossil fuel-free fuels for personal vehicles. The most likely alternative fuel is hydrogen-based fuel cells, which both Toyota and Hyundai are seriously exploring. But biofuels may have a role as well, for example, in a country like Brazil, which already has substituted a substantial biofuels/fossil fuels mix into fuels for its personal vehicles.

Transportation will be one of the hardest sectors to move off fossil fuels, if for no other reason than this sector is almost exclusively dependent on these fuels. If we are to be successful in decarbonizing the transportation sector, it is important to recognize how challenging this will be and not leap to simplistic solutions. Electric vehicles have an important role to play, especially in the future, but they are far from the predominant solution today.

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy and Climate Investment, Renewable Energy

July 27, 2022

How can U.S. climate action equalize the wealth gap between white and black American families?

Income disparity (Getty Images/Hyejin Kang)

By Robert Ddamulira, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

“The racial wealth gap in the United States is shocking, the average wealth of a white American family is $170,000, nearly 10 times that of the average wealth African-American family,” observes Kedra Newsom Reeves, consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Climate change impacts are posed to tilt that imbalance even further. More than 1 in 2 black families live in areas that are worst hit by the observed and expected impacts climate change in America. Oftentimes, black families also have little access to risk mitigation mechanisms such as insurance for property or personal health to mitigate against climate risks. Consequently, climate disasters are likely to further erode the limited black family wealth even further.

According to official U.S. Census records, the Black American population currently stands at over 15% of the total population but is growing rapidly. It has increased by over 80% since 2010. Over 55% of this population however lives in the America’s Southern states – these are the same regions that have also been worst hit by billion-dollar climate disasters as illustrated below;

Source: Pew, 2022

Source: NOAA, 2021

Overall, the historical coincidence of high concentrations of black American families within the areas that are hit hardest by climate change disasters presents enormous challenges. However, hidden within those same climate challenges could be important opportunities for the U.S to equalize the elusive wealth gap between its white and black families. But where could these opportunities for equality be at the state and federal levels?

Opportunities to Equalize Wealth through Climate Action:

Abundant opportunities exist at the state and federal levels to equalize wealth, particularly through supporting better education and career outcomes for black families; this is a fail-safe solution. A report by Genesis (2014) estimated that 50% of the jobs we will need in the next 10 years do not exist today; whatever those jobs will be, America will be stronger and more resilient if those jobs incorporate the best and latest climate scientific knowledge and innovation. Therefore, education on climate solutions and career support on the same can be a powerful means of developing an African American workforce that is best suited for a future where climate change will be a decisive factor in successful employment and job outcomes. Support in education and career opportunities at federal and state levels can take many forms. Still, it could include, among others, proactive internships, scholarships/fellowships, and career pathways that seek to equalize the training of a well-qualified black workforce, which will be effective in deploying the innovative climate solutions that Americans need today and in the foreseeable future. Several climate resilience sectors could be helpful in this regard, including, among others, renewable energy services, energy efficiency, circular economy reforestation programs, and other nature-based solutions at home and abroad. These new jobs will also require the creative application of artificial intelligence and social and emotional intelligence.

Federal and state affirmative action policies can go a long way toward expanding opportunities for young black Americans to choose and stay in well-paying careers that at the same time address climate change. Black families and the black community at large have a role to play, too. Black parents must take a more proactive role in encouraging their children and young members to select careers directly linked to the climate solutions sector. At the very least black families should encourage their young members to incorporate a climate lens to whatever career they choose.

It is evident that how the U.S. responds to the climate challenge could strongly affect how the world addresses climate change globally. The same climate solutions sector that has over time concentrated wealth within its white citizens and deprived black families of similar opportunities can serve as a lever to correct historical and structural inequality. Through education coupled with proactive action among black families at the individual and community level – the U.S. can transform climate change into an engine of opportunity and advance social equity.

Robert Ddamulira, Ph.D., is the CEO & Founder of GreenPesa LLC.

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy Economics

January 27, 2020

Seoul 1 GWp ‘Solar City’ Highlighted at Mayors Forum

NYC_small
Dr. Byrne and Mayor Park Won-soon interview in Seoul, Korea

The 2019 Mayors Forum (part of IREC held in Seoul in October) featured Seoul’s 1 GWp Solar City Initiative. FREE helped the City to design this ambitious program as part of the FREE-Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Dr. Byrne delivered the keynote at the Forum, which drew 37 mayors from 25 countries. Mayor Park Won Soon chaired the Forum.

Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) plans to invest $1.5 billion in their strategy to deploy 1 gigawatt (GWp) of solar energy by 2022. As part of the MOU, FREE has provided the modeling and technical assessment of the city’s rooftop potential as hosts of a distributed solar power plant. FREE also calculated the economics of the project and used a financing structure it has developed for city-scale investment in such a project. (FREE has published results of it modeling and financing approach for 5 cities in addition to Seoul: New York City, London, Munich, Amsterdam, and Tokyo.)

In November 2017, Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) declared its intention to deploy 1 gigawatt of rooftop solar as part of its “Solar City Seoul” master plan. Over the next five years, Seoul city government plans to invest $1.5 billion to make the project a reality. This is a significant step forward in the future of Seoul’s sustainability contribution and follows in the wake of the very successful first stages of the city’s One Less Nuclear Power Plant (OLNPP) initiative. 1 Under initiatives like the OLNPP, Seoul focused heavily on promoting energy conservation and efficiency improvement. With this new Solar City Seoul plan, the city is ramping up investment in energy production as well. FREE applauds this direction chartered by the Mayor of Seoul, Mr. Park Won-soon.

FREE has been actively advising the city for five years on the prospects of becoming a “solar city.” As part of the Seoul International Energy Advisory Council (SIEAC), Dr. John Byrne has described to city officials the potential of rooftop solar across the 10-million people strong city. FREE has also published several refereed articles analyzing the emergent role of the solar city concept coupled with new priorities, such as policy effectiveness, solar financing support, and market mechanisms available to Seoul to explore this potential in detail. 2 For example, research we have conducted shows Seoul has a full deployment potential of about 10 gigawatts. 3

FREE attended the launch of the initiative. Mayor Park Won-soon and Dr. Byrne were interviewed by leading Korean newspapers on the strategy. During an interview with Kyunghyang Shinmun, Mayor Park underscored FREE’s role, noting that he “had an opportunity to take a view of the downtown area in Seoul from Namsan Mountain with Prof. Byrne. As I talked with him, I realized that Seoul has a significant PV technical potential.” 4

A striking feature of the Solar City Seoul plan is the commitment to increase household-level PV deployment through miniature solar generators installed on rooftops and verandas or so-called “mini-PV” technology. This prong of the plan will engage more than 100,000 households in helping to supply solar energy to the city! This is exactly in tune with the Mayor’s original pursuit of the idea that “citizens are energy.” The initiative will make solar energy a part of the everyday life of Seoul’s citizens and businesses.

FREE has worked extensively on the concept of the “solar city” – the citywide deployment of rooftop solar energy. Our work shows not only that Seoul has significant potential to develop itself as a solar city but that cities like New York, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, and Munich possess similar resources. 5 Indeed, a paper published in the International Journal of Urban Sciences by the FREE research team highlights the fact that this opportunity is common to most cities around the world. 6 An investigation of the market, finance, and policy considerations associated with solar city deployment found that the concept is not only technically feasible but it also creates practical economic benefits, including job creation and expansion of local green industries, and results in significant environmental benefits by shrinking the city’s carbon footprint by more than 10 percent. 7

“I will make Seoul a place where PV can be found everywhere”, the Mayor said. The FREE team will be there to continue to help make this ambition become unavoidable reality.


