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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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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Energy, economic, and environmental analysis of integration of thermal energy storage into district heating systems using waste heat from data centres

Data centres produce waste heat, which can be utilized in district heating systems. However, the mismatch between data centres’ heat supply and district heating systems’ heat demands limits its utilization. Further, high peak loads increase the operation cost of district heating systems. This study aimed to solve these problems by introducing thermal energy storages. A water tank and a borehole thermal energy storage system were selected as the short-term and long-term thermal energy storage, respectively. Energy, economic, and environmental indicators were introduced to evaluate different solutions. The case study was a campus district heating system in Norway. Results showed that the water tank could shave the peak load by 31% and save the annual energy cost by 5%. The payback period was lower than 15 years when the storage efficiency remained higher than 80%. However, it had no obvious benefits in terms of mismatch relieving and CO emissions reduction. In contrast, the borehole thermal energy storage increased the waste heat utilization rate to 96% and reduced the annual CO emissions by 8%. However, the payback period was more than 17 years. These results provide guidelines for the retrofit of district heating systems, where data centres’ waste heat is available.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy, economic, and environmental tradeoffs at run-of-river hydropower facilities

Hydropower’s ability to quickly adapt to variability from wind and solar generation by fluctuation flow rates can allow the electricity grid to integrate more renewable capacity. However, these rapid flow fluctuations, required to meet variability needs, can negatively impact aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we quantified energy-economic-environment tradeoffs at five conventional hydropower facilities (i.e. hydropower produced ad a dam on a river channel) across the United States to identify a mix of operational regimes that can provide flexibility to support variable renewable energy integration and environmental protections. Model results show a range of ability to meet demand from 4.7% to 97.8% depending on which case study is considered. Additionally, when modeling the case study facilities on a range of RoR conditions, allowing a % of inflow as discharge, we found the range of 140–200% of inflow allowed as discharge lead to lowest environmental impact while meeting the highest amount of demand. Our sensitivity analysis results demonstrated the Richard-Baker Flashiness Index, used to measure flowrate changes, and Revenue, were negatively correlated with the percent of hydropower generation within the defined Regional Energy Deployment System balancing area (i.e. region in which energy demand and energy supply is balanced based on the Regional Energy Deployment System model) yet positively correlated to the variable renewable energy generation percentage in the defined balancing area. In conclusion, our results suggest hydropower operations can aid in increasing renewable energy generation while limiting environmental impacts when considering a holistic analysis of energy-economic-environment tradeoffs.

Economic impact↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hydropower expansion in eco-sensitive river basins under global energy-economic change

Vast hydropower resources remain untapped globally, the deployment of which could provide energy-economic benefits but impact riverine ecosystems. Across eco-sensitive river basins, it is unclear how drivers of hydropower expansion, such as rapid economic growth and a low-carbon energy transition, could interact with countervailing forces, such as increasingly cost-competitive variable renewable energy (VRE). Using an integrated energy-water-economy model, we explore the effects of these forces on long-term hydropower expansion in the world’s 20 most eco-sensitive basins, which have high ecological richness and untapped hydropower potential. Here, we find that a low-carbon transition exerts the strongest development pressure, causing deployment exceeding 80% of exploitable potential in more than 72% of eco-sensitive basins by 2050, most of which have limited deployment today. Rapid economic growth induces such extensive deployment in only 44% of eco-sensitive basins. Enhanced integration of VRE reduces deployment, alleviating the impacts of rapid economic growth but not the low-carbon transition.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

High-Fidelity Solar Irradiance Data: Simple Access to State-of-the-Art Information Accelerates Southeast Asia's Clean Energy Economic Transformation

High quality, robust, and reliable renewable energy resource data is foundational to climate-smart decision making, evidence-based policy planning, and clean energy investment mobilization. USAID and NREL, through the Advanced Energy Partnership for Asia, are expanding access to this critical resource data by providing free, high-fidelity solar resource data for Southeast Asia through the RE Data Explorer platform. This brief highlights several ways the Southeast Asia solar resource data has been used for power system planning and project development in the region.

