WRI Publications Feed: U.S. State & Regional Climate Change Policy

Clearing the Air: Reducing Upstream Greenhouse Gas Emissions from U.S. Natural Gas Systems

Sarah Parsons — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:48:29 -0400

Key Findings

Fugitive methane emissions from natural gas systems represent a significant source of global warming pollution in the U.S. Reductions in methane emissions are urgently needed as part of the broader effort to slow the rate of global temperature rise.
Cutting methane leakage rates from natural gas systems to less than 1 percent of total production would ensure that the climate impacts of natural gas are lower than coal or diesel fuel over any time horizon. This goal can be achieved by reducing emissions by one-half to two-thirds below current levels through the widespread use of proven, cost-effective technologies.
Fugitive methane emissions occur at every stage of the natural gas life cycle; however, the total amount of leakage is unclear. More comprehensive and current direct emissions measurements are needed from this regionally diverse and rapidly expanding energy sector.
Recent standards from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will substantially reduce leakage from natural gas systems, but to help slow the rate of global warming and improve air quality, further action by states and EPA should directly address fugitive methane from new and existing wells and equipment.
Federal rules building on existing Clean Air Act (CAA) authorities could provide an appropriate framework for reducing upstream methane emissions. This approach accounts for input by affected industries, while allowing flexibility for states to implement rules according to unique local circumstances.

Can the U.S. Get There from Here? Using Existing Federal Laws and State Action to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Sarah Parsons — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:51:17 -0500

Summary

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are expected to rise unless additional policy actions are taken. This report identifies a suite of policies that the Administration can pursue that do not require new legislation by the U.S. Congress. If pursued with “go-getter” level ambition, those policies can reduce U.S. emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020.

Key Findings

Without new action by the U.S. Administration, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will increase over time. The United States will fail to make the deep emissions reductions needed in coming decades, and will not meet its international commitment to reduce GHG emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
The U.S. EPA should immediately pursue “go-getter” emissions reductions from power plants and natural gas systems using its authority under the Clean Air Act. These two sectors represent two of the top opportunities for substantial GHG reductions between now and 2035.
The U.S. Administration should pursue hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) reductions through both the Montreal Protocol process and under its independent Clean Air Act authority. Eliminating HFCs represents the biggest opportunity for GHG emissions reductions behind power plants.
U.S. states should complement federal actions to reduce emissions through state energy efficiency, renewables, transportation, and other actions. States can augment federal reductions.
New federal legislation will eventually be needed, because even go-getter action by federal and state governments will probably fail to achieve the more than 80 percent GHG emissions reductions necessary to fend off the most deleterious impacts of climate change.

This chart shows potential reductions under existing federal authorities and state action through 2035.

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Can The U.S. Get There From Here? from World Resources Institute (WRI)

Sea-Level Rise and its Impact on Florida

Sarah Parsons — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 12:22:26 -0500

It is well-established that global warming has resulted in global sea-level rise. Since 1870, average global sea level has risen by about 8 inches. As the climate has become increasingly warmer, the annual rate of sea-level rise has accelerated. Average annual sea-level rise between 1993 and 2011 was 78 percent higher than between 1961 and 1993.

Four county governments in Southeast Florida, in response to impacts of sea-level rise, established the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact in January 2010. The purpose of this agreement between the county governments of Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach Counties – which have a combined population of 5.6 million — is to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies through joint efforts and to actively inform critical policymaking and government funding decisions at the state and federal levels.

Fact Sheet: U.S. Electricity Markets Increasingly Favor Alternatives to Coal

Kevin Lustig — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:20:35 -0400

The U.S. electric power system is gradually shifting toward cleaner forms of generation. One sign of this transition is the declining use of coal for electric power production.

In 2011, use of coal for U.S. power generation dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to the federal government’s independent U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In fact, the EIA reported1 earlier in 2012 that coal’s share of total U.S. electric power generation dropped below 40% for the last two months of 2011, the lowest level since 1978.

To understand the cause of this decline, it is important to examine contributing market forces. Doing so provides important context for recent coal plant retirement announcements, particularly given that some companies have attributed retirements to EPA rules that are still years away from going into force. For example, FirstEnergy Corp. announced in late January 20122 that it would retire several of its smaller coal-fired power plants, explaining that the decision was “based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.” FirstEnergy, however, had previously cited a range of reasons3 for its decision to reduce operations at many of its smaller coal plants.

