Market Forces

Getting 100% Clear on 100% Clean

By / Bio / Published: August 2, 2019

This post, authored by Steve Capanna, Director, U.S. Climate Policy & Analysis, originally appeared on EDF’s Climate-411 blog

Scientists agree that to maximize our chances of averting the worst impacts of climate change, we must stop adding climate pollution to the atmosphere by soon after mid-century. As one of the world’s most advanced economies, the U.S. must reach that goal no later than 2050 – which means transitioning to a 100% clean economy. If this sounds like an ambitious goal, that’s because it is. But it is also what’s needed to protect our economy, our health and our kids’ future.

Why a 100% Clean Economy?

For decades, scientists have warned that catastrophic climate change will result from continued unchecked greenhouse gas emissions. And for decades, our emissions have continued to grow.

Last fall, a Special Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body made up of leading scientists from around the world and responsible for assessing the science related to climate change, found that to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, it will be necessary for the world to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions (adding no more pollution to the atmosphere than we can remove) by soon after midcentury. We also need to achieve deep reductions in other greenhouse gas pollutants like methane. Continued delay will only deepen the challenge, and require us to reduce our emissions even more rapidly.

We’re already seeing the impacts of climate change in communities across the country from record flooding, devastating wildfires, scorching heat waves, and bigger and more damaging storms. Although the impacts are local, climate change is a global problem – which is why the IPCC outlined a global goal. But there are several reasons why the U.S. should strive for achieving a 100% clean economy as soon as possible.

First, the U.S. is the second largest emitter in the world, behind only China. Reaching net-zero emissions globally will only be possible with U.S. leadership. Second, over our history, the U.S. is responsible for by far the most emissions of any other country, more than 85% above China, the second biggest emitter. (Check out this Carbon Brief animation to see the relative emissions contributions of top emitting countries since 1750.) The U.S. has played a major role in creating this problem – we must also play a major role in the solution.

Furthermore, tackling the climate challenge is also just good business. By transitioning as rapidly as we can to 100% clean energy across our economy – including the power sector as well as transportation and industry – we will unleash the power of American innovation to develop cheaper, more efficient clean energy technologies. As global momentum on climate action continues to build, clean energy manufacturing will be an increasingly important industry. Innovative solutions developed by American entrepreneurs can be deployed around the world, helping lower the costs of global emissions reductions while strengthening American industries.

What Exactly Does 100% Clean Mean?

As we substitute zero carbon energy sources like wind and solar for fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, we reduce emissions. We’ve made a lot of progress on this front: according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, from 2007-2017, renewable electricity generation more than doubled, and wind and solar generation went from less than 1% of our electricity mix to more than 8%. But we can – and must – do a lot more.

Other sectors of the economy, however, such as air travel, or steel, cement and chemicals manufacturing, are very likely to be difficult and expensive to decarbonize with the technologies we have available or are developing today.

That’s where carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDRs) can play an important role. In comparison to technologies like solar or wind, which generate carbon-free energy, CDRs actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As long as we remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as we put into it, we’ll have achieved net-zero emissions – or a 100% clean energy economy.

There are many different types of CDRs, from natural approaches like increasing the amount of forest land and adopting sustainable farming practices, to technologies like direct air capture (DAC) that can suck pollution directly out of the air and store it underground or reuse it in products like fuel, fertilizer, or concrete.

How Do We Do It?

That’s a good question. We know that we are going to need to rapidly shift to cleaner sources of generation in the electricity sector, expand the use of clean electricity in sectors across the economy, advance energy efficiency – and also remove carbon from the atmosphere. The strategies we’ll need to pursue will vary by sector, and given the rapid pace of technology development over the last several years, it’s hard to know which zero-carbon technologies will end up being the most cost-competitive and easy to scale by 2050.

That’s why it’s important that the 100% clean economy goal is focused squarely on environmental results – cutting the pollution that causes climate change without specifying specific technology solutions. This allows for maximum opportunities to deploy a portfolio of technologies and approaches while providing incentives to innovators to find new effective and efficient low-, no-, and negative-emission technologies.

We can achieve this goal, but it will require policies that set declining limits on greenhouse gas emissions; account for the real cost of that pollution; stimulate the research, development and deployment of innovative technologies; and incentivize rapid action, especially in the sectors of the economy that look most challenging to decarbonize.

