The Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) was formed in 1995. to explore innovative policy, regulatory, and market-based incentive options to promote greater reliance on ecologically sustainable renewable energy technologies.
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The following REPP documents are on Solstice.
The growing use of natural gas is among the most important recent developments in America's energy picture. In this Issue Brief, Adam Serchuk and Bob Means address implications of this trend for renewable energy, both in the United States and globally. The paper provides a valuable resource for environmental and energy professionals seeking to understand the complex relationship between the two cleanest energy options now available.
- by Adam Serchuk and Robert Means
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In this paper, consultant James Cannon outlines a role for renewable energy in the transportation sector. Mr. Cannon proposes hydrogen as an automotive fuel. This clean burning gas could be produced by electrolyzing water with current generated by renewable energy technologies, direct photochemical or photobiological conversion, or biomass gasification.
- by James S. Cannon
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Paper presented at the World Energy Congress, Denver, Colorado, and published in A.A.M. Sayigh (ed.), Energy, Efficiency and the Environment (Oxford: Elsevier Press, Ltd., 1996). ABSTRACT: A restructured electricity system may undervalue renewable energy. We remain wary of unregulated markets, but urge the renewable energy community to begin considering how they could adapt to increasing customer choice.
- by Alan Miller and Adam Serchuk
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America's air is getting cleaner, but cleaner may not be clean enough. The best available scientific evidence suggests that legal levels of pollution make people sick. In the United States alone, air pollution kills over 50,000 persons a year╤a death toll higher than that of traffic accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. European air pollution levels equal or exceed those of the United States. In China, India, Thailand and other industrializing nations, air pollution is literally palpable.
- by Curtis Moore
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
Consumers will soon be able to select their own power company. To ensure that this freedom lowers the total social cost of electricity, customers need to know how their power is generated, and they need assurance that power sold as "green” really is so. The author argues that comprehensible, accessible information is essential for a properly functioning retail power market. He then discusses how to define green, the roles of new and existing power projects, the distinction between regulated green marketing programs and unregulated green power products, and the institutional arrangments for certifying green power. The paper concludes with seven recommended actions and principles for green power standards.
- by Edward A. Holt, editor of Green Pricing Newsletter edholt@igc.apc.org
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Policymakers and landowners in the Great Plains are growing increasingly enthusiastic about a European idea: distributed clusters of one to five large (100 to 500 kW), locally-owned, electricity-generating turbines. In the following REPP Issue Brief, consultant John Dunlop suggests that wind clusters should complement the large, multi-unit, professionally developed windfarms that today produce most American windpower. Mr. Dunlop asserts that in coming years, wind clusters will allow American communities, cooperatives and families to harness indigenous wind resources and thereby generate electricity, protect the environment and stimulate the local economy. .
- by John Dunlop
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Accompanied by 7 Figures and 10 TablesRenewable energy advocates have long argued that, given a choice, Americans prefer renewables to conventional alternatives such as nuclear and fossil fuels. The following REPP Issue Brief, Energy and the Environment: The Public View, by Dr. Barbara Farhar of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), reviews twenty-three years of polling data justifying this widely shared belief. Dr. Farhar's analysis reveals broad favor for renewable energy across society, and demonstrates that support has remained high even as energy prices have dropped and memories of the 1970s energy crisis fade.
- Barbara Farhar (farharb@nrel.gov)
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In determining the economic feasibility of small-scale renewables, the two most important considerations are the capital cost and the cost of financing. For the most part, these two factors are a function of market prices, and quotes from renewable energy contractors and financial institutions will be subject to competitive pressures.
Another factor influencing the economics of these systems -- the electric utility’s metering and interconnection requirements -- is decided through a political process that is largely independent of competitive pressures. In particular, the means by which the utility accounts for excess generation sold back to the utility can make a tremendous difference in the economic feasibility of small-scale renewable generation. Despite this fact, utility metering and interconnection policies with respect to small-scale, customer-owned, grid-connected renewable generators (hereinafter "small customer-generators") have received little attention.
Recently, however, there has been a surge of interest in the use of a particular metering arrangement, called “net metering,” to encourage direct customer investment in the development of renewable energy. In 1995, California enacted a law requiring utilities to provide net metering for residential PV systems.3 Similar bills were introduced during 1996 in Hawaii and New York, and at least three other states are currently contemplating the implementation of net metering.
- Thomas Starrs
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The authors define their major concern by opening the report with the following quote from an EPA document:
"In 1993, power plants were responsible for 72 percent of all sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. They also contributed 33 percent of all nitrogen oxide emissions. Of the nation's emission's of mercury, a toxic heavy metal, 23 percent came from power generation in 1993.... Moreover, powerplants represent the source of 36 percent of all [human] 1993 emissions of carbon dioxide, a dominant greenhouse gas."- Irving M. Mintzer (imintzer@igc.apc.org),
Alan S. Miller (asmiller@wam.umd.edu),
Adam Serchuk (aserchuk@wam.umd.edu)
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