The Future of Electricity Resource Planning
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Resource Advisor Guide
A publication of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Resource Advisor Guide PMS 313 AUGUST 2017 Resource Advisor Guide August 2017 PMS 313 The Resource Advisor Guide establishes NWCG standards for Resource Advisors to enable interagency consistency among Resource Advisors, who provide professional knowledge and expertise toward the protection of natural, cultural, and other resources on wildland fires and all-hazard incidents. The guide provides detailed information on decision-making, authorities, safety, preparedness, and rehabilitation concerns for Resource Advisors as well as considerations for interacting with all levels of incident management. Additionally, the guide standardizes the forms, plans, and systems used by Resource Advisors for all land management agencies. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) provides national leadership to enable interoperable wildland fire operations among federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local partners. NWCG operations standards are interagency by design; they are developed with the intent of universal adoption by the member agencies. However, the decision to adopt and utilize them is made independently by the individual member agencies and communicated through their respective directives systems. Table of Contents Section One: Resource Advisor Defined ...................................................................................................................1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................1 -
Wilderness Character Resource Brief
WILDERNESS CHARACTER National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Resource Brief Wilderness Stewardship Division Background The National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for the stewardship of 61 designated wilderness areas. Per agency policy, the NPS also manages eligible, proposed, recommended, and potential wilderness. In total, over 80 percent of all NPS lands are managed as wilderness, from Alaska to Florida. Preserving Wilderness Character The 1964 Wilderness Act’s Statement of Policy, Section 2(a) states that wilderness areas “shall be administered... so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character.” This affrmative legal mandate to preserve wilderness character, and related NPS policy, applies to all NPS wilderness. Wilderness character is a holistic concept based on the interaction of biophysical environments, personal experiences, and symbolic meanings. This includes intangible qualities like a sense of adventure and challenge or refuge and inspiration. Wilderness character also includes fve tangible qualities associated with the biophysical environment: • Natural - Wilderness ecological systems are Monitoring Wilderness Character substantially free from the effects of modern civilization How do NPS managers preserve wilderness character? Wilderness character monitoring helps address this • Untrammeled - Wilderness is essentially free from question by 1) assessing how management decisions the intentional actions of modern human control and actions may affect individual -
Ecosystem Services and Natural Resources
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND NATURAL RESOURCES Porter Hoagland1*, Hauke Kite-Powell1, Di Jin1, and Charlie Colgan2 1Marine Policy Center Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Woods Hole, MA 02543 2Center for the Blue Economy Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Monterey, CA 93940 *Corresponding author. This working paper is a preliminary draft for discussion by participants at the Mid-Atlantic Blue Ocean Economy 2030 meeting. Comments and suggestions are wel- come. Please do not quote or cite without the permission of the authors. 1. Introduction All natural resources, wherever they are found, comprise physical features of the Earth that have economic value when they are in short supply. The supply status of natural resources can be the result of natural occurrences or affected by human degradation or restoration, new scientific in- sights or technological advances, or regulation. The economic value of natural resources can ex- pand or contract with varying environmental conditions, shifting human uses and preferences, and purposeful investments, depletions, or depreciation. It has now become common to characterize flows of goods and services from natural resources, referred to as “ecosystem” (or sometimes “environmental”) services (ESs). The values of ES flows can arise through direct, indirect, or passive uses of natural resources, in markets or as public goods, and a variety of methodologies have been developed to measure and estimate these values. Often the values of ES flows are underestimated or even ignored, and the resulting im- plicit subsidies may lead to the overuse or degradation of the relevant resources or even the broader environment (Fenichel et al. 2016). Where competing uses of resources are potentially mutually exclusive in specific locations or over time, it is helpful to be able to assess—through explicit tradeoffs—the values of ES flows that may be gained or lost when one or more uses are assigned or gain preferential treatment over others. -