  1. FREE published a blog article on the OLNPP initiative which can be accessed at: https://freefutures.org/one-less-nuclear-power-plant-seouls-commitment-to-a-low-carbon-and-non-nuclear-city/
  2. For more information on our publications, please see freefutures.org/publications
  3. Byrne, J., Taminiau, J., Kurdgelashvili, L., & Kim, K. N. (2015). A review of the solar city concept and methods to assess rooftop solar electric potential, with an illustrative application to the city of Seoul. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 41, 830-844. doi://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.08.023
  4. Translated from the Korean newspaper Kyunghyang (article, in Korean, can be found at: https://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201712072105005&code=100100
  5. Byrne, J., Taminiau, J., Kim, K. N., Seo, J., & Lee, J. (2016). A solar city strategy applied to six municipalities: Integrating market, finance, and policy factors for infrastructure-scale photovoltaic development in Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, 5(1), 68-88. doi:10.1002/wene.182
  6. Byrne, J., Taminiau, J., Seo, J., Lee, J., & Shin, S. (2017). Are solar cities feasible? A review of current research. International Journal of Urban Sciences, 1-18. doi:10.1080/12265934.2017.1331750
  7. Byrne, J., Taminiau, J., Kim, K. N., Lee, J., & Seo, J. (2017). Multivariate analysis of solar city economics: Impact of energy prices, policy, finance, and cost on urban photovoltaic power plant implementation. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment, , n/a. doi:10.1002/wene.241

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy and Climate Investment, Energy Economics, Global Environments

June 11, 2018

California’s Bold Solar Energy Vision

By Joseph Nyangon
How California’s New Rooftop Solar Mandate Will Build Additional Value for Its Customers

Luminalt solar installers Pam Quan (L) and Walter Morales (R) install solar panels on the roof of a home on May 9, 2018, in San Francisco. (Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images).

The boldest new plan yet to increase electricity generation from noncarbon-producing sources has been announced by California. Highly regarded as a trendsetter and vanguard of progressive energy policies, California became the first state to require solar power installed on all new homes. The requirement makes rooftop solar a mainstream energy source in the state’s residential market. Adopted by the California Energy Commission (CEC) as an update to the state’s 2019 Title 24, Part 6, Building Energy Efficiency Standards [1], the solar mandate obligates new homes built after Jan. 1, 2020 to include photovoltaic (PV) systems.

These standards represent a groundbreaking development for clean energy. Single-family homes and multifamily units that are under three stories will be required to install solar panels. The biggest impact may prove to be the incentive for energy storage and the expected uptake in energy efficiency upgrades which could significantly cut energy consumption in new homes.

But not everyone is celebrating. Critics warn that the requirement could drive up home prices overall, further exacerbating already high housing costs in the state. For instance, in a letter to CEC, Professor Severin Borenstein of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley warned that such a plan would be an “expensive way to expand renewables” to achieve clean energy goals [2]. But in its order, CEC argued that the new rooftop solar mandate would save homebuilders and residents money in the long-term and cut energy-related greenhouse-gas emissions in residential buildings.

Few solar firms, homebuilders, efficiency experts and local governments fully understand the significance of the mandate. Buildings-to-grid integration experts speak of “turning residential solar into an appliance,”—the merging of rooftop solar, home energy management, energy storage, and data analytics into the next generation of high-performance buildings that is expected to usher in a new era of sustainable development.

How could this new solar mandate help improve grid management so that these ‘new power plants’—clusters of buildings integrated into the grid—can respond quickly to load signals like water heating or home entertainment and thereby contribute to better system reliability? Of course, there are a lot for stakeholders to grapple with between now and 2020 as they come up with compliance solutions to address these opportunities. But this gap, especially, poses a significant challenge in how the new California’s Title 24 codes will affect the clean energy industry.

On the delivery side, First Solar Inc.—a U.S. panel manufacturer—and Sunrun—the largest U.S. residential-solar installer—could be major beneficiaries of the new building codes considering their established market positions in the state. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2018 puts the mid-point estimate of installed solar capacity required to meet the state’s ambitious ‘50% by 2030’ renewable portfolio standard (RPS) target at around 32 GW (Figure 1). California currently has an installed solar capacity of 18.6 GW, indicating that it has only until the beginning of the next decade to find technical, business, and policy solutions to realize a 50% increase in installed PV capacity. Considering that the core elements of the requirements are now technically locked in, greater cooperation with solar industry players is needed for the success of this bold energy vision.