Advanced Energy Partnership for Asia↗
DOE OSTI2025

Current state and future projections of drying processes in the US food and pulp and paper sectors: Energy, economic, and environmental assessment

The pulp and paper (P/P) and food sectors are the third- and fifth-largest industrial energy consumers in the United States, with total on-site energy consumption of 2,039 TBtu and 1,144 TBtu, respectively. Thermal drying processes for moisture removal, which are energy-intensive, play a critical role in both industries. This study is the first to evaluate state- and national-level US drying energy demand for these sectors from 2020 to 2050. To complete this evaluation, we developed a thermodynamic modeling framework integrated with economic and environmental models to compute product-specific drying energy intensity and estimate the sector-specific costs and emissions profiles associated with drying operations. The model-predicted energy intensity was validated against the literature. Using current and projected annual production volumes in these sectors, we estimated total drying energy use. Results indicate that drying accounts for 22 % of total energy consumption in the P/P sector and 10 % in the food sector. The estimated annual energy cost (2020) to operate thermal dryers is $\$$919 M in the P/P sector and $\$$417 M in the food sector. Additionally, drying contributes to 25 % of total CO 2 e emissions in the P/P sector (including biogenic) and 15 % of emissions in the food sector. Regional performance shows that the Southern US is the leading energy consumer for P/P drying, whereas the Midwest leads in food drying. This study presents both potential solutions to enhance drying efficiency and barriers to implementation. Energy efficiency improvements, low-carbon fuels, and electrification are discussed as key pathways for reducing costs and optimizing industrial drying processes.

3E analysis↗
DOE OSTI2024

RFA-17-14597, Methodology for Meeting Containment System Principal Design Criteria to Maximize the Passive Safety Value in Advanced Nuclear Energy Economic Competitiveness

Advanced (Non-Light Water) Reactors are being designed with Passive Safety as an essential and integral feature. To help streamline the licensing of advanced reactors, the DOE and the NRC have drafted Principal Design Criteria (PDCs) for advanced reactors. A question that remains to be answered is: how an Advanced Reactor take credit for passive safety features inherent in certain advanced reactors while at the same time complying the evolving PDC.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy and economic impacts of U.S. federal energy and water conservation standards adopted from 1987 through 2024

This paper presents estimates of the key impacts of U.S. national energy and water conservation standards adopted from 1987 through 2024. The standards for consumer products, commercial and industrial equipment, lighting products, and plumbing products include those set by legislation as well as standards adopted by the Department of Energy (DOE) through rulemaking. In 2024 alone, these standards are estimated to have saved an estimated 6.0 quads of primary energy, which is equivalent to 6.5% of total U.S. energy consumption, and 1.7 trillion gallons of water, which is equivalent to approximately 12% of the annual water withdrawals for public supply in the U.S in 2015. The estimated reduction in CO 2 emissions associated with the standards in 2024 was 270 million metric tons, which is equivalent to 5.6% of total annual U.S. CO 2 emissions from energy consumption. The annual savings in operating costs for households and businesses totaled $\$$105 billion, and the average household saved $\$$576 in operating costs as a result of standards on residential appliances and plumbing products. The estimated cumulative past and future energy and water savings from these standards amount to 307 quads of energy and almost 53 trillion gallons of water. The estimated cumulative CO 2 emissions reduction from the standards come to 10.3 billion metric tons. Accounting for the increased upfront costs of more-efficient products and the energy and water cost savings over the products’ lifetime, the standards have a cumulative net present value of benefit of $\$$3.2 trillion using 3 percent discount rate and $\$$3.5 trillion using 7 percent discount rate when discounting past and future benefits to 2024.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2026

Irrigation Infrastructure and Modernization – Setting a Baseline: Estimates of Irrigation Water Conveyance Infrastructure Extents and Composition and the Potential Water, Energy, and Economic Benefits of Modernization in the Western U.S.

In the Western United States (U.S.), water delivery for irrigation is still largely managed using century-old equipment and designs. Modernization of this vital water conveyance infrastructure, such as piping of earthen canals, is known to improve water availability and water quality for farmers, while saving energy and enabling new hydropower. However, there is sparse information about the extent of irrigation water delivery infrastructure, which makes it challenging to estimate the cost of upgrades at scale and the potential benefits of accelerating modernization work. This report estimates a variety of previously unquantified data points related to irrigation water delivery infrastructure in the Western U.S. to support stakeholders interested in nationwide modernization planning. The findings should be considered approximations, useful for understanding the scale, range, or variability of these indicators. Taken together, the findings of this report illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities involved in modernizing the agricultural water delivery infrastructure in the Western U.S. Accelerating the pace of modernization could strengthen the long-term resilience of U.S. food systems while providing significant economic, energy, water, and environmental benefits.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Regulators’ Energy Transition Primer: Economic Impacts of the Energy Transition on Energy Communities, Environmental Justice Considerations, and Implications on Clean Energy Jobs