Impact of Variable Renewable Energy on System Operations
GRID INTEGRATION SERIES: IMPACT OF VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY ON SYSTEM OPERATIONS Scaling Up Renewable Energy June 2020 DISCLAIMER This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by the Scaling Up Renewable Energy Project (Tetra Tech ES, Inc., prime contractor). The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. GRID INTEGRATION SERIES: IMPACT OF VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY ON SYSTEM OPERATIONS Prepared for: Energy and Infrastructure Office U.S. Agency for International Development 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20523 Submitted by: Tetra Tech ES, Inc. 1320 North Courthouse, Suite 600 Arlington, VA 22201 www.tetratech.com USAID TASK ORDER AID-OAA-I-13-00019/AID-OAA-TO-17-00011 DISCLAIMER This report was prepared by Tetra Tech ES, Inc., ICF (subcontractor), and IWE (subcontractor). Authors included Jairo Gutierrez, Adrian Paz, and Arai Monteforte from Tetra Tech; Sanjay Chandra and Rakesh Maurya from ICF; Pramod Jain from IWE; and Sarah Lawson, Jennifer Leisch, and Kristen Madler from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION 4 POWER SYSTEMS WITH VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY 6 VARIABILITY AND UNCERTAINTY IN ELECTRICITY SYSTEMS 6 FLEXIBILITY OF POWER SYSTEMS 7 OPERATING A SYSTEM WITH A HIGH SHARE OF VARIABLE RENEWABLE ENERGY 9 SELECTED COUNTRY EXPERIENCE 13 COLOMBIA 15 INDIA 16 MEXICO 19 THE PHILIPPINES 20 VIETNAM 22 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 24 BIBLIOGRAPHY 27 ANNEX A. -
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES: a GUIDE for DECISION MAKERS Acknowledgments
JANET RANGANATHAN CIARA RAUDSEPP-HEARNE NICOLAS LUCAS FRANCES IRWIN MONIKA ZUREK KAREN BENNETT NEVILLE ASH PAUL WEST ECOSYSTEM SERVICES A Guide for Decision Makers PLUS The Decision: A fictional story about a community facing ecosystem change ECOSYSTEM SERVICES A Guide for Decision Makers JANET RANGANATHAN CIARA RAUDSEPP-HEARNE NICOLAS LUCAS FRANCES IRWIN MONIKA ZUREK KAREN BENNETT NEVILLE ASH PAUL WEST Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and fi ndings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors, and do not necessarily refl ect the views of WRI or the collaborating organizations. Copyright © 2008 World Resources Institute. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-56973-669-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941147 Cover and title page images by Getty Images and Hisashi Arakawa (www.emerald.st) Table of Contents FOREWORD i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii SUMMARY iv CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 Ecosystem services and development 3 Condition and trends of ecosystem services 6 Entry points for mainstreaming ecosystem services 8 About this guide 9 The Decision: Where the Secretary connects ecosystems and human well-being 11 CHAPTER 2: Framing the Link between Development and Ecosystem Services 13 Make the connections -
Replacing Property Taxes on Utility Generation with Revenues from a Carbon-Based Tax: a Minnesota Tax Shift Opportunity I
Memo: To: Michael Noble, ME3 From: John Bailey, David Morris, ILSR (Tel: 612-379-3815) Date: 11/15/98 Re: Replacing Property Taxes on Utility Generation With Revenues from a Carbon-Based Tax: A Minnesota Tax Shift Opportunity I. Introduction Electric utilities in Minnesota pay four types of taxes: income tax, franchise fee (or gross receipts tax), sales tax, property tax.1 The total amount paid in each category is shown in Table 1. In 1995, the total came to $375 million. Table 1. Electric Utility Tax Paid in Minnesota in 1995 Property Tax MN Sales Tax MN Income Tax Franchise Fee Total NSP $152,078,365 $65,076,000 $31,709,000 $25,505,000 $274,368,365 Minnesota Power $34,706,493 $5,963,664 $3,843,817 $700,000 $45,213,974 Otter Tail $7,152,715 $4,197,450 $1,370,067 $233,643 $12,953,875 Interstate $3,670,381 $1,935,124 $573,770 $569,969 $6,749,244 Anoka Elec. Coop $3,179,055 $4,658,862 $0 $534,379 $8,372,296 Dakota Elec. Assoc. $4,742,500 $4,487,719 $0 $144,025 $9,374,244 Cooperative Power $7,095,000 $0 $0 $0 $7,095,000 United Power Assoc. $10,827,954 $0 $5,000 $0 $10,832,954 Total $223,452,463 $86,318,819 $37,501,654 $27,687,016 $374,959,952 Source: Minnesota Department of Public Service, 1996 Energy Policy and Conservation Report, December 1996 Recently, Minnesota has re-examined the utility tax structure in light of the restructuring of electricity occurring throughout the country. -
Nuclear Power Reactors in California