Figure 1: AEO 2018 estimate of renewable energy generating capacity and emissions in California (2016-2050)

Here are suggestions of what needs to be done to succeed. The provision of today’s electricity services is fundamentally dependent on its transmission, distribution, and storage (TD&S) systems; these functions include business activities that support construction, operation, maintenance and in this case, overhaul California’s electricity infrastructure [3]. According to the 2018 U.S. Energy and Employment Report (USEER), national employment in TD&S including retail service was approximately 2.35 million in 2017, with nearly 7% growth expected in 2018, mostly in manufacturing, construction, installation/repair, and operation of TD&S facilities [4]. Using these national figures as rough benchmarks for job generation, the new solar building mandate represents a major growth opportunity for the solar industry. However, there are transmission implementation challenges that could occur in the future. Orders 890 and 1000 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) require transmission providers to treat demand resources comparably with transmission and generation solutions during transmission planning. Which means that a clarification is required of whether onsite generation under Title 24 would count toward compliance with FERC’s orders.

With proper distribution and transmission planning coupled with the fact that new homes will have better efficiency overall, California could reap significant benefits from the solar mandate and pioneer in mainstreaming non-wire alternative business models associated with solar distributed generation systems [5]. Deferring and reducing costs to capacity upgrades for distribution and transmission under a distributed utility regime, is one example. For this reason, California regulators would need to anticipate and address compliance issues that could result during the implementation period, such as concerns regarding flexibility measures, the estimated number of homes that would comply with the codes, and year-on-year market bottlenecks that may occur without a rapid change in business models. Further greater stakeholder engagement and partnerships with the building industry, universities and research organizations will be needed to track progress on single–family and multi-family solar development.

Another key step is to improve the revenue model for all generation technologies to reconcile with long-term contracts. In recent years, as solar power grew in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council region, and particularly in California, future prices of solar electricity became uncertain. Today’s electricity prices are set based on the variable cost of the marginal technology. Because technologies like rooftop solar, once built have near-zero marginal costs, this could put downward pressure on long-term electricity prices. Good news for customers and the economy! But payment for TD&S may be of risk. States have been solving this problem by implementing long-term fixed pricing systems, either through power purchase agreements (PPA) or capacity mechanisms, which carry the full-price risk of the technology. California (and New York) has proposed new revenue models that balance the pace of improvement in technology cost and revenue returns [6]. Still, further adjustments to the revenue model may be required in the future.

The logic behind California’s solar mandate is to reposition the market so that the bulk of generation will increasingly come from customer-sited equipment. This is significant: rooftop solar is one of the most effective customer-sited solutions for accelerating a decentralized grid and greening our electricity supply. Apart from the anticipated long-term cost-reductions to the grid, we can infer that CEC may have been guided by the growing market potential of rooftop solar when crafting the new building code energy-efficiency standards. As to the question of the economic viability of the standards to the grid, a detailed study is needed to take into account direct and indirect impacts.

Recently, there has been mention of the mounting problem widely known as the “duck curve”—that is, the sun shines only during the day which means that the solar energy cannot meet the system’s demands when the sun goes down or cloud cover disrupts solar energy system output. This phenomenon can force utilities to ramp up non-solar generation, thereby undermining some of the benefits of a low-carbon strategy. This concern raises a question: What happens to the value of solar energy produced as new additional capacity grows? Over-generation? Because retail competition is still limited in volume to support the anticipated market growth under the new standards, the value of the additional solar generation could decline. Furthermore, the grid would need to be prepared to anticipate and handle any over-generation. CEC is aware of the duck curve problem and included a compliance credit for energy storage in the Title 24 codes to address the issue. But this may not be enough. Options for maximizing on-site solar use should be sought as capacity grows. In addition, while greater electrification of buildings is noteworthy for the utility business model, without offering incentives to residential solar producers, for instance, in the form of affordable construction materials that socializes costs overall ratepayers and introduces new products and services that guarantee long-term profitability, the latest round of CEC building codes could raise significant grid management issues and market uncertainties thus exacerbating the duck curve problem. In brief, the role of utilities in interconnecting these ‘power plants’ and managing any over-generation issues will become more critical.

Growth from the new solar mandate and steps taken to incentivize storage and energy efficiency upgrades may not produce profits for utilities in the short term. But adoption of the Title 24 codes offers utilities opportunities for greater electrification and enables them to search for cost-effective pathways to reduce carbon emissions. In a study of grid decarbonization strategies in California, Southern California Edison (SCE) found that a clean power and electrification path can provide an affordable and feasible approach to achieving the state’s climate and air quality goals [7]. While the cost of managing the grid is an important consideration for utilities like SCE, approval of the new solar mandate is an important reminder of the changing utility industry. Power companies are developing new ways to extract value from emerging distributed solar technologies and expand customer choices. The success of the Title 24 codes will depend to a significant degree on supportive regulation [8,9]. With billions of investments required for grid modernization to address the aging infrastructure issues, finding a sustainable operating model that enables utilities to recuperate costs through rates is fundamental. This is a long-term proposition and power companies should treat it as such.