Furthermore, available evidence does not support the notion that regulations are the primary driver behind recent coal plant retirement announcements. These business decisions4 are heavily influenced by such market forces as lower natural gas prices, declining growth in electricity demand, rising coal prices, and increased cost-competitiveness of renewables.

Download the fact sheet to keep reading and see full citations.

Midwest Manufacturing Snapshot: Energy Use and Efficiency Policies

Kevin Lustig — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:22:57 -0500

Summary

The workforce and economies of Midwestern states are more reliant on manufacturing than in any other U.S. region. Like the U.S. as a whole, during the past decade, the Midwest lost one-third of its total manufacturing workforce. With the central focus of state governments on economic development, there is a growing interest in understanding how industrial energy efficiency investments could contribute to regional economic recovery and long-term competitiveness for U.S. manufacturers. However, state-level energy-use data are not currently available from public sources at the level of detail needed to identify which sectors are using how much energy and where.

Introduction

Steel mill in Illinois. Photo credit: flickr/Payton Chung

Manufacturing remains a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Midwest. Manufacturers are also significant consumers of energy; yet, manufacturing subsector fuel use data are not available at the state level, which greatly limits the public’s understanding of industrial energy efficiency potential and other related questions of public interest. Given the centrality of manufacturing to the Midwestern economy and energy consumption, policymakers, industry and other interested stakeholders would benefit from more detailed information regarding energy use across all manufacturing sectors.¹

The primary purpose of this paper is to enable a constructive dialogue around effective strategies for achieving complementary environmental and economic outcomes in the Midwest. For the first time, this paper estimates manufacturing subsector-specific energy use for the 10 states in the Midwestern Governors Association (MGA).² Detailed manufacturing energy-use and economic activity data are presented alongside state-by-state policy summaries, giving a snapshot of where energy is being used and current state approaches for reducing energy-related costs and emissions.

Some context for this paper is worth noting at the outset. The year 2011 saw modest economic recovery for U.S. manufacturing, as a whole, after a decade of historic job losses and high energy prices. In 2012, state budgets will likely remain tight and the last of federal Recovery Act funding for state energy efficiency programs will be spent. Many policymakers are prioritizing policies that spur new investments to create jobs and economic development in their states. With these goals in mind, energy efficiency investments offer promising returns, in terms of both economic growth and employment. More productive energy use begets a more productive and efficient economy, now and for decades into the future (Laitner et al., 2012).

This working paper is divided into five main sections. The first section describes national and regional trends in manufacturing energy use and economic activity. The second section describes available public data and our methodology for deriving more detailed state-level manufacturing subsector energy-use data. The third section introduces in greater detail the concept of industrial energy efficiency (EE) and highlights four emerging policy trends. The fourth section profiles the 10 member states of the MGA, including graphics and discussion of state-specific energy use and recent manufacturing trends, as well as high-level summaries of relevant state policies. The final section discusses further work needed to build on the information presented here to more specifically identify policies needed to reduce the energy intensity and increase the cost competitiveness of Midwest manufacturing.

As noted in Section 2 of this paper, public data are available from government sources that describe state-level energy-use and economic-activity by industry and manufacturing, in general. However, no public data sources allow for consistent, direct comparisons on manufacturing subsector energy-use among the states of the Midwest. ↩
Member states of the MGA are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. ↩

More than Meets the Eye: The Social Cost of Carbon in U.S. Climate Policy, in Plain English

Maggie Barron — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:25:58 -0400

Presidents since Ronald Reagan have required that significant rules issued by the federal government be accompanied through intra-governmental review by a cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the Obama administration (like the Bush administration before it) has imposed a requirement to assess climate regulation through the lens of a figure (or range of figures) known as the “social cost of carbon” (SCC). The SCC estimates the benefit to be achieved, expressed in monetary value, by avoiding the damage caused by each additional metric ton (tonne) of carbon dioxide (CO2) put into the atmosphere.