Applications of new technology, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, enabled the United States to significantly increase its production of oil and natural gas during the last decade—the “Shale Gas Revolution.” As natural gas began to dominate the market with abundant supply and low prices, coal production and consumption have declined. Concurrently, the competitiveness of renewable energy and energy storage has climbed sharply, and analysts expect to see continued reductions in fossil fuel use in the coming decades. Many of these changes have been driven by market forces (i.e., low-cost natural gas and renewables), but current and future policy decisions aimed at tackling climate change concerns and reducing greenhouse gas emissions will also shape the future of the energy sector. This transition to low-carbon fuels has created both opportunities for clean energy technologies and challenges for communities traditionally dependent on fossil fuel-related industries. The power sector’s ongoing shift away from coal has left many coal miners and coal-fired power plant employees unemployed and often unprepared for jobs in other industries, including growing clean energy fields. This primer focuses on the declining coal industry, impacts on communities and workers, opportunities to transition workers who have lost their jobs to clean energy and other related sectors (including hydrogen-oriented jobs), recruitment and training strategies, and available programs and actions to make the shift to a low-carbon economy in a fair, just, and equitable manner by engaging the resources of federal and state governments, as well as the private sector.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
DOE OSTI2022

Economic and embodied energy analysis of integrated circuit manufacturing processes

Integrated circuits (ICs) are the fundamental microelectronic building blocks of typical information and communication technology (ICT) devices such as laptops and smartphone. With the emergence of faster and cheaper low-power ICs for the growing ICT market, there is a limited information on their manufacturing energy and economic impacts owing to the lack of recurrent upgradation of proprietary IC manufacturing process data. In this work, economic and life cycle energy assessments (LCAs) of IC manufacturing and assembly processes were conducted using the latest bill of materials (BOM) manufacturing data in a state-of-the-art IC manufacturing cost software tool developed by IC Knowledge, LLC. IC manufacturing cost was estimated to be $\$$1.00-$\$$5.00/cm 2 ; the high-end cost represents the most advanced 3D NAND IC technology with the Wafer Level Chip Scale Package cost of $4/cm 2 . Total cumulative energy demand (CED) estimates of IC manufacturing using the OpenLCA software ranged from 9 to 38 MJ/cm 2 or 56–235 BJ/month with the largest share (~ 75%) from on-site energy. The IC manufacturing CED is projected to increase with the progress in IC technology node, which has increased by more than two times for technology node evolution from 110 to 14 nm. Furthermore, the representative detailed BOM data were considered to reduce the CED uncertainties of the estimated standard deviation of 35%- 42%.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Advancing Clean Energy and Economic Development Goals in Pembroke Hopkins Park Township

Pembroke Hopkins Park Township (PHP) is participating in the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Communities Local Energy Action Program (LEAP) pilot, which is supporting 24 communities across the United States in their efforts to transition to clean energy to improve energy reliability, lower energy costs, and strengthen local economies. Communities LEAP is specifically open to low-income, energy-burdened communities that are also experiencing either direct environmental justice impacts or direct economic impacts by moving towards clean energy solutions.

Communities LEAP↗
DOE OSTI2025

Implications of AI and Data Center Service Demand on Energy, Water, and Economic Systems

This talk focuses on the challenges posed by the rapid growth of data centers (DCs), which rely heavily on electricity, water, land, and mineral resources, and have significant interactions with economic growth. The U.S. leads in DC deployment, but understanding how resource demands and constraints impact DC expansion requires strategic multisector analysis. To address this, the talk introduces a new conceptual framework and modeling capability within GCAM-USA, allowing integrated analysis of DC service demand, electricity, and direct and indirect water needs under varied scenarios. Insights include state-level water and electricity trends for DCs, uncertainty bounds, and the broader implications for resources and economics.

Data Centers↗
DOE OSTI2022

Influence of ESG Investing on Growth of CCS in U.S.

This presentation is being submitted as part of a sponsored session titled, "The Role of Carbon Capture & Storage in Reaching Net Zero Emissions," to the United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE) and will be presented at the 39th USAEE/International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) North American Conference to be held October 24–26, 2022, in Houston, Texas.

Zaremsky, Connie↗
DOE OSTI2023

Fossil Fuel Transitions Framework: Case studies of the decision-making process for energy and economic development pathways

The Net Zero World Initiative leverages expertise across U.S. government agencies and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) national laboratories, in partnership with other governments and philanthropies, to accelerate the decarbonization of global energy systems. This whole-of-government approach supports countries committed to raising their climate ambitions by co-creating and implementing highly tailored, actionable technical and investment strategies that put just and sustainable net-zero solutions within reach. The Net Zero World Initiative enables country partners to harness the convening power and technical expertise of U.S. and international industry, think tanks, and technical institutions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