Energy plays a vital role in the global economy: fossil fuel dependency, the stability of the supply chain, and the prospects for harnessing previously untapped resources affect a range of policy concerns, from national security and international affairs to economic development and climate change. RAND's energy research covers the spectrum from energy conservation and security to emerging technologies and energy use by the U.S. armed forces.
Producing natural gas from shale generates air pollutant emissions. RAND researchers provided a first-order estimate of air emissions, and the monetary value of the associated damages, from the extraction of shale gas in Pennsylvania.
In November 2012, the Department of Energy and Climate Change unveiled the UK's national Energy Efficiency Strategy, setting out the direction of their policy for the coming decades. RAND Europe's research on
The authors discuss the merit of conducting research with both members of the general public and with populations living near proposed carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) sites.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is an important social goal to mitigate climate change. A common mitigation paradigm is to consider strategy "wedges" that can be applied to different activities to achieve desired GHG reductions.
Federal subsidies and policies to encourage plug-in vehicle adoption would produce more benefits at lower cost by targeting the purchase of vehicles with small battery packs.
The use of biomass for energy production has increasingly been encouraged in the United States, in part motivated by the potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to fossil fuels.
To reduce air emission and oil dependency impacts from passenger vehicles, strategies to promote adoption of hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles with small battery packs offer more social benefits per dollar spent.
This paper provides a framework for incorporating uncertainty analysis specifically into estimates of the life cycle GHG emissions from the production of biomass.
Explore options for conducting a set of trials to test the feasibility of transitioning from fuel excise taxes to a system of road use charges based on vehicle miles of travel.
The authors perform a technical and economic assessment and estimate the economic costs and net GHG reductions from U.S renewable electricity mandates. GHG emissions reductions from such policies could be as much as 670 million metric tons per year. Depending on technological development, economic costs are $13-$45 billion per year. Lower costs depend on favorable technological progress.
Public perceptions of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and other low-carbon electricity-generating technologies may affect the feasibility of their widespread deployment.
The authors explore the limits of current knowledge about grid electricity in LCA and carbon footprinting for the U.S. electrical grid, and show that differences in standards, protocols, and reporting organizations can lead to important differences in estimates of CO2, SO2, and NOx emissions factors.
This report is intended to complement extensive documentation contained in the model itself. CUBE 1.0, available for download on the NETL website, determines the life cycle GHG emissions of biomass feedstocks from planting the biomass to delivery to the bioenergy plant gate ("farm-to-gate").
This paper offers a critical overview of the full spectrum of household discrete choice-based automobile demand models.
Subjective probabilistic judgments about future module prices of 26 current and emerging photovoltaic (PV) technologies were obtained from 18 PV technology experts.
Power produced by utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has fluctuations on both short and long time scales. Power spectral density (PSD) analysis provides information on the character of these power fluctuations. Examination of the correlation and step size of the power output between several PV sites within a multi-site system allows assessment of geographic diversification for addressing intermittency.
This paper speculates about the future of the environmental movement as a function of its increasing use of network forms of organization and related strategies and technologies attuned to the information age.
Nuclear Power in Eastern Europe: Learning or Forgetting Curves?
Reviews a collection of recent energy scenarios from a policy and planning perspective and compares these scenarios quantitatively.
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