Despite the challenges discussed above, California’s new Title 24 mandate represents the boldest and most inspiring building energy efficiency standards by any state to date [10]. No doubt the questions surrounding future electricity rates, grid management issues, retail competition, investments in TD&S, design of long-term contracting via PPA mechanisms, and the impact on housing prices require significant attention. But this solar mandate can be an unprecedented energy-problem solving strategy that turns every home into a power plant as solar becomes more mainstream.

Additional Resources
[1] Rulemaking on 2019 Building Energy Efficiency Standards: https://energy.ca.gov/title24/2019standards/rulemaking/
[2] Email response by Severin Borenstein regarding new building energy efficiency standards rulemaking to mandate rooftop solar on all new residential buildings: https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/cecweisenmiller180509.pdf
[3] Nyangon, J. (2015). Why the U.S. urgently needs to invest in a modern energy system. FREE. https://freefutures.org/why-the-u-s-urgently-needs-to-invest-in-modernizing-its-energy-infrastructure/
[4] The 2018 U.S. Energy and Employment Report was prepared by the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) and the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO): https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98cf80ec4eb7c5cd928c61/t/5afb0ce4575d1f3cdf9ebe36/1526402279839/2018+U.S.+Energy+and+Employment+Report.pdf
[5] Nyangon J. (2017). Distributed energy generation systems based on renewable energy and natural gas blending: New business models for economic incentives, electricity market design and regulatory innovation [Ph.D. dissertation]. College of Engineering, University of Delaware. Google Scholar.
[6] Nyangon J, Byrne J. (2018). Diversifying electricity customer choice: REVing up the New York energy vision for polycentric innovation. In: Tsvetkov PV, editor. Energy Systems and Environment. London, UK: IntechOpen. pp. 3-23. Google Scholar
[7] The Clean Power and Electrification Pathway: An exploration of SCE’s proposal to help realize California’s environmental goals: https://www.edison.com/content/dam/eix/documents/our-perspective/g17-pathway-to-2030-white-paper.pdf
[8] Nyangon, J. (2015). Obama’s Budget Proposals for Clean Energy and Climate Investment. FREE. https://freefutures.org/obamas-budget-proposals-for-clean-energy-and-climate-investments
[9] Nyangon, J. (2015). Mobilizing Public and Private Capital for Clean Energy Financing. FREE. https://freefutures.org/mobilizing-public-and-private-capital-for-clean-energy-financing/
[10] Nyangon, J. (2014). International Environmental Governance: Lessons from UNEA and Perspectives on the Post-2015 Era. Journal on Sustainable Development Law and Policy 4: 174–202. Google Scholar

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy Economics, Energy Markets, Renewable Energy Tagged With: Building Energy Efficiency Standards, California, Duck Curve, Solar City, Solar Electricity, Solar Mandate, Title 24

January 15, 2016

Post-Paris Agreement: FREE’S Focus on Subnational Climate Action

By Job Taminiau and Joseph Nyangon
Accelerating climate action and finance at subnational level based on the Paris Agreement.

The 21st Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP 21 (also known as the Paris climate summit) closed in Le Bourget, France after two weeks of intense negotiations, with negotiators agreeing on a landmark “Paris Agreement.” The conference took place from November 30 – December 12, 2015 and was attended by a delegation from the Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment (FREE). The FREE delegation included Dr. John Byrne, Chairman and President, and Dr. Job Taminiau, Research Principal of FREE. This blog post briefly discusses the outcome document of the negotiations and highlights the experience of attending COP-21.

FREE’s Participation in the COP process
The FREE delegation participated in official side events, interviews, discussions, and meetings throughout the second week of the negotiations. Overall, the FREE delegation was very impressed by the ‘can do’ attitude of, particularly, the subnational actors that were present at the COP. In fact, these subnational actors, on more than one occasion, highlighted their willingness to not only follow-up on negotiators’ progress to seal a deal but to champion and “ratchet-up” local climate action as a viable pathway for future climate change mitigation and adaptation.

