Impacts of EPA’s finalized power plant greenhouse gas standards
Emissions reductions may be met with relatively small costs.
Bistline, John↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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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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Cost Recovery for Standby and Ancillary Services for Distributed Generation: Considerations for New Mexico
A New Mexico statute allows investor-owned utilities to recover costs of “standby and ancillary services” resulting from distributed generation (DG). In attempting to do so, it is important to recognize both the physical and economic impacts, positive and negative, that distributed generation creates. Distributed generation has different impacts on ancillary and standby services depending on the location, capacity, and production patterns of the systems. Low penetrations of small distributed generation systems will not create significant contingencies for utilities. System impact of fluctuations in DG production may be no larger than normal fluctuations caused by customer demand, such as an air conditioner cycling. Higher penetrations and large DG system may produce noticeable impacts; so magnitude is critical when determining potential additional recoverable utility costs. Understanding DG impact on ancillary services is a relatively new and emerging area of study and as such there are not well-established formulas or protocols. Discretion is required. A hosting capacity analysis can help determine how much DG can be implemented before the impacts become substantive. Standby rates are traditionally used for large industrial generators or combined heat and power systems and threshold system size levels are often used in determining applicability of standby rates. System size thresholds may also be appropriate for standby rates and DG. Relatively small, geographically diverse DG systems are unlikely to create a noticeable coincident outage, so developing a standby charge based on assumed coincidence may not be appropriate. Individual lines and feeders may have considerable excess capacity during coincident outages, or they may be fully utilized and facing upgrades in the near future, which could vary over time. Understanding specific events that create concern for utilities is critical to developing an appropriate rate mechanism (e.g., single residential or community system outage, cascading event, clouds, eclipse). Any modeling or studies of the grid should also recognize the unique situation created when DG is coupled with a smart inverter or storage. These devices change the value proposition and can help mitigate some of the voltage and ramping issues DG can pose for a utility. Utilities can recover their fixed costs in a variety of ways, and some are better suited for DG than others. Beyond charging for standby and ancillary services, other options include fixed customer charges, demand charges, minimum bills, time-of-use rates and updated net energy-metering policies. Studies and analyses of the specific impacts that DG has on the grid should inform utilities’ decision-making process because distributed generation creates both costs and benefits for the grid. Any charge specific to DG customers should be backed up with analysis. At the heart of this conversation is utilities attempting to recover fixed costs. Allowing utilities to indiscriminately recover all stranded fixed costs can negatively affect long-term market efficiency by blunting utility incentives to lower costs and acting as a barrier to entry and exit. The current status of New Mexico’s grid, impending infrastructure updates, and likely customer adoption patterns for DG (backed up by transparent analysis) should remain at the forefront when considering charges for standby and ancillary services. Recognizing that utility regulation is largely a reactive process, it is recommended that applications for DG related standby or ancillary services cost recovery mechanisms be thoroughly reviewed by an experienced economist. If the commission has no such skill set on staff, one might be hired.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Stakeholder Support for Wildlife Conservation Funding Policies
State wildlife management agencies in the United States have depended on a “user-pay” funding model for conservation efforts that relies on revenue from hunting license sales and a federal excise tax on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment. Declines in hunting participation, however, jeopardize sustainability of the current funding model. Ensuring support among stakeholders for wildlife management and conservation may require expanding sources of funding and incorporating the perspectives and values of a diversifying constituency into decision making processes. We used a web-based survey of wildlife-associated recreationists in Michigan, USA to evaluate support for a range of conservation funding policies. Respondents self-identified primarily as hunters (n = 2,558) or wildlife watchers (n = 942). We used binary logistic regression to evaluate support for four conservation funding policy options: state sales tax, lottery proceeds, extractive industry revenue, and a user-based tax on outdoor gear (i.e., “backpack tax”). Determinants of support varied by type of policy and stakeholder characteristics. We found no statistically significant differences between hunters and wildlife watchers in their support for conservation funding policies when accounting for other variables such as wildlife value orientations, engagement in stewardship behaviors, age, and gender. The industry-based policy achieved the greatest level of approval, while the backpack tax had the lowest. Respondents were mixed in their support of the sales tax and lottery proceeds options. Cluster analysis revealed three homogenous groups related to conservation funding policies: “strong support,” “mixed/opposed,” and “anti-backpack tax.” Clusters differed in their support for conservation funding policies and on psychological and demographic variables. The “strong support” and “anti-backpack tax” groups differed in their levels of stewardship engagement, knowledge of conservation funding mechanisms, and support for the backpack tax option. The “mixed-opposed” group tended to be older, less educated, and less likely to be a member of a conservation organization. Results suggest support for conservation funding differs by policy type and social and psychological characteristics of stakeholders. Based on differences in policy support revealed in this study, we suggest a multi-tiered approach to funding conservation and building on support among wildlife stakeholders to mitigate the looming funding crisis for state wildlife agencies.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Measuring Economy-Wide Circularity of the United States: An Input-Output Model in Mass Units
