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Incisive commentary from RAP experts
RAP experts keep their finger on the pulse of the energy sector and provide timely analysis of topics impacting stakeholders TODAY.
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November 10, 2015
Bring Your Economy into the 21st Century: Tackling CO2 with Cap-and-Invest
As they consider how to comply with EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), many states are reaching a growing consensus that mass-based programs with regional trading—“cap-and-trade”—could drive compliance costs down. A related mass-based approach—one with… View Summary +
December 8, 2015
Integrating Renewable Energy into Power Systems in China: The Importance of Good Planning
Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. electricity industry experienced a wrenching transformation from a sector characterized by high growth to one focused on reliability, economic efficiency, and environmental performance. The contemporary building blocks of electricity planning in the United… View Summary +
February 1, 2016
Recognizing Early Action Under the Clean Power Plan
- Ken Colburn
Data suggest that the electric power sector’s long march toward decarbonization was already well underway before the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) rulemaking, let alone the final rule’s compliance period, which doesn’t begin until… View Summary +
March 2, 2016
Long Live the Duck — and May He Fly Flat
- Jim Lazar
Utilities and grid operators from Germany to Hawaii have expressed concern about their ability to maintain reliable service as increasing amounts of variable renewable energy–primarily wind and solar–are added to a grid that has historically consisted overwhelmingly of… View Summary +
April 14, 2016
It’s Aready Happening: New EIA Numbers Show a Utility Sector in Transformation
- John Shenot
My colleague David Littell recently wrote about the inexorable shift of the US power sector toward cleaner sources of electric energy, noting that the cost of renewables has been dropping, energy efficiency continues to grow, and storage… View Summary +
July 7, 2016
Hot Showers and Cool Rides: Wind, Sun, and the Duck Curve
- Jim Lazar
As we look out over the power sector transformation that is unmistakably upon us, there are those who warn of the sacrifices, the risks, and the costs that could come with more and more intermittent electricity generation—wind… View Summary +
February 15, 2013
Resource Planning
The resources below are offered as part of our Complying with Environmental Regulations Knowledge Management Series. These papers provide perspectives on utility resource planning and ongoing portfolio management. Addressing the Effects of Environmental Regulations:… View Summary +
April 3, 2014
Tackling 111(d): Where to Begin?
- Ken Colburn
Lately, it seems as if everyone associated with the power sector or an environmental organization is opining on whether EPA will allow this approach or that mechanism to count toward compliance in its proposal to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions… View Summary +
May 15, 2014
Tackling 111(d): Could Regional Approaches Rule?
- Ken Colburn
States have a long history of collaborating to achieve energy and environmental goals at lower cost and with greater efficiency than they could achieve alone. Collaborating to implement EPA’s forthcoming 111(d) rule may once again offer across-the-board… View Summary +
July 9, 2014
Tackling 111(d): The Proposed Rule is Out, Now What?
- Ken Colburn
June 18th— the date EPA published its proposed rule to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing power plants under section 111(d) of the federal Clean Air Act in the Federal Register—marked the beginning of a new… View Summary +