FREE co-sponsored and co-organized two side events at the conference. In a side event on the potential contribution of cities to address climate change, co-sponsored and co-organized by FREE in collaboration with the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP, University of Delaware) and the Climate Alliance of European Cities with Indigenous Rainforest Peoples (or simply “Climate Alliance”), the Global Covenant of Mayors, and others, Dr. Taminiau offered a perspective on subnational climate change innovation, leadership, and governance by drawing from examples of ‘solar city’ strategies. Such a project could offer a substantial improvement in a city’s energy profile: for example, a high density, vertical city like Seoul could supply 66% of daylight electricity needs for the year and 35% of all-hours annual electricity needs from the use of 30% of the rooftop real estate available in the city. The Europe-based Climate Alliance was a very suitable partner for this message: the organization works with more than 1,700 cities and municipalities spread across 26 European countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

COP21_Paris Agreement_FREE_John_Byrne_Job_Taminiau_Paris_AgreementL-R: Dr. Taminiau and Dr. Byrne at the Paris climate change conference

Flanked by among others, Camille Gira of Luxembourg European Union Council Presidency; Magda Aelvoet, Minister of State, President, Federal Council for Sustainable Development, Belgium; Tine Heyse, Deputy Mayor of Ghent, Belgium; Josefa Errazuriz, Mayor of Providencia, Chile; Julie Laernoes, Vice-President of Nantes Metropole, France; Marie-Christine Marghem, Belgian Federal Minister of Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development; and Ellý Katrin Gudmundsdottir, Chief Executive Officer and Deputy Mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland, Dr. Taminiau argued that cities are well positioned to help bend the carbon curve. “Cities could be the power plant of the future,” he added.

The second side event organized by the Climate Change Center Korea was titled “Preparing Action Plans for a Post-2020 Climate Change Regime in Asia.” Former prime ministers and senior government officers from Asia were among the participants in this well-attended event, highlighting the need for a new finance, markets and policy regime as well as stronger cooperation and partnerships in Asia to combat climate change. Dr. Duck-Soo Han, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Climate Change Center and Former Prime Minister of Republic of Korea called for enhanced financial and technological resources in Asia to combat climate change. Professor Haibin Zhang of Peking University and a Member of the Global Advisory Board of the Center for Climate and Sustainable Development Law and Policy (CSDLAP) offered a Chinese perspective on climate policy governance. Dr. Oliver Lah of Wuppertal Institute for Climate (Germany) examined EU-Asia climate partnerships. And Richie Ahuja, Regional Director for Asia of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) summarized work in Asian region on clean energy and clean cooking systems as low-carbon solutions.

COP21_Paris Agreement_FREE_John_Byrne_Climate_Action
Dr. Byrne presenting findings from a study on the financeability of large urban solar plants in Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. Photo by IISD/ENB

Dr. Byrne presented findings from a six-city study on the financeability of large urban solar plants. He described results from Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo, noting financing and policy needs on the cost of installations in these cities to enable infrastructure-scale investment. Particularly, New York City, London, Munich, and Amsterdam could be successful in implementing a solar city strategy without many changes to existing policy structures. Seoul and Tokyo, meanwhile, require more modification to existing conditions in order to produce a viable project that could attract financial resources from investors. For instance, FREE’s researchers find that such infrastructure-scale solar development is financeable in 13 years for Seoul, 10 years for New York City, and 11-12 years for London, Munich and Amsterdam (Figure 1).

Solar city implementation options for the six municipalities under a 10-year financing maturity.
Figure 1. Solar city implementation options for the six municipalities under a 12-year financing maturity. [1]

The Paris Agreement: A New Direction for Climate Change Governance?
Forged by nearly 200 countries to ramp-up climate mitigation and adaptation measures to reel in planet-warming carbon emissions, the Paris Agreement marks a historic shift in climate diplomacy. Indeed, the agreement has been hailed as a monumental step in the climate change negotiation process: “For the first time, every country in the world has pledged to curb emissions, strengthen resilience and join in common cause to take common climate action,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon during the conference’s closing session. “This is a resounding success for multilateralism,” he declared. Key elements of the new agreement include:

  1. A goal to hold the increase in global average temperature to “well below 2°C and endeavour to reach 1.5°C” relative to pre-industrial temperatures;
  2. Successive nationally determined contributions outlining Parties’ commitments to reduce climate change emissions, to be updated every five years. Each round of commitments needs to represent a progression from previous commitments; and
  3. A regular process of review of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. This “global stocktake” which informs collective efforts on mitigation, adaptation and support on technology development and transfer for developing country parties will take place in 2023 and every five years thereafter.

