ISE Research: Utility of the Future

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https://hdl.handle.net/2144/39109

The electric power industries of the world are shifting from centralized, fossil-based production to more distributed and entirely carbon-free networks. Along with colleagues in the Questrom School of Business, the College of Engineering, and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, the Institute plays a global leadership role in this area.

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EPA methane emission controls, Obama vs Trump vs Biden: what needs to be fixed and what should be left alone
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2021-05-04) Kleinberg, Robert L.
On 13 August 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated its final rule amending the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the Oil and Natural Gas Sector. Both adherents and detractors of President Donald J. Trump saw the new rule as contributing to the President’s deregulatory agenda, taking an important step toward American dominance in fossil fuels (desirable or not), and winning yet another battle in the war on the environmental protection legacy of President Barack Obama. This simple story line is compelling, but when the details are examined, it is found that the changes were in some ways more important, and in other ways less important than advertised by supporters and opponents. Moreover, some of the changes have damaged positions Trump championed, while others have the potential to substantially improve the environmental performance of the oil and gas industry. Most importantly, some major sources of methane emissions have been inadequately dealt with across both administrations. Therefore the Biden administration EPA, in re-examining NSPS, should take care to discard the mistakes made by the Trump administration, retain the improvements, and move forward on a number of new fronts. Topics explored include redundancy of methane and volatile organic compound leak detection, regulation of older and low production facilities, abandoned wells, pneumatic controllers, oil storage tanks, routine flaring, malfunctioning and unlit flares, gathering pipelines, and EPA certification of new methane emission detection technology. All results and any errors in this report are the responsibility of the author.
The value of diversifying uncertain renewable generation through the transmission system
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-09) Van Horn, Kai; Pfeifenberger, Johannes; Ruiz, Pablo
A study published by the ISE estimates transmission-related benefits attributable to the geographic diversification of variable renewable generation and loads. The analysis indicates that the benefits of transmission expansion between areas with diverse renewable generation resources are greater than typically estimated, with significant reductions in system-wide costs and renewable generation curtailments in both hourly day-ahead and intra-hour power market operations. The benefits are substantial and yet often not accounted for because they are more difficult to model. The key findings of the study include the following: 1. For renewable generation levels from 10% to 60% of annual energy consumption, interconnecting two power market sub-regions with different wind regimes through transmission investments can reduce annual production costs by between 2% and 23% and annual renewable curtailments by 45% to 90%. 2. When real-time uncertainties of renewable generation and loads relative to their day-ahead forecasts are taken into consideration, the benefit of geographic diversification through the transmission grid are 2 to 20 times higher than benefits typically quantified based only on “perfect forecasts.” The findings of the study highlight the important role transmission expansion can play in successfully integrating large-scale renewable generation under both forecasted day-ahead and real-time market conditions. The authors also emphasize the need for transmission benefit-cost analyses to go beyond deterministic hourly simulations and begin taking into account both forecasting uncertainty and intra-hour system conditions to fully capture the regional and inter-regional renewable generation diversification benefits of the transmission system.
Still charging: energy storage commercialization in Massachusetts
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-05) Marttin, Victor
With the mutually reinforcing trends of climate change mitigation and transport electrification, the opportunity for energy storage innovation has never been more apparent. Massachusetts supports a robust community of entrepreneurs who develop and commercialize their inventions in the state. Recognizing this, the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy and Greentown Labs conducted 25 interviews with a wide array of participants involved in the energy storage innovation ecosystem for ISE’s new report, Still Charging: Energy Storage Commercialization in Massachusetts. These interviews focused on barriers, gaps, and strengths of Massachusetts in getting energy storage technologies from lab to the first sale. [TRUNCATED]
Bringing power and progress to Africa in a financially and environmentally sustainable manner
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2020-04) Stuebi, Richard; Adukonu, Edem; Wang, Peishan; Zhang, Ted; Yue, Xin; Ren, Justin