The impact of SCC numbers is not theoretical and has consequences for the government regulatory process and therefore for the strength of regulations on climate change that emerge from it. Application of this tool can be problematic to achieving optimum outcomes for society. A growing literature indicates that developing the SCC requires assumptions that go well beyond the usual boundaries of science or economics. It requires many judgment calls that are hidden in complex economic models and largely invisible to policymakers and stakeholders. The Obama administration has formulated a standardized approach to estimating the SCC for all new federal rules issued that would regulate greenhouse gases. In the case of climate change, the government calculates the cost imposed on society globally by each additional tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas. These include health impacts, economic dislocation, agricultural changes, and other effects that climate change can impose on humanity. The benefit to society of avoiding those costs is summed up in the social cost of carbon.

In 2009 an interagency team of U.S. government specialists, tasked to estimate the SCC, reported a range of values from $5 to $65 per tonne of carbon dioxide. The choice of a final figure (or range of figures) is, in itself, a major policy decision, since it sets a likely ceiling for the cost per tonne that any federal regulation could impose on the economy to curb CO2. At $5 a tonne, government could do very little to regulate CO2; at $65, it could do significantly more. Higher SCC numbers, such as the United Kingdom’s range of $41–$124 per tonne of CO2 with a central value of $83, would justify, from an economics perspective, even more rigorous regulation.

This paper discusses the limitations that the special nature of climate change imposes on cost-benefit analysis and its constituent parts, primarily focusing on the estimation of the SCC. It explains in plain English the various steps in calculating the SCC, the weaknesses and strengths of those calculations, and how they are used to inform climate policy. The aim is to help policymakers, regulators, civil society, and others judge for themselves the reliability of using the resulting numbers in making policy decisions. Framed as a series of questions and answers, it also allows these stakeholders to understand the current debate within the economics community as to whether climate policy is a special case for which standard cost-benefit and SCC tools of the trade are not adequate to assess policy options.

What’s Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs

Maggie Barron — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:20:06 -0500

Executive Summary

In the absence of congressional action on climate change, all eyes are on the states and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to see how they will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing large power plants and industrial facilities. Indeed, power plants and industrial facilities are the sources of half of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making those plants and facilities central to any effort to reduce the country’s total emissions. This working paper explores a promising pathway for the states and EPA to make these reductions using the standards of performance under section 111 of the Clean Air Act.

EPA has announced that it will begin the process for regulating power plants and refineries under section 111. EPA has scheduled listening sessions with stakeholders and intends to issue draft performance standards for new and modified power plants by July 26, 2011, and at the same time issue to the states a draft mandatory guideline that requires states to develop plans to impose performance standards on existing power plants. The final performance standards and mandatory guidelines are expected in May 2012. The process for refineries will lag behind that for the electricity sector by about six months, with draft rules to be issued in December 2011 and final rules expected in November 2012.

Like many other requirements of the Clean Air Act (the Act), the standards of performance under section 111 are designed and implemented through a federal-state partnership. EPA lists the categories of sources and establishes performance standards for new and modified emitters within listed categories. EPA also establishes a mandatory “guideline” for states, creating a federal “floor” for regulation of existing sources that applies only if the states fail to set their own standards of performance that meet or exceed this floor. This guideline includes possible “system[s] of emission reduction” that the states may use to set standards of performance. In promulgating these plans, the states will have considerable flexibility, since the standards of performance under section 111(d) may take the form of traditional emissions rate limitations or any number of other more flexible mechanisms. The emergence of state cap-and-trade programs raises the question of whether these cap-and-trade programs could be used to meet a state’s obligations under section 111(d) of the Act.

The traditional approach to regulating power plant and industrial facilities is through performance standards that prescribe specific emissions limitations on individual sources. This approach has been used for years to control conventional pollutant emissions, and is the safest approach from a legal defensibility standpoint. Because many states have already begun regulating some existing sources using cap and trade, the traditional approach may not be the one preferred by the states or their stakeholders. Indeed, states that have already chosen to reduce emissions from power plants and industry using flexible, marketbased approaches, can be expected to develop plans calling for alternatives to the traditional source-specific performance standards. EPA under George W. Bush concluded that the Clean Air Act allows cap and trade as a demonstrated and effective form of regulation under Section 111(d), and the Obama EPA has not contested this interpretation. Until federal courts rule on this approach, however, there will be some uncertainty about its viability.