The ideal of creating closed material cycles by transforming the way we make, use and repurpose goods has become known as the circular economy. Besides its visionary appeal, material efficiency strategies central to circular economy can allow us to meet decarbonization goals that are otherwise out of reach. Production of basic materials such as cement, iron and steel and petrochemicals is one of the largest drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. Measuring circularity, and understanding its relationship with other sustainability metrics, however, is still difficult due to lack of data in mass units covering the entire economic system. Input-output (I-O) tables were originally created as a means of tracking the monetary flows that represent exchanges of goods and services within an economy, but have found additional uses in life cycle assessment and material flow accounts. In the traditional approach of environmentally extended I-O tables, emissions and energy data augment monetary flows. This approach can lead to price effects that distort physical quantities. Also, circular economy strategies and their goals relate to mass, not monetary flows. Therefore, it is best to simulate them using physical quantities. With these issues in mind, we have developed I-O tables in mass units to measure the flow of goods in the U.S. economy. This allows us to better measure how circular the economy really is, and how policy changes to affect this circularity may also affect decarbonization goals. Improving knowledge of these linkages could allow manufacturers to make changes in their production to achieve their sustainability and decarbonization targets. Our tool also provides a standard approach and public repository for data in physical units, making such data more available, useful, and meaningful. Following an established set of material flow metrics used by the European Union, we have used our tool to calculate material footprints over time differentiated by oil and gas versus other extractive industries. This approach also shows the relative trade balances of the U.S. in materials. We have developed a case study for the iron and steel sector, showing how different decarbonization scenarios affect not only economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions, but also total material use.
circular economy↗
Unlocking Solar for Low- and Moderate-Income Residents: A Matrix of Financing Options by Resident, Provider, and Housing Type
Historically the low and moderate income (LMI) market has been underserved by solar photovoltaics (PV), in part due to the unique barriers LMI residents face to participation in the PV market. The intent of this report is to identify the most promising strategies state policymakers might consider to finance PV for LMI customers across three housing types: single family, multi-family, and manufactured housing. The result is a financing matrix that documents the first and second tier financing options states may consider for each housing type. The first tier options were selected based upon their potential impact on LMI PV deployment. Second tier financing approaches could also be used to achieve state policy goals, but may not have as much effect on the relevant LMI market segment. Nevertheless, each financing option comes with tradeoffs that state policymakers may wish to consider when they make decisions about which financing approaches are best suited to achieve their LMI PV deployment goals.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Adaptation policies to increase terrestrial ecosystem resilience. Potential utility of a multicriteria approach
Climate change is rapidly undermining terrestrial ecosystem resilience and capacity to continue providing their services to the benefit of humanity and nature. Because of the importance of terrestrial ecosystems to human well-being and supporting services, decision makers throughout the world are busy creating policy responses that secure multiple development and conservation objectives- including that of supporting terrestrial ecosystem resilience in the context of climate change. This article aims to advance analyses on climate policy evaluation and planning in the area of terrestrial ecosystem resilience by discussing adaptation policy options within the ecology-economy-social nexus. The paper evaluates these decisions in the realm of terrestrial ecosystem resilience and evaluates the utility of a set of criteria, indicators, and assessment methods, proposed by a new conceptual multi-criteria framework for pro-development climate policy and planning developed by the United Nations Environment Programme. Potential applications of a multicriteria approach to climate policy vis-A -vis terrestrial ecosystems are then explored through two hypothetical case study examples. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the utility of the multi-criteria approach in the context of other climate policy evaluation approaches, considers lessons learned as a result efforts to evaluate climate policy in the realm of terrestrial ecosystems, and reiterates the role of ecosystem resilience in creating sound policies and actions that support the integration of climate change and development goals.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Analysing the usage and evidencing the importance of fast chargers for the adoption of battery electric vehicles
