US Energy Sector Research Articles

Cutting CO2 emissions from the US energy sector: meeting a 50% target by 2030

US energy-related CO2 emissions are of a globally significant scale and therefore the mitigation of these emissions may play an extremely important role in addressing anthropogenic climate change in the 21st century. In order to address this internationally relevant topic, this study set out to apply the concept of stabilization wedges to the US energy sector. The goal was to assess the cumulative emission abatement potential of a range of currently available strategies. We find that population, surface temperature, the type of industry present and the carbon intensity of the fuel mix are dominant drivers of energy-related emissions in the USA. In addition, we find that, if the right legislative and market mechanisms were in place, a cumulative CO2 reduction of 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 would be possible in the US energy sector. We demonstrate that this very large reduction in emissions can be achieved using 12 technologically deployable, economically feasible and politically acceptable mitigation strategies

Climate change adaptation: A study of fuel choice and consumption in the US energy sector

Using cross-sectional data, this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms. Consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas, oil, and other fuels. They also use more energy. Climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating. On net, American energy expenditures will likely increase, resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise. For example, if the US warms by 5 °C by 2100, we predict annual welfare losses of $57 billion.

Evidence of under-investment in energy R&D in the United States and the impact of Federal policy

Investments in energy technology research and development (R&D), and in associated human and institutional capacity, are fundamental to our ability to respond to changing economic and environmental needs. This paper uses data on R&D investments and patent records to examine the relationship between expenditures on R&D and innovation, with a particular focus on the energy sector. We observe that R&D spending and patents, both overall and in the energy sector, have been highly correlated over the past two decades in the US. In addition, we observe that the R&D intensity of the US energy sector is extremely low when compared to other sectors. We argue that the data illustrates the critical role of public policy, as evidenced by the impact of recent technology transfer related legislation on the total number and on the ownership of innovations resulting from federally sponsored R&D. We conclude that there has been a significant and sustained pattern of under-investment in the US energy sector, and that recent declines in energy R&D exacerbate this situation. Innovation for the US energy infrastructure is also a significant driver of the international energy economy. Thus, the spillover from US under-investment detracts from the global capacity to respond to emerging risks such as global warming.

Quantifying the credibility of energy projections from trends in past data: The US energy sector

For energy forecasts to be useful in modelling or in policy efforts, the associated uncertainties must be known reliably. We analyse the actual errors in past forecasts of over 170 energy producing and consuming sectors of the US economy. We find that the often assumed normal distribution fails to model frequency of extreme outcomes (those lying far from the mean) accurately. Triangular distributions perform even worse as they assign zero probability to the outliers. We develop a simple one-parameter model that can be used to estimate a probability distribution for future projections. In addition to energy forecasts, our method can be applied to any field where a history of forecasting is available.

Water Resources in Food and Energy Production

Conflicts for water between US agriculture and energy sectors are projected to increase. Currently agriculture consumes 83%b of the water withdrawn, and an inrcrease of 17% is projected by the year 2000. At the same time, a major synfuel program from coal and oil shale could increase water consumption for energy production 4to 30-fold over present levels. A significant portion of this growth in water demand will occur in the western states where most irrigated agriculture and onehalf of US coal reserves are located. Environmental restrictions and the necessity to maintain aquatic ecosystems are additional constraints. (Accepted for publication 15 June 1982)