Nuclear Power Reactors in California As of mid-2012, California had one operating nuclear power plant, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) owns the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, which consists of two units. Unit 1 is a 1,073 megawatt (MW) Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) which began commercial operation in May 1985, while Unit 2 is a 1,087 MW PWR, which began commercial operation in March 1986. Diablo Canyon's operation license expires in 2024 and 2025 respectively. California currently hosts three commercial nuclear power facilities in various stages of decommissioning.1 Under all NRC operating licenses, once a nuclear plant ceases reactor operations, it must be decommissioned. Decommissioning is defined by federal regulation (10 CFR 50.2) as the safe removal of a facility from service along with the reduction of residual radioactivity to a level that permits termination of the NRC operating license. In preparation for a plant’s eventual decommissioning, all nuclear plant owners must maintain trust funds while the plants are in operation to ensure sufficient amounts will be available to decommission their facilities and manage the spent nuclear fuel.2 Spent fuel can either be reprocessed to recover usable uranium and plutonium, or it can be managed as a waste for long-term ultimate disposal. Since fuel re-processing is not commercially available in the United States, spent fuel is typically being held in temporary storage at reactor sites until a permanent long-term waste disposal option becomes available.3 In 1976, the state of California placed a moratorium on the construction and licensing of new nuclear fission reactors until the federal government implements a solution to radioactive waste disposal. -
THE FUTURE ELECTRICITY GRID Key Questions and Considerations for Developing Countries
THE FUTURE ELECTRICITY GRID Key questions and considerations for developing countries BHARATH JAIRAJ, SARAH MARTIN, JOSH RYOR, SHANTANU DIXIT, ASHWIN GAMBHIR, ADITYA CHUNEKAR, RANJIT BHARVIRKAR, GILBERTO JANNUZZI, SAMAT SUKENALIEV, AND TAO WANG WRI.ORG The Future Electricity Grid: Key Questions and Considerations for Developing Countries i AUTHORS: Bharath Jairaj, Sarah Martin, and Josh Ryor World Resources Institute Shantanu Dixit, Ashwin Gambhir, and Aditya Chunekar Prayas, Energy Group (PEG) Ranjit Bharvirkar The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) Gilberto Jannuzzi International Energy Initiative (IEI) Samat Sukenaliev UNISON Group Tao Wang DESIGN AND LAYOUT BY: Jen Lockard [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Foreword 3 Executive Summary 7 Introduction 13 The Traditional Electricity Sector Model 21 The Changing Electricity Sector: Current Trends 35 Implications for the Future Grid 45 Considerations for Developing Country Stakeholders 51 Conclusion 54 Glossary 56 Annex 1 57 Annex 2 58 References 65 Endnotes iv WRI.org FOREWORD Electricity systems around the world are balancing New policies that support these non-utility a diverse set of challenges, ranging from energy ▪ generators and aim to increase clean energy use security and access to environmental and public are expanding. health concerns. At the same time, the energy land- □ Since 2004, the number of countries scape is changing rapidly as a result of three trends putting in place renewable energy targets disrupting the status quo. These include: has tripled from 48 to 164 (REN21 2015). These trends are happening in New, more cost effective technologies, includ- both high income countries and lower ▪ ing variable renewable energy, energy effi- income countries. ciency, small distributed generation and storage that are being deployed at larger scale. -
Theory of Ecosystem Services
Seminar 2 Theory of Ecosystem Services Speaker Dr. Stephen Polasky Valuing Nature: Economics, Ecosystem Services, and Decision-Making by Dr. Stephen Polasky, University of Minnesota INTRODUCTION The past hundred years have seen major transformations in human and ecological systems. There has been a rapid rise in economic activity, with a tenfold increase in the real value of global gross domestic product (GDP) (DeLong 2003). At the same time, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found many negative environmental trends leading to declines in a majority of ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). A major reason for the rapid increase in the production of goods and services in the economy and deterioration in the provision of many ecosystem services is the fact that market economic systems reward production of commodities that are sold in markets and accounted for in GDP, but does not penalize anyone directly for environmental degradation that leads to a reduction in ecosystem services. As Kinzig et al. (2011) recently wrote about ecosystem services: “you get what you pay for” (or, alternatively, you don’t get what you don’t pay for). Ecosystems provide a wide array of goods and services of value to people, called ecosystem services. Though ecosystem services are valuable, most often no one actually pays for their provision. Ecosystem services often are invisible to decision-makers whose decisions have important impacts on the environment. Because of this, decision-makers tend to ignore the impact of their decisions on the provision of ecosystem services. Such distortions in decision-making can result in excessive degradation of ecosystem functions and reductions in the provision of ecosystem services, making human society and the environment poorer as a consequence. -
Toward a Sustainable Electric Utility Sector