The assumption that the states and many of their stakeholders will propose cap and trade under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act has led to a number of questions around program design features, such as whether the Act allows offsets, or trading across listed categories of sources and whether the existing regional cap-and-trade program designs would be acceptable to EPA under section 111(d). Even though many of these issues are questions of first impression and therefore cannot be answered with absolute certainty, this paper explores the arguments for and against specific cap-and-trade design features in the context of section 111, including the implications for existing and planned regional cap-and-trade programs.

Findings

This working paper examines the process for establishing performance standards covering existing power plants and industrial facilities in the United States and finds:

Congress granted the EPA and the states considerable flexibility in determining how to cover existing power plants and industrial facilities under section 111 of the Clean Air Act.
After lengthy collaboration with stakeholders, twenty-three states designed and many implemented flexible, marketbased emissions-trading mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants and industrial facilities.
The discretion afforded to states under the Clean Air Act should permit them to propose a variety of policy mechanisms, including cap and trade.
The regional cap-and-trade designs present specific opportunities and challenges when reconciling the designs with section 111 of the act, including the following:
- Offsets cannot be used to meet federal minimum reductions but may be allowed above and beyond federal minimums.
- Trading between regulated categories of sources depends on the EPA’s interpretation of the act.
- Borrowing and safety valve mechanisms are problematic unless they can be designed to ensure minimum reductions within federal time frames.

Bottom Line on Emerging Solar Metering Policies

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:25:16 -0500

Inflexible metering procedures limit the types of customers who can invest in solar electric power, and the scale of systems. New policies for virtual net metering, community solar, and meter aggregation can make solar more economical and accessible.

Virtual Net Metering

What is virtual net metering (VNM)?

Net metering allows utility customers with on-site renewable electricity generating systems to receive credits for excess electricity that is sent to the grid and to later use those credits to offset their electricity bill, or receive outright payment for them.1 In contrast, virtual net metering (VNM) allows multiple customers (with their own discrete meters) to share the net metered credits from a system without rewiring to physically link their meters to the system. Specific rules vary by state, and even by utility. Virtual net metering policies are currently most often available to owners and/or operators of multi-tenant buildings, or to a group of buildings within a small contiguous geographic boundary. Typically, the system must located “behind” (on customer side of) the meter of at least one of the utility customers credited and/or the customers credited must be located within the same facility where the system is installed.

For example, a low-income housing building owner could install a solar PV system where the power flows through a single meter and feeds directly back into the grid. The utility would allocate the credits for the kilowatt-hours received to each tenant’s individual utility account based on a pre-agreed percentage sharing scheme. While VNM customers sharing an electricity generation source do need to be in the same utility territory, they do not need to be under the same rate schedule in most states.

Which states allow for virtual net metering?

California
Colorado
Delaware
Maine
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Vermont

How does virtual net metering facilitate new customer participation?

Currently, virtual net metering is most often available for occupants of multi-tenant buildings, low-income housing, municipal buildings, and to groups of buildings in contiguous proximity to the solar installation. Without VNM, separate tenants with a solar investment on their building’s roof would each have to be physically connected to the system to receive net metered credits on their separate utility bills. This is cost-prohibitive and logistically difficult.

What is “community solar”?

Community solar programs and policies facilitate joint ownership or sponsorship of a generating system, and sharing of the benefits even when the power itself cannot be physically shared. It can make solar accessible to owners of property that cannot accommodate a solar PV array and those prohibited from entering into legal ownership structures typically used for solar, among others.

Policies and incentives vary from state to state, thus there is no one standard community solar model. According to a publication of the National Renewable Energy Lab, three project models are currently the most common:

Utility-Sponsored Model: a utility owns or operates a project that is open to voluntary ratepayer participation;
- United Power, an electric co-op in Colorado, offers the option to lease panels at its Sol Partners Cooperative Solar Farm for a fixed upfront fee. In return, payment for the kilowatt-hour (kWh) production is credited to their account at a “community solar” rate higher than the retail rate.
Special Purpose Entity (SPE) Model: individual investors join in a business enterprise to develop a community solar project;
- In Maryland, a group of investors formed the University Park Community Solar LLC to invest jointly in a system located on the roof of a local church. Owners share the revenues from power sales to the church, as well as from incentives.
Non-Profit “Buy a Brick” Model: donors contribute to a community installation owned by a charitable non-profit corporation. [Donations may be tax deductible, but there are no financial benefits shared, and in fact this does not require special policy.]
- The East Portland Community Center project was funded by local businesses through the “Solar 4R Schools” program. The non-profit program installs solar systems and uses them to educate communities about solar power.

