Number of results to display per page
Search Results
12. Tectonic Shifts in the U.S. Electricity Sector
- Author:
- Dave Grossman (Rapporteur), Roger Ballentine, and Andy Karsner
- Publication Date:
- 12-2014
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- The U.S. electricity sector is nearing an historic inflection point. A confluence of mutually-reinforcing factors is putting unprecedented pressure on the century-old model of monopolistic supply of electrons at approved rates of return, flowing from central generation stations to end-users. Cleaner energy generation technologies continue to improve, are getting less expensive, and are being deployed at an accelerating rate. Innovations in the financial markets and in business models are spurring cleaner energy deployment and increasing competition for providing customers with energy services. A new generation of customers accustomed to transparency, control, and choice in all aspects of their consumption of goods and services is increasingly expecting the same from energy providers. Information technologies that have enabled rapid change in communications and entertainment are now starting to be applied to energy. And public policies are beginning to enable, if not encourage, fundamental changes in how electricity is generated and provided. The current utility model is colliding with this confluence of factors, leading to a system in conflict, with the old system trying to accommodate more irregular dispatch, customer or third-party owned distributed generation, a range of social equity issues, and societal desires for a stable, clean, interactive, and hardened system. While part of the answer to these challenges may lie in a reformulation of the regulated utility business model, others believe that a more fundamental re-ordering of how energy is produced, delivered, managed, and owned is in the offing. This vision of a re-ordered, more diverse, more competitive, and more integrated electricity system could be thought of as “Clean tech 3.0”. This vision involves better systems (not just better devices), smart and connected devices of all sorts, a dynamic and flexible two way grid, more active and involved consumers, and business models that do not rely on subsidies. It also envisions clean energy not just as a commodity but as a way to provide value to customers (e.g., comfort, mobility, health). Achieving Clean tech 3.0 will require society to grapple with some tough equity and policy challenges, including whether to keep and/or adapt the traditional regulatory compact, how to treat low-income consumers and consumers not generating their own power, and which policies and institutions should be created, reformed, or eliminated to create the proper enabling environment for change. The electricity sector is already starting to witness the rise of a class of customers empowered by technological advances to start to re-think their relationship to energy. These empowered customers have social needs and practical preferences for which they are willing to pay, including price certainty, reliability, resilience, and cleanness. The industry is thus entering a new era that focuses less on selling electrons than on offering consumers valuable services. The path, however, is not without obstacles. The role for traditional utilities in this customer-focused market is unclear; such a focus has not historically been part of their business and is not one of their strengths, and the utilities have been operating in a sector unaccustomed to significant change. Clean energy companies, too, can find it challenging to develop new profitable business models. Even the energy efficiency industry, which offers the fastest and lowest cost pathway to a cleaner energy future, may struggle to sell and scale energy efficiency unless market structures and enabling policies can align with improving technologies to realize the full value proposition of smarter energy delivery and consumption. Regulators have been struggling to figure out how to address the suite of changes facing the electricity sector as well. Current physical and policy infrastructures do not seem to be up to the task. There appear to be three interdependent tectonic plates in motion – long term utility generation planning, mid-term smart grid design, and very near-term device and software design and deployment – that are not aligned, are moving at dangerously different speeds, and are not properly engaging with each other on a regular basis. Regulatory models must be devised that are more flexible, adaptive, and open to rapid advances in technology. There are some places now, such as Hawaii and New York, where regulatory innovation is occurring to try to get ahead of some of these issues. While the challenge of rethinking utility regulatory models falls largely in the hands of state policy makers, the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed rule for carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, issued under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, might have profound implications for how state policies and markets will impact energy efficiency and clean energy. The draft rule would set 2030 emissions goals for states and then give states flexibility on how to meet those goals. The draft 111(d) rule is complex, and a variety of concerns have been raised about it. It is not known how the final rule will be modified to address concerns and comments, nor how the almost certain litigation will be resolved. At the very least, the draft rule is already spurring conversations in every state that have not been had to this point at the level and scale necessary, forcing states to think about how emissions reductions will be achieved, what their energy mix will be, what role clean energy will play, and how state policies and market structures need to change in the years ahead. Those conversations can help contribute to broader discussions about creating a clear and compelling vision of the near-future state of U.S. clean energy. Those discussions need to include a range of actors, including the many regulators and utility executives who think the U.S. is still in Clean tech 1.0 and does not need to go anywhere else. There is a need to figure out how to bring those people along and help them start to understand the speed and nature of the changes that are occurring.