Six years after the 2009 diplomatic disaster of Copenhagen, the path to Paris had been well-prepared. The COP talks in Copenhagen, in no small part, collapsed due to the continued focus on a top-down, legally binding agreement with strong emission reduction commitments for which, ultimately, willingness to sign on by nation-states was low. The Copenhagen Accord (2009) and subsequent Cancun Agreements (2010) formulated a new approach revolving around a new way of target-setting of more bottom-up, self-determined, national targets. This ‘pledge-and-review’ approach yielded approval from a much larger set of nation-states, including the United States and China. A “fresh” architecture for climate action was set out to be the goal in the follow-up Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (2011).[2] The bilateral talks and agreements between China, the U.S., and India can also be seen as critical preparatory work that allowed for the outcome in Paris. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping met in September 2015 in Washington D.C. announcing new and strengthened bilateral and multilateral climate cooperation, including the establishment of a national cap-and-trade program in China by 2017, providing momentum for success in Paris.

The Paris Agreement marks a break from the past, representing an unprecedented inflection point in the global response to climate change. Over twenty years of negotiations have brought the international community to a point where self-determination, rather than top-down treaty pursuits, has become the new approach moving forward. In this, there appear to be at least two main elements that will shape climate change governance for the years to come.

First, the agreement provides a process for governments to ratchet-up efforts to limit global temperature rise and, for the first time, includes commitments from all key Parties to the convention. The agreement puts emphasis on registering commitments at global, national, provincial/state, local, and corporate scales, and tracks national performance over time. Every five years, beginning in 2020, each country will be required to communicate a new nationally determined contribution for reducing emissions. Potentially, this implies that the Paris Agreement could be the main platform within which climate change action at the global level is articulated for years, only to be routinely updated rather than fully redrafted.

Second, as the focus shifts to implementation, the success of the agreement lies in the Convention’s ability to engage the private sector, financial institutions, cities, and transnational and subnational authorities. Indeed, as Christiana Figueres highlighted during the 2016 Investor Summit on Climate Risk, the Paris Agreement was “clearly the easiest of the components”. [3] Noting the Paris Agreement as the “starting line”, Christiana Figueres continued that the real challenge is to take all the “fantastic intentions” and move them to actual implementation. Similarly, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon emphasized the gravity of the challenge that lies ahead: “We have an agreement. It is a good agreement. You should all be proud. Now we must stay united – and bring the same spirit to the crucial test of implementation. That work starts tomorrow”.[4]

COP_21_Paris_Agreement Celebration_Christiana Figueres_Laurence Tubiana_Ban_Ki_moon_François_Hollande
L-R: Laurence Tubiana, COP 21 Presidency; UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres; UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; COP 21/CMP 11 President Laurent Fabius, Foreign Minister, France; and President François Hollande, France, celebrating the conclusion of the event. Photo by IISD/ENB

The Bottom Line: Paris Agreement Implementation Requires Subnational Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership
The FREE delegation proposed ‘polycentric’ strategies to COP-21 as a viable way forward for the international community. The proposal is based on ideas and models developed and implemented by FREE, such as the promising contribution of the Pennsylvania Sustainable Energy Finance Program (PennSEF), the innovative character of the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) model, or the transformative potential of ‘solar cities’. The proposal titled “A Polycentric Response to the Climate Change Challenge Relying on Creativity, Innovation, and Leadership” highlights the critical importance of subnational actors, particularly cities and other municipal agents. [5] Relying on a wide and diverse landscape of actors to address climate change, the proposed focus on ‘polycentric’ strategies could capture and scale-up the innovation, leadership, and creativity taking place.

