The Center for Applied Environmental Law and Policy commissioned and funded the following reports and publications.
Industrial/Buildings
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U.S. hydrogen production is poised to increase dramatically, due to incentives provided under the Inflation Reduction Act and demand-side growth as firms look to decarbonize their operations. Depending on how the hydrogen is produced, however, this production could have the perverse effect of increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This DRAFT study provides a detailed survey of the state of domestic hydrogen production technologies and their GHG and other emissions. This study then surveys potential opportunities for reducing GHG emissions, including impacts on emissions, cost, and other operational factors.
Author: Worley Consulting
Date: February 29, 2024 -
Hydrogen can be used in a variety of applications throughout the economy, and could be poised to play a significant role in economy-wide decarbonization as global energy production advances towards clean technology. Hydrogen can be used to power vehicles, generate electricity, power industry and heat homes and businesses. There are a number of existing and operating hydrogen production facilities in the U.S., however data on their operating characteristics and emissions is sparse. This is also the case for ammonia production facilities, which could play a similar role to hydrogen in the clean energy economy. This paper aims to inventory existing U.S. industrial hydrogen and ammonia production facilities, estimate their carbon dioxide emissions, evaluate approaches to capture these emissions along with quantifying the amount of capturable emissions, and approximate the associated abatement costs.
Author: Hensley Energy Consulting, LLC
Date: October 4, 2023 -
This report documents the technical capabilities of highly efficient heat pumps for heating water and supplying industrial heat, exploring potential applications of this technology in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. It then discusses barriers to mass deployment of heat pumps, before offering near-term and long-term marketing and policy solutions.
Author: Peter Alstone et al.
Date: August 2021
Power Sector
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The U.S. electric grid is under strain, with extreme weather and blackouts on the rise. Some say the cause is over reliance on renewables like wind and solar. This white paper argues that the primary threat to grid reliability is not the changing energy mix but rather failures in grid governance.
Author: Alexandra Klass, Josh Macey, Shelley Welton, Hannah Wiseman
Date: March 20, 2024 -
This report examines the opportunity afforded to the electric sector by two federal acts: the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Under these Acts, utilities could replace aging equipment, adopt advanced technologies, and meet changes in demand due to factors that include the increased electrification of transportation and building sectors. However, obstacles such as tight deadlines and competitive procurements can collide with necessary but time-consuming proceedings around utility decisions.
Author: Analysis Group (Paul Hibbard, Grace Howland, Grace Maley, Daniel Stuart, Sue Tierney)
Date: January 2024 -
The U.S. electric grid is in transition. It is continuing a shift from fossil fuel-based systems of energy production to renewable energy sources and energy storage resources. Meanwhile, growth in electricity demand is starting to accelerate, and grid reliability challenges are on the rise, prompting questions about the nature and pace of reforms needed to ensure reliability during the transition. This report investigates these questions and explains how industry changes and reform efforts impact different areas of reliability. It explores the drivers of grid transition and offers a primer on reliability – including how reliability needs are evolving – and the various reforms being pursued to ensure a reliable future grid.
Author: The Brattle Group (Metin Celebi, Andrew Levitt, Andrew W. Thompson, Ragini Sreenath, Xander Bartone, Samuel Willett, Hazel Ethier)
Date: December 20, 2023 -
This report explores the implementation of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules issued under the Clean Air Act (CAA) over the past several decade, specifically explaining how those rules have provided compliance flexibilities consistent with statutory instructions. It outlines certain mechanisms that offer compliance options to regulated entities, before presenting case studies of EPA rules and state laws, adopted under CAA requirements, that have incorporated such mechanisms. Notably, the report demonstrates how such flexibilities have in fact led to more cost-effective air pollution control from stationary sources over time.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: December 18, 2023 -
This report summarizes the technological bases for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fuel-fired electric generating units, issued in May 2023. It then explains in detail how the regulated entities would have numerous technical options to comply, and how deployment of the full range of controls could be facilitated through compliance flexibilities such as trading or averaging of emissions. The report notes that further technical innovation under the final rule should be expected, in line with experience under past Clean Air Act regulations.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: December 18, 2023 -
This report reviews several early efforts to model the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) on key power sector metrics, including capacity and generation mix and CO2 emissions. It examines the impacts of IRA both within individual models (as compared to a business-as-usual baseline) and across the various models considered.
Author: ERM (Lauren Slawsky, Mackay Miller, and Sierra Fraioli)
Date: August 3, 2023 -
In May of 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed to strengthen limits on emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants. Since EPA finalized the original limits in 2011, there have been developments in air pollution control technologies and practices that warrant more-protective standards on emissions of metals, mercury, and acid gases from these sources. This analysis examines the cost-effectiveness of adopting a more stringent limit on metals emissions, a more comprehensive update of the mercury standards, and a significantly lower limit on emissions of acid gases. It concludes that these revisions to the current regulation – along with improved and consistent emissions monitoring – would be cost-effective, and that the strengthened standards could be met within three years of rule finalization.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: June 15, 2023 -
This review traces trends in coal-fired electric generating capacity and operations over the past 15 years, documenting significant declines in both, and projecting continued falloff in this type of resource as the power sector transitions to cleaner sources of energy. It explains the economic and policy reasons behind this trend, before delving into recent integrated resource plans that illustrate how individual power companies' expectations align with the trends.