- Political Geography:
- United States
13. Task Force Report on Streamlining and Consolidating Congressional Oversight of the US Department of Homeland Security
- Publication Date:
- 09-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Congressional leaders are best able to judge what committee should have jurisdiction over this department and its duties. But we believe that Congress does have the obligation to choose one in the House and one in the Senate, and that this committee should be a permanent standing committee with a nonpartisan staff.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Biosecurity, Governance, Law, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- United States
14. Responding to Change: The New World of Oil and Gas
- Author:
- Bill White(Chair) and Leonard Coburn(Rapporteur)
- Publication Date:
- 09-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- Improved technology has led to enhanced oil and gas productivity at lower cost and significant production increases in the United States and Canada, dramatically changing energy perspectives. The shift from energy scarcity toward abundance is requiring new energy policies. The potential for the United States to become a net exporter of oil and gas changes American views of energy dependency. Shifts in global energy demand growth from developed to less developed countries, and especially to the Asia-Pacific region, require understanding of changing global energy trade. American energy will flow to markets where scarcity is the largest. Canada and the United States are reaping the benefits of this new world of oil and gas. Mexico will lag behind unless it addresses its chronic problems. Without reform, Mexico could become a net importer of all its hydrocarbons, a fundamental change from its current status. Responding to these changes will require knowledge, foresight, and strategies that are bold and comprehensive.
- Topic:
- Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, Oil, and Natural Resources
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Canada, and Mexico
15. The Future of the U.S. Electricity Sector
- Author:
- Bill Dickenson (Co-Chair), Phil Sharp (Co-Chair), and Dave Grossman (Rapporteur)
- Publication Date:
- 09-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- The future of the U.S. electricity sector is hard to foresee – and it is never wise to overpay one's fortune tellers – but there appear to be some key trends and technologies that may reshape future electricity markets and determine the innovativeness, resilience, security, and global competitiveness of the sector. Discussions of the sector's past, present, and future formed the heart of the 2013 Aspen Institute Energy Policy Forum. This report summarizes and organizes some of the key insights from those discussions.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, Markets, and Natural Resources
- Political Geography:
- United States
16. A Northern Tiger? Canada's Economic and Fiscal Renaissance and its Implications for the United States
- Author:
- Jeremy A. Leonard
- Publication Date:
- 03-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- As the United States struggles to find a politically acceptable and economically sensible solution to its severe fiscal crisis, hidden in plain sight just North of the 49th parallel is an example that ought to be considered more carefully. Quietly, but steadily, under governments of all political stripes, Canada has profoundly re-structured its economy, gotten its fiscal house in order, created a competitive business tax environment, and come into its own as a strong economic player in North America and beyond.
- Topic:
- Debt, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Bilateral Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States and Canada
17. Reinventing Health Care
- Author:
- Basit Chaudhry deBronkart, Carole Roan Gresenz, Joseph Hutter, Anjali Jain, Brent C. James, Shawn Martin, Lewis Mattison, Daniel L. Newton, Anthony Nguyen, Brent Parton, Kavita Patel, and Steven Weinberger
- Publication Date:
- 03-2012
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- In many respects, the U.S. health care system is breathtakingly innovative. It produces new technology, medical procedures, and scientific knowledge at a dazzling speed, enabling patient store cover from diseases and injuries once thought incurable or untreatable. As a consequence, the U.S. has one of the highest survival rates for cancers, excels at acute and trauma care, and has produced half of the world's Nobel laureates.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology and Health Care Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States
18. Changing Currents: Turbulence for the Electricity Industry?
- Author:
- Phil Sharp
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- The question is never whether the United States has an energy policy. It has dozens. They come with various decision-makers at overlapping levels of authority, ample numbers of stakeholders, and generally lots of confusing and often contradictory signals.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- United States
19. Global Energy Markets in a Time of Political Change
- Author:
- Bill White
- Publication Date:
- 10-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- A shift in relative energy consumption among regions and the development of new, unconventional supplies will be the most significant changes over the next twenty years. The dominant fuels in the world energy market until 2030 will continue to be hydrocarbons — oil, coal, and natural gas. Major shifts will occur, however, among the three fuels, among regions and in their supply. Globally, oil will continue to be the most widely used fuel as it supplies more than 90 percent of the energy for transportation. Coal, now the dominant fuel used for electric power generation, will lose ground to natural gas, a less carbon-intensive hydrocarbon. Natural gas will become the second largest overall supplier and well positioned to replace coal as the leading supplier for electric power. Developing countries will lead the way in overall energy growth, with Chinese and Indian energy demand growing fastest. Energy demand in developed countries will remain flat. For the United States, growth in gas shale and oil shale are likely to be “game changers,” altering the supply picture dramatically.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Markets, Political Economy, and Natural Resources
- Political Geography:
- United States, China, and India
20. Race, Crime, and Punishment: Breaking the Connection in America
- Author:
- Keith O. Lawrence (ed)
- Publication Date:
- 05-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Aspen Institute
- Abstract:
- More than 2.3 million people in america are in jail or prison.sixty percent are african american and Latino.Of all the statistics portraying racial inequity in our country, this is the most alarming: it indicates the failure of so many of our society's institutions; it predicts dire consequences for millions of children and families of color who are already at socioeconomic disadvantage; and it challenges the very definition of our democracy.
- Topic:
- Crime, Race, and Social Stratification
- Political Geography:
- United States and America