Menu

Blog

Insights from Our Experts
Filter

In a Time of Transition, Regulators Can Drive Cutting-Edge Cost Allocation Reform

By Jim Lazar, Mark LeBel
The need for change in how we measure the cost of providing electric service by customer class is obvious to any attentive observer of the dramatic changes now underway in the electric utility industry. Electric Cost Allocation for a New Era, the manual RAP published at the beginning of 2020, provides detailed guidance on the preparation of embedded and marginal ... Read More

低碳电力体系下配电系统运营商面临的挑战

By Philip Baker
向清洁能源的转变正在改变电力系统的性质。电气化程度不断提高，更积极的消费者以及消纳更多风能和太阳能的需求。传统消费者只能被动的消费电，而现代消费者越来越积极，能买卖能源服务、发电、而且调整行为为了支持电网的可靠性、低碳性和经济性。这些趋势正在�... Read More

Agricultural demand-side management needs multi-sectoral interventions

By Mahesh Patankar, Frederick Weston, Robert Lieberman
Cheap agricultural electricity has bedevilled the Indian power sector for decades, but enhanced agricultural demand-side management won’t solve the problem alone Virtually everyone with a working knowledge of the Indian power sector will agree that one of the sector’s biggest problems is the very inexpensive (way below average cost) electricity supplied to a... Read More

Pushing water uphill: Putting power behind the renovation wave

By Louise Sunderland
For some time now I have been struck by the irony of the European Commission’s chosen name for its building renovation policy package, the “renovation wave,” given that increasing the rate of renovation has been like pushing water uphill. Currently, we renovate only around 1% of the European building stock each year to reduce energy use. This stubbornly ... Read More

How we reduced our energy bills by 60%

By Jan Rosenow
A year ago, I announced that we had replaced our six-year-old, reliable gas boiler with an air source heat pump. “Ripping out a perfectly well functioning gas boiler before the end of its natural life and replacing it with a heat pump is misguided. It won’t reduce much carbon,” I was told. “Let’s find out,” I thought, and estimated the carbon savi... Read More

Connecting Cities to the PUC Process

By David Farnsworth
As municipal policymakers take increasingly active roles in moving their cities through the energy transition, they need to know their way around their states’ utility regulatory landscape. RAP and our partners at the Building Electrification Initiative (BEI) tackled this topic recently, inviting representatives of both city governments and state utility commis... Read More

Extra Credit: Maximizing the Benefits of Solar in Schools

By Dara Torre, Janine Migden-Ostrander
While across the country America’s schools have been shuttered this spring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sun continues to shine. More than 1,000 megawatts of installed solar capacity from nearly 5,500 K-12 school buildings continues to generate clean energy and cost savings. With decreased electricity consumption from closures, sizable amounts of so... Read More

China’s Watchdog for State-Owned Enterprises Grapples With Coal-Fired Generation

By Max Dupuy
The future of China’s power sector, which accounts for about a quarter of the world’s annual consumption of coal and a still-growing fleet of coal-fired generation units, is one of the central questions for world climate policy. Within China, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Agency have been coordinating a power sector re... Read More

Power Sector Transformation and Economic Recovery in China

By Richard Sedano
The good news is that coal is struggling around much of the world because the business case for coal-fired power is diminishing year by year. In competitive procurements around the globe, portfolios of clean energy — wind and solar especially — are winning, and winning big. This is happening despite efforts from coal generating companies to advocate policymak... Read More

Transition to just

By Louise Sunderland
The global experience with the coronavirus crisis is shining light on the precariousness of everyday life for low-income and vulnerable households. As we are forced to stay at home, higher household energy bills put further pressure on already stretched household budgets. The pandemic is also reminding us that good outcomes for all rely to a great extent on good ... Read More

The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP)® is an independent, non-partisan, non-governmental organization dedicated to accelerating the transition to a clean, reliable, and efficient energy future.