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The future of electricity supply and delivery on the continent of Africa represents one of the thorniest challenges facing professionals in the global energy, economics, finance, environmental, and philanthropic communities. Roughly 600 million people in Africa lack any access to electricity. If this deficiency is not solved, extreme poverty for many Africans is virtually assured for the foreseeable future, as it is widely recognized that economic advancement cannot be achieved in the 21st Century without good electricity supply. Yet, if Africa were to electrify in the same manner pursued in developed economies around the world during the 20th Century, the planet’s global carbon budget would be vastly exceeded, greatly exacerbating the worldwide damages from climate change. Moreover, due to low purchasing power in most African economies and fiscal insolvency of most African utilities, it is unclear exactly how the necessary infrastructure investments can be deployed to bring ample quantities of power – especially zero-carbon power – to all Africans, both those who currently are unconnected to any grid as well as those who are now served by expensive, high-emitting, limited and unreliable electricity supply. With the current population of 1.3 billion people expected to double by 2050, the above-noted challenges associated with the African electricity sector may well get substantially worse than they already are – unless new approaches to infrastructure planning, development, finance and operation can be mobilized and propagated across the continent. This paper presents a summary of the present state and possible futures for the African electricity sector. A synthesis of an ever-growing body of research on electricity in Africa, this paper aims to provide the reader a thorough and balanced context as well as general conclusions and recommendations to better inform and guide decision-making and action. [TRUNCATED]
Assessment of Haiti’s electricity sector
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2018-03) Stuebi, Richard; Hatch, Jennifer
INTRODUCTION: This report summarizes the current state of the electricity sector in Haiti, to form a knowledge base from which to subsequently evaluate options for how best to increase electricity access in Haiti. Accordingly, this report summarizes the results of an extensive review of the publicly-available information on the electricity sector in Haiti, supplemented by targeted interviews with selected individuals known to be knowledgeable about electricity in Haiti based on their recent involvement in assessing the sector or in pursuing/supporting development opportunities. [TRUNCATED]
Multi-user microgrids: obstacles to development and recommendations for advancement
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2018-11) Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Multi-user microgrids (MUMs) are an emerging approach to electricity service that allows neighboring customers to obtain greater resilience in electricity service, from a set of locally installed distributed energy resources (DERs) of their own choice (sometimes including solar energy and energy storage), through joint participation in a power production and delivery system that can operate independently from the host electric utility. To date, there are relatively few MUMs in operation. This is primarily because regulated utility service from the electricity grid has historically been adequate and cost-effective for most customers – and it is highly likely that this will remain largely true, so that MUMs will not become widespread anytime soon. However, with improving microgrid economics and increasing customer needs for resilience, there will be a growing number of situations in which MUMs will become viable. Even today, certain sets of customers find the benefits offered by MUMs to outweigh the additional costs. Despite this, MUM activity has been extremely limited because of a number of significant barriers associated with implementing this novel business model. Exacerbating this, there is a dearth of comprehensive study on these barriers. Consequently, the goal of this research is to provide a first investigation into the barriers to MUM development and some early hypotheses on potential remedies that would facilitate MUM development when and where they might be a good solution – with a particular focus on the Northeastern U.S. [TRUNCATED]
Assessing the potential for U.S. utility green bonds
(Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy, 2019-05) Lam, Tan; Fox-Penner, Peter; Hatch, Jennifer
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Bonds are the largest single class of financial instrument across the world’s financial markets. Recently, a subclass of these bonds, called green bonds, has emerged in the market place. Green bonds are a type of bond whose proceeds may be used only for certain approved “green” investments. In exchange for agreeing to invest only in such projects, the bond issuer obtains some value greater than they would obtain from traditional financing, and are therefore encouraged to finance and undertake a greater number of green projects. This unique value may not be recognized in traditional financial accounting. Of course, like any other capital-raising investment, green bonds enable their issuer to finance a new project that should increase (or at least maintain) its revenues, profits, and cash flow. The utility sector was the second largest issuer of green bonds in 2017, accounting for $26.2 billion dollars’ worth of green bond issuance globally. These were primarily issued to finance renewable energy projects, a class of projects that makes the utility sector one of the most logical for deployment of green bonds. While choosing to issue green bonds does not seem to have any price advantage over regular bonds in the market, green bonds can provide other benefits. These benefits may include reputation effects, better treatment in secondary markets, and other intangibles (See Table ES1).

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