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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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This poster summarizes the findings in the NREL technical report "Solar Pathways in Federal Energy Assistance Programs: Expanding the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP)" (NREL/TP-6A20-88519).
Each year, millions of Americans experience energy insecurity, or the inability to afford enough energy to meet their basic needs. Here, this study evaluates whether residential rooftop solar can serve as a preventative solution to energy insecurity among low- to moderate-income households. Using a national, matched sample of solar and non-solar households based on detailed and address-specific data, we find that solar leads to large, robust and salient reductions in five indicators of energy insecurity. Moreover, the benefits of solar ‘spill over’ to improve a household’s ability to pay other energy bills. The results suggest that rooftop solar may be an effective tool for policymakers who seek to reduce energy insecurity.
The nexus of energy and poverty is one of the most significant long-term challenges facing the energy and electricity sectors, with negative feedback loops between energy-related costs, risks, and insecurities, on the one hand, and diverse other social and economic insecurities, on the other, helping to undermine health, wellbeing, and resilience in low- and moderate-income communities around the US and the world (Biswas et al. 2022). The transition of energy systems to clean energy alternatives offers a potential opportunity to redesign future energy arrangements in ways that, instead, create beneficial social value for communities, reverses the energy-poverty nexus, and enhances community wellbeing (Biswas et al. 2020; Miller et al. 2018). The promise of clean energy transitions to address the energy-poverty nexus is especially significant when designed using principles of just energy transitions. To leverage just clean energy transitions to accomplish a reversal of the energy-poverty nexus requires improvement in three capabilities: (1) Understanding and mapping the community-scale dynamics and variability of the energy-poverty nexus, which vary considerably from community to community; (2) Evaluating the technical, social, and economic potential for different clean energy system designs to deliver social value to specific communities; and (3) Working collaboratively with communities to imagine and design clean energy systems solutions that meet their needs, fit their capabilities and contexts, and deliver multiple forms of community-desired social value/benefits that help reverse key facets of the energy-poverty nexus. This project developed a portfolio of novel tools, methodological approaches, and collaborative partnerships with four communities in Puerto Rico that further the objective of building these three capabilities.
From March 2020 through November 2023, the University of New Hampshire Carsey Center for Impact Finance and its partners worked to create accessible training programs and shared capitalization platforms to enable community finance institutions – such as credit unions, community banks, and Community Development Financial Institutions (“CDFI”s) – to expand their engagement in solar finance in low-income communities.
Total impact of space and space related activities on local economy of Boulder, Colorado - income-product accounts
Personal income in Cape Kennedy area
Federal research and development financing as regional income equalizer
Methodology for estimating county personal income in six state area
Personal income and population estimates of Kansas counties
Personal income and population estimates in Oklahoma counties
Personal income and population estimates in Arkansas counties
Personal income and population estimates in Nebraska counties
Allocation methods of state personal income to Iowa counties, and tabulated results including population figures
Methodology for personal income and population estimates in Missouri counties
Federal non-defense expenditure programs analyzed for impact on regional income distribution
Critical evaluation of studies and measurements of incoming lower-energy particles and association with airglow and auroras
Income redistribution after changes in level or composition of federal government expenditures
We model the annual incoming solar radiation topoclimatology for the Rio Grande River basin in Colorado, U.S.A. Hourly pyranometer measurements are combined with satellite reflectance data and 30-m digital elevation models within a topographic solar radiation algorithm. Our results show that there is large spatial variability within the basin, even at an annual integration length, but the annual, basin-wide mean is close to that measured by the pyranometers. The variance within 16 sq km and 100 sq km regions is a linear function of the average slope in the region, suggesting a possible parameterization for sub-grid-cell variability.