On the Path to Decarbonization: Electrification and Renewables in California and the Northeast United States

Wind and Solar Resource Droughts in California Highlight the Benefits of Long-Term Storage and Integration with the Western Interconnect

“…Long-term energy storage, supplemental generation, demand management, and transmission expansion are all potential options to provide reliability in 100% renewable electricity systems. ,− Low-carbon, firm generation technologies such as large-scale hydroelectricity, nuclear power, geothermal, biofuels, and natural gas with CCS could reduce both the costs of variable renewable electricity systems and the relative benefits of transmission expansion across larger geographic areas. However, such technologies are limited by legislation, constrained geographically and/or face major barriers to scale up. ,,,, It remains to be seen to what extent wind and solar generation in California and WECC will face similar barriers. We have framed this study based on an idealized electricity system that relies solely on wind and solar generation, thereby identifying an upper-bound for the influence of weather variability on system cost.…”

Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Marginal Cost of Carbon Abatement for Residential Buildings under California’s 2019 Title 24 Energy Codes

“…In this study net costs would be realized by a homeowner who may not be concerned with MAC results but would likely be attentive to the marginal cost differences of various housing types and possibly to the average NPV of a particular home; homebuyers calculating investment returns on a housing type similar to those used in this study will find that all housing types featured have negative NPVs, although significant variation exists (Table ). To that end, all-electric building type F has the lowest marginal cost and highest NPV of the buildings used in this study, followed by building types C and E. That two out of three homes with the lowest marginal cost are all-electric could suggest that consumers will readily embrace this housing type, however consumer acceptance of, and stakeholder resistance to , all-electric homes are potential barriers to adoption. Consumer demand for all-electric homes may not materialize at scale without the support of policies that lower marginal costs, increase benefits, and increase consumer awareness of the multiple benefits that exist today for some electric building configurations.…”

“…These findings indicate that there are no obvious barriers to the adoption of all-electric building energy codes for new California homes, however other considerations exist that have not been included here. Primary among these are the equity concerns raised by decreasing levels of gas use, which could result in consumers with limited financial means paying higher prices for natural gas . This consideration warrants additional study, but such studies should not delay action as the continued expansion of natural gas infrastructure deepens path-dependency for that fuel and will allow the scale of the equity problem to grow, along with emissions and the potential for stranded asset costs.…”

Electrification Futures Study: Operational Analysis of U.S. Power Systems with Increased Electrification and Demand-Side Flexibility

“…Electrification, accompanied by power sector decarbonization, is seen in the scientific community as a critical component of climate change mitigation strategies (Loftus et al 2015;Khanna et al 2019;Guminski, Fiedler, et al 2019;Mahone et al 2018;Capros et al 2019). By shifting energy consumption away from non-electric sources and toward electricity at the final point of consumption, widespread electrification could lead to profound changes in electricity demand in several ways.…”