Author: The Brattle Group (Metin Celebi, Long Lam, Jadon Grove, Natalie Northrup)
Date: April 27, 2023 -
As a follow-on effort to Andover Technology Partners' "Analysis of PM and Hg Emissions and Controls from Coal-Fired Power Plants," this analysis examines the cost of complying with substantially lower mercury emissions limits at coal-fired power plants. It also calculates the incremental costs of achieving these standards once the sources have already met more stringent particulate matter emissions rates. The analysis finds that the incremental costs of compliance with more stringent mercury standards are a small fraction of the costs when considered independently of the particulate matter emissions limit, well within the range of annual compliance costs under other Clean Air Act rules.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: January 5, 2023 -
This report identifies categories of public health, environmental, and other economic benefits that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has historically not quantified or fully acknowledged in developing past rules limiting toxic contaminants in waste streams from coal-fired power plants. It makes detailed recommendations on how to correct these deficiencies in regulatory analysis, drawing on the most current economic and scientific studies.
Author: David A. Keiser et al.
Date: June 27, 2023 -
This analysis explores the technologies available for reducing emissions of acid gases, including hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hydrofluoric acid (HF), from coal-fired power plants. It finds that there have been significant developments since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency originally adopted limits on such emissions in 2011, resulting in greater emission reductions and lower compliance costs. In addition, the analysis estimates total (annual) costs of complying with various HCl limits, showing that the costs for the entire fleet to meet a substantially lower limit would be modest.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: April 5, 2022 -
This review, conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Centers at the University of Arizona and University of New Mexico, details recent and emerging findings on the human health impacts of toxic metals emitted by coal-fired power plants. Drawing on studies examining the health effects of individual metals and mixtures of metals in mine wastes (many of which are also found in emissions from coal-fired power plants), it catalogues an array of health harms that could be expected to result from exposure to coal-fired power plants' emissions, potentially through several exposure pathways.
Author: University of Arizona and University of New Mexico Superfund Research Centers (Raina M. Maier et al.)
Date: April 2022 -
This report examines the technical feasibility of modifying coal-fired boilers to cofire gas and estimates the capital costs involved in making such modifications. It further discusses the impacts of gas cofiring on operations and maintenance costs and on CO2 emissions rates. Several real-world examples of coal-fired power plants that have completed such projects are showcased, demonstrating the feasibility of high levels of gas cofiring in terms of heat input.
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: February 12, 2022 -
This analysis explores the technologies available for reducing emissions of hazardous metals (in the form of particulate matter) and mercury from coal-fired power plants. It finds that there have been significant developments since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency originally adopted limits on such emissions in 2011, resulting in greater emission reductions and lower compliance costs. In addition, the analysis estimates total (annual) costs of complying with various metals limits, showing that the costs for the entire fleet to meet a substantially lower limit would be modest. Similar fleetwide calculations for mercury limits can be found in the follow-on report, "Analysis of PM and Hg Emissions and Controls from Coal-Fired Power Plants – Addendum, Analysis of the Cost of Complying with Lower Hg Emissions Levels.”
Author: Andover Technology Partners (James Staudt)
Date: August 19, 2021 -
This analysis of reported compliance data under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, a 2011 regulation limiting emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants, finds that the regulated sources have largely surpassed the emission rate reductions needed to meet the mercury, toxic metals, and acid gas standards of the rule. For each of these pollutants, it calculates the average emissions rates for several slices of the fleet based on recent data. In addition, the analysis shows how variability in particulate matter emissions rates (as a benchmark of emissions of toxic metals found within the particulate matter) decreased markedly from 2011 to 2019.
Author: NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)
Date: August 2021 -
This report, supported by several technical analyses, documents the benefits of clean closure of coal ash impoundments at power plants – in other words, fully removing toxic waste from the site rather than capping it and leaving it in place to leach chemicals into the surrounding soil and waterbodies. Through three case studies, the report demonstrates significantly greater economic benefits, including job and income gains, under the clean closure approach.
Authors: Lisa Evans, Kate French
Date: July 8, 2021
Transportation
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Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI) identified 330 lithium mining projects as of December 2022, ranging from those that have been announced to those that are fully operating. Looking at the full supply projections of the 153 projects that were producing or had public, identified production estimates showed sufficient lithium supply to meet the EPA's recent regulatory proposals, as well as forecast demand for the rest of the world.
Author: Benchmark Mineral Intelligence
Date: June 2023 -
Using large-scale, nationally representative survey data, this study found that improved battery electric vehicle (BEV) technology has been a key force in increasing the market share of BEVs in recent years and that forecasted improvements of BEV range and price suggest this trend is likely to continue.
Authors: Connor Forsythe, Kenneth Gilingham, Jeremy Michalek, Kate Whitefoot
Date: May 30, 2023 -
The economics strongly favor electrification of Class 2b and 3 vehicles, which include large pick-ups and vans, as well as package and delivery trucks. A typical Class 2b–3 battery electric vehicle (BEV) owner would save several thousand dollars, compared to a typical combustion vehicle owner, and tax credits available under the Inflation Reduction Act would only improve the financial outlook.
Author: Roush (Himanshu Saxena, Vishnu Nair, Sajit Pillai)
Date: May 2023
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This study seeks to inform policymakers and the modeling community by reviewing the range of consumer adoption modeling approaches used in projecting future zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales, with a focus on specific consumer choice models used in policy-relevant modeling contexts.
Author: Rhodium Group (Eric G. O'Rear, Shweta Movalia, Ben King, and Emily Wimberger)
Date: March 24, 2023