Each week, I review the papers, studies, reports, and briefings posted over at the RFF Library Blog.
Climate-Informed Decisions: The Capital Investment Plan as a Mechanism for Lowering Carbon Emissions
Global trajectories for reducing carbon emissions depend on the local adoption of alternatives to conventional energy sources, technologies, and urban development. Yet, decisions on which type of capital investments to make, made by local governments as part of the normal budget cycle, typically do not incorporate climate considerations. Furthermore, current academic and professional literature specific to climate change draws attention to decision-making tools that would require access to technical expertise, data, and financial support that may not be practical for cities in low- and middle-income countries. Arguably, the methodologies most able to effect this transformation will be those that are convenient and affordable to administer, and that offer straight-forward low carbon alternatives to traditional forms of infrastructure investment. - via World Bank / by Corbett Grainger, Fan Zhang, and Andrew Schreiber
Tracking the Sun VIII: The Installed Price of Residential and Non-Residential Photovoltaic Systems in the United States
[Utility Dive] The national average installed cost of residential solar fell 9% from 2013 to 2014, and 8% in the first half of 2015, a pace similar to price declines when module prices were also plummeting, according to “Tracking the Sun VIII,” the annual survey of U.S. photovoltaic solar prices from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). - via Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Fracking on University of Texas Lands: The Environmental Effects of Hydraulic Fracturing on Land Owned by the University of Texas System
[Austin Statesman-American] The hydraulic fracturing boom on University of Texas System lands in West Texas has polluted soil, groundwater and air, according to a report [attached] to be released Tuesday by an environmental group and a think tank. - via Frontier Group and Environment Texas / by Jeff Inglis and Luke Metzger
Electricity Dispatching with Health Considerations
Integrating accurate air quality modeling with decision making is hampered by complex atmospheric physics and chemistry and its coupling with atmospheric transport. Existing approaches to model the physics and chemistry accurately lead to significant computational burdens in computing the response of atmospheric concentrations to changes in emissions profiles. By integrating a reduced form of a fully coupled atmospheric model within a unit commitment optimization model, we allow, for the first time to our knowledge, a fully dynamical approach toward electricity planning that accurately and rapidly minimizes both cost and health impacts. - via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Combustion of Available Fossil Fuel Resources Sufficient to Eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet
[Dot Earth] A new analysis of Antarctica’s vast ice sheet in a world heated by unabated greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning comes to a stark, if unsurprising, conclusion: Burn it all, lose it all. - via Science Advances (Sep 11, 2015, v1, n8, e1500589; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1500589) / by Ricarda Winkelmann, et al.
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