An appropriate charging infrastructure is one of the key aspects needed to support the mass adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and it is suggested that publically available fast chargers could play a key role in this infrastructure. As fast charging is a relatively new technology, very little research is conducted on the topic using real world datasets, and it is of utmost importance to measure actual usage of this technology and provide evidence on its importance to properly inform infrastructure planning. 90,000 fast charge events collected from the first large-scale roll-outs and evaluation projects of fast charging infrastructure in the UK and the US and 12,700 driving days collected from 35 BEVs in the UK were analysed. Using multiple regression analysis, we examined the relationship between daily driving distance and standard and fast charging and demonstrated that fast chargers are more influential. Fast chargers enabled using BEVs on journeys above their single-charge range that would have been impractical using standard chargers. Fast chargers could help overcome perceived and actual range barriers, making BEVs more attractive to future users. At current BEV market share, there is a vital need for policy support to accelerate the development of fast charge networks.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Applying Machine Learning to Understand Write Performance of Large-scale Parallel Filesystems
In high-performance computing (HPC), I/O performance prediction offers the potential to improve the efficiency of scientific computing. In particular, accurate prediction can make runtime estimates more precise, guide users toward optimal checkpoint strategies, and better inform facility provisioning and scheduling policies. HPC I/O performance is notoriously difficult to predict and model, however, in large part because of inherent variability and a lack of transparency in the behaviors of constituent storage system components. In this work we seek to advance the state of the art in HPC I/O performance prediction by (1) modeling the mean performance to address high variability, (2) deriving model features from write patterns, system architecture and system configurations, and (3) employing Lasso regression model to improve model accuracy. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach by applying it to a crucial subset of common HPC I/O motifs, namely, file-per-process checkpoint write workloads. We conduct experiments on two distinct production HPC platforms—Titan at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and Cetus at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility—to train and evaluate our models. We find that we can attain ≤ 30% relative error for 92.79% and 99.64% of the samples in our test set on these platforms, respectively.
Xie, Bing↗
2016 Earth System Grid Federation Annual Report
The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) experienced a major setback in June 2015, when it experienced a security incident that brought all systems to a halt for more than half a year. However, federation developers and management committee members turned the incident into an opportunity to dramatically upgrade the system security and functionality and to develop planning and policy documents to guide ESGF evolution and success. Moreover, despite the incident, ESGF developer working teams continue to make strong and significant progress on various enhancement projects that will help ensure ESGF can meet the needs of the climate community in the coming years.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
Feasibility Study for Battle Mountain Renewable Energy Park
The Feasibility Study for the Battle Mountain Renewable Energy Park project (“Feasibility Study”) will assess the feasibility, benefits and impacts of a 5 Mega Watt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) generating system (the “Solar Project” or “Energy Park”) on the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians of Nevada Battle Mountain Colony in Battle Mountain, Nevada (NV). The Energy Park will provide power for export to utility off-takers and job training and employment for Tribal members and revenue for the Tribe. This Feasibility Study will be a collaborative effort between the Tribal government, consultants, Tribal members and stakeholders and will allow the Tribe to make informed decisions regarding the Solar Project.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Understanding HPC Benchmark Performance on Intel Broadwell and Cascade Lake Processors
Hardware platforms in high performance computing are constantly getting more complex to handle even when considering multicore CPUs alone. Numerous features and configuration options in the hardware and the software environment that are relevant for performance are not even known to most application users or developers. Microbenchmarks, i.e., simple codes that fathom a particular aspect of the hardware, can help to shed light on such issues, but only if they are well understood and if the results can be reconciled with known facts or performance models. The insight gained from microbenchmarks may then be applied to real applications for performance analysis or optimization. In this paper we investigate two modern Intel x86 server CPU architectures in depth: Broadwell EP and Cascade Lake SP. We highlight relevant hardware configuration settings that can have a decisive impact on code performance and show how to properly measure on-chip and off-chip data transfer bandwidths. The new victim L3 cache of Cascade Lake and its advanced replacement policy receive due attention. Finally we use DGEMM, sparse matrix-vector multiplication, and the HPCG benchmark to make a connection to relevant application scenarios.
