Engineering topics

Marcy, Cara

Publications and source records attributed to Marcy, Cara.

4 records

DOE OSTI2023

Power sector impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

Abstract The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is regarded as the most prominent piece of federal climate legislation in the U.S. thus far. This paper investigates potential impacts of IRA on the power sector, which is the focus of many core IRA provisions. We summarize a multi-model comparison of IRA to identify robust findings and variation in power sector investments, emissions, and costs across 11 models of the U.S. energy system and electricity sector. Our results project that IRA incentives accelerate the deployment of low-emitting capacity, increasing average annual additions by up to 3.2 times current levels through 2035. CO 2 emissions reductions from electricity generation across models range from 47%–83% below 2005 in 2030 (68% average) and 66%–87% in 2035 (78% average). Our higher clean electricity deployment and lower emissions under IRA, compared with earlier U.S. modeling, change the baseline for future policymaking and analysis. IRA helps to bring projected U.S. power sector and economy-wide emissions closer to near-term climate targets; however, no models indicate that these targets will be met with IRA alone, which suggests that additional policies, incentives, and private sector actions are needed.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Emissions and Energy Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act

If goals set under the Paris Agreement are met, the world may hold warming well below 2 degrees C (1); however, parties are not on track to deliver these commitments (2), increasing focus on policy implementation to close the gap between ambition and action. Recently, the US government passed its most prominent piece of climate legislation to date - the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) - designed to invest in a wide range of programs that, among other provisions, incentivize clean energy and carbon management, encourage electrification and efficiency measures, reduce methane emissions, promote domestic supply chains, and address environmental justice concerns (3). IRA's scope and complexity make modeling important to understand impacts on emissions and energy systems. We leverage results from nine independent, state-of-the-art models to examine potential implications of key IRA provisions, showing economy-wide emissions reductions between 43 and 48% below 2005 levels by 2035.

electricity↗

DOE OSTI2022

Comparison of temporal resolution selection approaches in energy systems models

Capacity expansion models for the power sector are used to project future decisions over the coming decades by simulating investment and operation decisions for the use of electricity. Due to model performance constraints, these models typically do not explicitly simulate every hour within a year, but instead simulate representative time segments (groups of hours). This paper evaluates different approaches for selecting time segments across three methods: sequential, categorical, and clustering, across a wide range of time-segment quantities, for a total of 204 temporal profiles. To measure the performance of each profile's ability to accurately represent data, the root-mean-square-error of each profile's time segments are compared to the data's original hourly data. The temporal alignment across regions is also measured (i.e., how often windy days align across regions). Different spatial resolutions were applied for a subset of the temporal selection methods to investigate the impact spatial resolution has on performance. This paper provides a framework for measuring the value of different temporal selection methods and of adding more granular data to energy system models. Overall, multi-criteria clustering yields the lowest root-mean-square-error across all datasets evaluated and provides a holistic view of the intertwined relationships between renewable generation and electricity demand.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2020

Energy Storage in Long-Term System Models: A Review of Considerations, Best Practices, and Research Needs

Technological change and policy support have heightened expectations for the role of energy storage in power systems, creating a need to enhance representations of energy storage in long-term models to inform decision-making. Energy storage technologies have complex and diverse cost, value, and performance characteristics that make them challenging to model, but there is limited guidance about best practices and research gaps for energy storage analysis. This paper reviews the literature and draws upon our collective experience to provide recommendations to analysts on approaches for representing energy storage in long-term electric sector models, navigating tradeoffs in model development, and identifying research gaps for existing tools and data. The review focuses on national-scale models with technological, temporal, and regional detail given their prevalence in planning and policy, though many insights are transferable to other modeling contexts. It also offers guidance to consumers of model outputs on proper use and interpretation based on model strengths and limitations. In particular, this review demonstrates the importance of capturing how the values of energy storage and other resources change as the system composition changes (e.g. with different levels of storage, renewables deployment, and emissions outcomes). These considerations require model detail like high spatiotemporal resolutions and endogenous investments that global integrated assessment models and price-taker frameworks do not typically resolve. Research gaps include linking tools of different resolutions, developing reduced-form representations of value streams, incorporating hybrid energy storage and renewable systems, and representing longer-duration energy storage technologies.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