Community solar models often aim to reduce the high upfront costs of solar, sometimes allowing participants buy into the program’s installation(s) monthly or per kWh. Their contribution then entitles them to receive payments for the system’s production, and can fix the price for a portion of their bill to protect against future price increases.

Where is community solar allowed?

The following states allow at least one of the community solar models listed above:

Arizona
California
Colorado
Delaware
Florida
Illinois
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Utah
Washington

Meter Aggregation

What is “meter aggregation”

Meter aggregation allows for allocation of the credits from a solar electric system to meters in buildings separate from where the actual power is produced, if they are on the same customer’s utility account. It is usually reserved for buildings located in a tight geographical boundary, either adjacent to one another or located no more than a few miles from one another. It can be done physically, which may require additional equipment, or virtually.

Often, net metering policies limit the amount of power that a customer can sell back to the grid to less than a set percentage of their annual consumption. The benefit of meter aggregation is that several facilities’ metered annual consumption is aggregated; thus the owner can install a larger system and sell more power back. Meter aggregation is often used in agricultural operations or business campuses where there are multiple separate facilities with the same owner.

Summary

In summary, net metering, virtual net metering, community solar, and meter aggregation can be characterized as follows:

Net metering: allocation of benefits to one customer via one meter;
Virtual net metering: allocation of net metered energy credits denoted in kWh to multiple customers with separate meters, often system located on their site or nearby;
Community solar: allocation of benefits across meters of multiple customers who may or may not be near and/or own some part of the generating system, and
Meter aggregation: allocation of system benefits to multiple meters of one customer.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States Using Existing Federal Authorities and State Action

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:16:58 -0400

Click here to explore emissions, reduction scenarios, and agency actions with our interactive tool.

WRI’s analysis of potential greenhouse gas emissions reductions by federal and state governments suggests a range of potential outcomes is possible. On the federal level, whether reductions are achieved at the lower end or upper end of the range shown in Figure 1 depends on the extent to which the Obama Administration and subsequent administrations use existing regulatory authority to go after reductions shown to be technically possible in the literature. On the state level, whether reductions are realized at the lower or upper end of the range projected in Figure 2 depends similarly on the continued resolve by governors and legislative leaders in the 25 states counted as having taken actions. The findings set out here represent an assessment of what is possible given available inputs for some key sectors. It does not include potential emissions reductions achievable through federal policies to reduce vehicle miles traveled, management of agricultural lands and forests, new federal investments in areas such as energy efficiency, renewable energy infrastructure, or other areas that could yield reductions, nor new federal legislation of any kind. Key findings are summarized below.

Figure 1: Projected U.S. Emissions under Different Federal Regulatory Scenarios

Figure 2: Projected U.S. Emissions under Different Federal Regulatory Scenarios and State Scenarios

If federal agencies and states pursue the path of “go getters” and move strongly to achieve the reductions published literature suggests are technically feasible in the sectors analyzed, the U.S. could achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, which approach but fall short of President Obama’s Copenhagen pledge to reduce emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
If, however, federal agencies fail to capitalize on available reduction opportunities and states fall short on their announced plans to reduce emissions, middleof- the-road or lackluster reductions will result, falling far short of the 17 percent reduction by 2020 goal.
Longer-term reductions post-2020 are less certain under all analyzed scenarios, primarily due to uncertainty about how quickly aging power plants will be replaced and the transportation sector can be transformed. Regulatory policies can drive technology, but without knowing what technological advances will happen and when, it is difficult to project the tightening of regulatory standards.
All scenarios under current federal authority and announced state plans show the United States far off the pace of reductions the IPCC suggests are necessary by mid-century to prevent average global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius.
While the results of the analysis suggest that existing federal regulatory tools can be used effectively to reduce emissions alongside state actions, it is clear that the federal government and states will need to achieve reductions beyond those identified in even the most ambitious regulatory scenario if the United States is to meet its Copenhagen commitment. Some of these reductions might be found in regulatory policies not analyzed here, such as agricultural and forest lands management (approximately 7 percent of the U.S. inventory) or transportation planning (approximately 27 percent). Implementation of other environmental policies that encourage high-emitting sectors to modernize could also yield more reductions, such as mercury, sulfur dioxide, ozone and ash disposal regulations affecting aging coal plants.
Among the existing federal regulatory tools most useful to achieve reductions are the mobile source and New Source Performance Standard provisions of the Clean Air Act, as well as the existing authority under Title VI of the Act to reduce hydrofluorocarbons. The vehicle fuel efficiency authority of the Department of Transportation is also important. State action that contributes reductions beyond federal regulatory policies will likewise be essential to meeting reduction goals.
The analysis shows that a significant portion of the reductions can be achieved in non-energy emissions. It is expected that these non-energy reductions can be accomplished without energy price increases.
It is likely that the U.S. Congress and states will need to step up to augment existing regulatory tools, especially if the United States is to gear up to reduce emissions by the approximately 80 to 95 percent needed by 2050 to ward off the most deleterious effects of climate change.

