Electricity
Achieving Low-Cost Solar PV: Industry Workshop Recommendations for Near-Term Balance-of-System Cost Reductions
This report synthesizes the specific design strategies and technical and process best practices that emerged from RMI’s June 2010 “Solar PV Balance of System” design charrette. BoS costs—all the upfront costs associated with a PV system except the module—account for over half of PV system cost and pose a barrier…
Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the U.S. Efficiency Opportunity
It is commonly known that energy efficiency implementation has not achieved its technical or economically feasible potential in the United States, and many have attempted to quantify how much electricity the U.S. can save in the future. However, few have compared states to each other to determine why some states…
Climate: Eight Convenient Truths
In this article from Roll Call, Amory Lovins provides eight arguments for Congress to pass climate change legislation. He argues that protecting the climate is profitable and describes steps that can be taken to promote energy efficiency and save fossil fuels.
Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?
This semitechnical article, summarizing a detailed and documented technical paper (see “The Nuclear Illusion” (2008)), compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors. It explains why soaring taxpayer subsidies haven’t…
“New Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story”
The dominant type of new nuclear power plant, light-water reactors (LWRs), proved unfinanceable in the robust 2005–2008 capital market, despite new U.S. subsidies approaching or exceeding their total construction cost. New LWRs are now so costly and slow that they save 2–20× less carbon, 20–40× slower, than micropower and efficient…