The Distributed Utility Concept: Toward a Sustainable Electric Utility Sector Steven Letendre, John Byrne, and Young-Doo Wang, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware The U.S. electric utility sector is entering an uncertain period as pressure mounts to cut costs and minimize environmental impacts. Many analysts believe that exposing the industry to competition is the key to reducing costs. Most restructuring proposals acknowledge the need to maintain environmental quality and suggest mechanisms for assuring continued support for end-use efficiency and renewable energy in a deregulated electric utility industry. Two of the most prominent ideas are non-bypassable line charges and portfolio standards. This paper suggests another option based on the distributed utility (DU) concept in which net metering and a form of performance-based ratemaking allow distributed generation, storage, and DSM to play an important role in a new competitive electric utility sector. A DU option directly incorporates these resources into the electric system by explicitly acknowledging their value in deferring distribution equipment upgrades. INTRODUCTION electric utility industry. In our view, the DU option has been neglected in the current debate. The electric utility sector in the U.S. is on the verge of A DU strategy involves a fundamental shift in the way fundamental change as regulators, policymakers, and indus- electricity is delivered, with a move away from large-scale try officials seek a strategy for introducing competition into central generation to distributed small-scale generation and the industry. The move toward competition is driven by the storage, and targeted demand-side management. To date, belief that significant efficiency gains could be realized by the DU concept has mainly been analyzed in terms of its exposing the industry to market forces. -
Ecology: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Part 1
CK-12 FOUNDATION Ecology: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Part 1 Akre CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook,” CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high-quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning. Copyright © 2010 CK-12 Foundation, www.ck12.org Except as otherwise noted, all CK-12 Content (including CK-12 Curriculum Material) is made available to Users in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share Alike 3.0 Un- ported (CC-by-NC-SA) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), as amended and updated by Creative Commons from time to time (the “CC License”), which is incorporated herein by this reference. Specific details can be found at http://about.ck12.org/terms. Printed: October 11, 2010 Author Barbara Akre Contributor Jean Battinieri i www.ck12.org Contents 1 Ecology: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Part 1 1 1.1 Lesson 18.1: The Biodiversity Crisis ............................... 1 1.2 Lesson 18.2: Natural Resources .................................. 32 2 Ecology: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Part I 49 2.1 Chapter 18: Ecology and Human Actions ............................ 49 2.2 Lesson 18.1: The Biodiversity Crisis ............................... 49 2.3 Lesson 18.2: Natural Resources .................................. 53 www.ck12.org ii Chapter 1 Ecology: Biodiversity and Natural Resources Part 1 1.1 Lesson 18.1: The Biodiversity Crisis Lesson Objectives • Compare humans to other species in terms of resource needs and use, and ecosystem service benefits and effects. -
Regularization of Business Investment in the Electric Utility Industry
This PDF is a selection from an out-of-print volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research Volume Title: Regularization of Business Investment Volume Author/Editor: Universities-National Bureau Volume Publisher: Princeton University Press/NBER Volume ISBN: 0-87014-195-3 Volume URL: http://www.nber.org/books/univ54-1 Publication Date: 1954 Chapter Title: Regularization of Business Investment in the Electric Utility Industry Chapter Author: Edward W. Morehouse Chapter URL: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c3026 Chapter pages in book: (p. 213 - 282) REGULARIZATION OF BUSINESS INVESTMENT IN THE ELECTRIC UTILITY INDUSTRY' EDWARD W. MOREHOUSE GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORPORATION Introduction THIS PAPER explores the possibilities of regularizing business invest- ment by the electric utility industry. The program for the conference adds, "as means of maintaining high productive employment in a private enterprise economy." This ultimate goal of "high productive employment" as an incen- tive for regularization of investment is of less importance in the electric utility industry than in other industries, as data submitted later tend to show. Electric utilities already have achieved a rela- tively high stability of employment of operating personnel, and the impact of investment on wages and employment in electric utility operations is relatively less significant to the total economy than it is in other industries. Any contribution that electric utilities might make by stabilizing their capital expenditures would be a contribu- tion to employment stability generally, and particularly to employ- ment in the building of plant, or the manufacture of plant and equipment items, needed by electric utilities. These indirect em- ployment effects would bulk larger than the direct effects on the number of employees used in utility operations.