Video Summary

What's Blocking the Sun? Solar Photovoltaics for the U.S. Commercial Market

Maggie Barron — Wed, 05 May 2010 09:41:28 -0400

Executive Summary

The commercial sector of the U.S. economy is in a unique position to drive growth in the solar photovoltaic (PV) market, widening it geographically as well as increasing its total size. The retailers, multinational companies, and small businesses that occupy commercial real estate in the United States make up 36 percent of national electricity consumption. The roof print of these businesses is vast and suitable for installing solar PV at scale. These potential investors are increasing their attention to the risks of climate change and seeking investment solutions that can meet their growing power demands as well as their sustainability mandates. However, more than 90 percent of commercial PV capacity installed is concentrated in only five states. Beyond pioneers in a few key states, why have more businesses not found solar PV to be the solution? Over the past year, our team interviewed members of WRI’s Climate and Business Projects in order to understand the experiences of businesses exploring or participating in solar PV markets; those interviews inform this working paper.

This paper provides a snapshot of the current investment environment for solar PV in the United States from the commercial end user’s point of view. The current installation trends, policy landscape, and economics are described in detail. Solar PV installations are concentrated in states with strong financial incentives and no regulatory barriers to distributed generation. Commercial investments have fared worse than the residential market during the economic downturn of the past two years. The policy landscape has improved since 2008, but multiple regulatory barriers remain at the state level and federal support is less certain after 2010.

An analysis of the hurdles remaining for solar PV finds that they are both economic and regulatory. The economics of a PV system is modeled in detail for four U.S. states, showing the potential impact of lower module costs as well as state and federal policies on the levelized cost of solar power. PV has not yet reached cost parity with traditional power generation without a price on carbon, but its costs are expected to continue to decline and to eventually reach grid parity. The evolution of new business models and support policies is needed to stimulate deployment and accelerate this transition. Solutions are discussed that have the potential to “unblock” investment in this sector, including regulatory reform, demand aggregation, new financing mechanisms and public R&D investment.

With the objective of expanding the commercial market for solar PV, we make 18 strategic recommendations for solar industry members, commercial energy end users, and policy makers. Recognizing that the PV industry is in a highly dynamic phase and that these are only a few of the solutions that could put it on a sustainable path to grid parity, we conclude with questions for further research. At the end of this paper, there is a survey containing three sets of key questions, each targeted to different stakeholders.

WRI Publications Feed: U.S. State & Regional Climate Change Policy

Clearing the Air: Reducing Upstream Greenhouse Gas Emissions from U.S. Natural Gas Systems

Key Findings

Can the U.S. Get There from Here? Using Existing Federal Laws and State Action to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Summary

Key Findings

Interactive Graphic

Embed this graphic on your site.

Presentation

Sea-Level Rise and its Impact on Florida

Fact Sheet: U.S. Electricity Markets Increasingly Favor Alternatives to Coal

Midwest Manufacturing Snapshot: Energy Use and Efficiency Policies

Summary

Read More

Introduction

More than Meets the Eye: The Social Cost of Carbon in U.S. Climate Policy, in Plain English

What’s Ahead for Power Plants & Industry? Using the Clean Air Act to Reduce GHGs, Building on Regional Programs

Executive Summary

Findings

Bottom Line on Emerging Solar Metering Policies

Virtual Net Metering

Meter Aggregation

Summary

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States Using Existing Federal Authorities and State Action

Video Summary

What's Blocking the Sun? Solar Photovoltaics for the U.S. Commercial Market

Executive Summary