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
Assessment of Seasonal Energy Performance for Room Air Conditioners in Multiple Climates
This report provides a general approach for adopting a seasonal energy efficiency metric by examining the climate-specific temperature bin distribution for air conditioner use, the seasonal energy efficiency results according to International Standards Organization (ISO) 16358 by climate region, and the relationships in seasonal energy efficiency across regional metrics. This approach could make the seasonal efficiency metric values comparable with those from other countries with standards consistent with ISO 16358. Policy action and market transformation can be accelerated and effectively harmonized with other regional or international efforts by adopting a seasonal energy efficiency metric. The framework and methodology described in this report have been applied in the following publications: Shaffie et al. 2022, Park et al. 2021, Park et al. 2019, and UNEP 2019a.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
Zero-Emissions Roadmap for Oakland County
This document outlines a strategic pathway for Oakland County, Michigan to achieve zero emissions by 2050 under the Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) Program. The report encompasses analyses and high-level modeling to guide Oakland County in its emission reduction goals. Key methods include establishing an emissions inventory baseline with ongoing evaluation of future projects’ emissions impacts. Core elements include decommissioning old infrastructure, enhancing energy efficiency, deploying hybrid and ground-source heat pumps, and transitioning to electric fleets. It is proposed to structure the planning process into 5-year strategic plans to make the decarbonization process manageable. The document also emphasizes the need for reassessment of goals and periodic updates to remain adaptive to technological advancements and funding considerations. A matrixed approach for evaluating projects by cost and emissions savings is suggested to optimize decision-making given finite resources.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Flexibility and Performance of Parallel File Systems
As we gain experience with parallel file systems, it becomes increasingly clear that a single solution does not suit all applications. For example, it appears to be impossible to find a single appropriate interface, caching policy, file structure, or disk-management strategy. Furthermore, the proliferation of file-system interfaces and abstractions make applications difficult to port. We propose that the traditional functionality of parallel file systems be separated into two components: a fixed core that is standard on all platforms, encapsulating only primitive abstractions and interfaces, and a set of high-level libraries to provide a variety of abstractions and application-programmer interfaces (API's). We present our current and next-generation file systems as examples of this structure. Their features, such as a three-dimensional file structure, strided read and write interfaces, and I/O-node programs, are specifically designed with the flexibility and performance necessary to support a wide range of applications.
Kotz, David↗
WATCHMAN: A Data Warehouse Intelligent Cache Manager
Data warehouses store large volumes of data which are used frequently by decision support applications. Such applications involve complex queries. Query performance in such an environment is critical because decision support applications often require interactive query response time. Because data warehouses are updated infrequently, it becomes possible to improve query performance by caching sets retrieved by queries in addition to query execution plans. In this paper we report on the design of an intelligent cache manager for sets retrieved by queries called WATCHMAN, which is particularly well suited for data warehousing environment. Our cache manager employs two novel, complementary algorithms for cache replacement and for cache admission. WATCHMAN aims at minimizing query response time and its cache replacement policy swaps out entire retrieved sets of queries instead of individual pages. The cache replacement and admission algorithms make use of a profit metric, which considers for each retrieved set its average rate of reference, its size, and execution cost of the associated query. We report on a performance evaluation based on the TPC-D and Set Query benchmarks. These experiments show that WATCHMAN achieves a substantial performance improvement in a decision support environment when compared to a traditional LRU replacement algorithm.
Scheuermann, Peter↗
NASA’s Satellite Needs Working Group Management Office: Developing Solutions in an Agile, Open Science Environment
Every two years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) leads an assessment of U.S. Federal civilian agency Earth observation needs submitted through the Satellite Needs Working Group (SNWG) survey. In four survey cycles beginning in 2016, nearly 400 high-priority satellite needs have been identified, spanning Earth Science and representing a wide variety of potential applications for Earth observation data. During each assessment cycle, new data products and services (i.e., solutions) that meet the needs of multiple agencies are identified and proposed for funding. The majority of solutions being developed or currently operational are global in scope, including harmonized land surface reflectance data from Landsat and Sentinel-2; composites of cloud properties derived from MODIS, VIIRS, and five geostationary satellites; dynamic surface water extent and land surface disturbance products derived from multiple optical and radar missions; a suite of low-latency products from the ICESat-2 mission; and a soil moisture product derived from the upcoming NISAR mission. The SNWG Management Office, within the Earth Action element of NASA’s Earth Science Division, manages both the biennial SNWG survey assessment and the development of solutions starting at full capacity with the 2020 cycle. Each solution project is required to align with NASA’s open science policy, including developing source code in an open code repository, having an open-source software license, and making all data freely available via NASA’s Earthdata website. The presentation will include an overview of the SNWG process, its emphasis on open science, and highlight several operational solutions freely available to the global research and applications communities.
Katrina Virts↗
Building technologies
After growing up on construction sites, Roderick Jackson is now helping to make buildings nationwide far more energy efficient.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Energy Transition Initiative, Island Energy Snapshot - British Virgin Islands (Fact Sheet)
This profile provides a snapshot of the energy landscape of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), one of three sets of the Virgin Island territories in an archipelago making up the northern portion of the Lesser Antilles.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