FREE has well-established experience with sustainable energy financing programs and, through research such as on solar cities, is actively developing options for transformative change. The SEU model, for instance, has been implemented in the U.S. state of Delaware (with a second bond issuance planned for the near-term) and in Washington, DC and is being actively explored in India and Korea. The U.S. White House in an announcement made by President Obama recognized the SEU model for its promise of transformative change and capability to lower energy use and carbon emissions while improving state economic development. Other programs, like PennSEF and planned future projects, combine innovations in finance, policy and market approaches and are needed to mobilize necessary levels of climate finance and fulfilment of existing commitments of the Paris Agreement.

Concerns linger as to, for instance, the observation that much more needs to be done than is currently pledged by the nation-states in order to meet the two degree target (the so-called ‘ambition gap’). The bottom line of the Paris Agreement therefore is that implementation will require the mobilization of state and non-state actors to perform substantial technical, methodological, and policy efforts to support the accord when it enters into force. A critical factor in this is the leveraging of financial resources to drive transformative change. FREE plans to assist state and non-state actors in developing these capacities. Recombination and careful consideration of the policy-market-finance interaction is at the foundation of FREE’s project portfolio and can deliver a critical contribution towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Notes
[1] Byrne, J., Taminiau, J., Kim, K.N., Seo J., and Lee, J. (2015). “A solar city strategy applied to six municipalities: integrating market, finance, and policy factors for infrastructure-scale photovoltaic development in Amsterdam, London, Munich, New York, Seoul, and Tokyo.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment.
[2] As mentioned on the UNFCCC website: https://unfccc.int/key_steps/durban_outcomes/items/6825.php
[3] As discussed at the 2016 Investor Summit on Climate Risk. The Summit seeks to sustain the momentum from Paris and was organized by Ceres, the United Nations Foundation, and the United Nations Office for Partnerships.
[4] https://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=2875#.Vqe9cSo4HIV
[5] This position paper was authored by Dr. Job Taminiau and Dr. John Byrne in their respective capacity at the Center for Energy & Environmental Policy (CEEP, University of Delaware).

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy and Climate Investment, Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Tagged With: Clean Energy Financing, Climate Change, Climate Finance, Innovation, Paris Agreement, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Cities, Sustainable Investing

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

News & Blog

  • FREE Thoughts Blog
  • Announcements
  • Media
  • In the Media

Blog Categories

  • Carbon Markets
  • Climate Change
  • Energy Access
  • Energy and Climate Investment
  • Energy Economics
  • Energy Markets
  • Global Environments
  • Renewable Energy
  • Sustainable Urban Infrastructure
  • Uncategorized
  • Water-Energy Nexus

Policy Brief Authors

Policy Brief Authors

Announcements

New Article Examines Public Transportation and the Legacy of Jamie Lerner and Curitiba, Brazil

American national climate policy inaction leads to emboldened emerging voices in communities, policy successes

Climate expert to Korean TV audience: How can the U.S. give energy sector workers “a just transition” in moving from coal to renewable energy?

Recent Posts

Environmental Justice and Renewable Energy

Electricity Disconnections: Pursuing the Goal of 100% access to electricity in the United States

Stay Connected

Get email updates about new announcements, policy briefs and relevant information.

We never share your contact details.

Article Tags

Abundant Energy Building Energy Efficiency Standards California Carbon Markets Carbon Trading China Clean Energy Clean Energy Financing Climate Change Climate Finance Decarbonization Duck Curve Energy Access Energy Efficiency Energy Markets Environmental Justice Ethical Cities Green Dispatch Innovation Microbeads Natural Gas NIMBY Nuclear Energy Paris Agreement Philadelphia Pollutants Polycentric Climate Governance Renewable Energy Shale Gas Solar Solar City Solar Electricity Solar Mandate Sustainable Cities Sustainable Investing Title 24 Water-Energy Nexus

Connect

Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment
630 5th Avenue, Suite 2000
New York, NY 10111

Mailing Address:
1013 Beards Hill Rd.
STE 101-M #200
Aberdeen, MD 21001

E: contact@freefutures.org
P: +1 212 705 8758
P: +1 215 494 7383 (Pennsylvania)

SUPPORT FREE

Social

  • Email
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Search FREE

Copyright © 2023 · FREE · Site by: Epic Brand Media