Climate change is an urgent problem that demands an urgent solution. The time is now to commit to a 100% clean economy that will be cleaner, safer, and more prosperous for all Americans.

Posted in emissions, Politics / Leave a comment

Not all fossil fuel subsidies are created equal, all are bad for the planet

By / Bio / Published: June 13, 2019

This is part two of a five-part series exploring “Policy Design for the Anthropocene,” based on a recent Nature Sustainability Perspective. The first post explored the intersection of policy and politics in the development of instruments to help humans and systems adapt to the changing planet.

A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper made headlines by revealing that the world is subsidizing fossil fuels to the tune of $5 trillion a year. Every one of these dollars is a step backward for the climate. That much is clear.

Instead of subsidizing fossil emissions, each ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted should be appropriately priced. That’s also where it’s important to dig into the numbers.

It’s tempting to go with the $5 trillion figure, as it suggests a simple remedy: remove the subsidies. At one level, that is precisely the right message. But the details matter, and they go well beyond the semantics of what it means to subsidize something.

Direct subsidies are large

The actual, direct subsidies—money flowing directly from governments to fossil fuel companies and users—are “only” around $300 billion per year. That is still a huge number, and it may well be an underestimate at that. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2014, which took a closer look at fossil subsidies than reports since, put the number closer to around $500 billion; a 2015 World Bank paper provided more detailed methodologies and a range of between $500 billion and $2 trillion.

What all these estimates have in common is that they stick to a tight definition of a subsidy:

Subsidy (noun, \ ˈsəb-sə-dē \)

“a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public,” per  Merriam-Webster.

These taxpayer-funded giveaways are not only not “advantageous to the public,” they also ignore the enormous now-socialized costs each ton of CO2 emitted causes over its lifetime in the atmosphere. (Each ton emitted today stays in the atmosphere for dozens to hundreds of years.)

The direct subsidies also come in various shapes and forms—from some countries keeping the cost of gasoline artificially low, to a $1 billion tax credit for “refined coal” in the United States.

Indirect subsidies are significantly larger

The vast majority of the IMF’s total $5 trillion figure is the unpriced socialized cost of each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Each ton, the IMF estimates conservatively, causes about $40 in damages over its lifetime in today’s dollars.

Depending on one’s definition of a subsidy, this may well qualify. It’s a grant from the public to fossil fuel producers and users—something the public pays for in lives, livelihoods and other unpriced consequences of unmitigated climate change.

The remedy here is very different than removing direct government subsidies. It’s to price each ton of CO2 emitted for less to be emitted. The principle couldn’t be simpler: “When something costs more, people buy less of it,” as Bill Nye imbued memorably on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight recently.

 

https://twitter.com/GernotWagner/status/1128444583229186048

All that goes well beyond semantics of what it means to subsidize. One policy is to remove a tax loophole or another kind of subsidy, the other is to introduce a carbon price. The politics here are very different.

Unpriced climate risks might be much larger still

The $5 trillion figure also hides something else. By using a $40-per-ton figure, the IMF focuses on a point estimate for each ton of CO2 emitted, and a conservative one at that. The number comes from an estimate produced by President Obama’s Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon. That’s a good starting point, certainly a better one than the current Administration’s estimate.

But even the $40 figure is conservative. It captures what was quantifiable and quantified at the time. It does not account for many known yet still-to-be-quantified damages. It does not account for risks and uncertainties, the vast majority of which would push the number significantly higher still.

In short, the $5 trillion figure may well convey a false sense of certainty.

In some sense, little of that matters. The point is: there is a vast thumb on the scale pushing the world economy toward fossil fuels, the exact opposite of what should be done to ensure a stable climate.

In another very real sense, the different matters a lot: Politics may trump all else, but policy design matters, too.

By now the task is so steep that it’s simply not enough to say we need to price emissions and leave things at that. Yes, we need to price carbon, but we also need to subsidize cleaner alternatives—in the true sense of what it means to subsidize: to do so for the benefit of the public. Whether that comes under the heading of a “Green New Deal” or not, it is a much more comprehensive approach than one single policy instrument.

This is party 2 of a 5-part series exploring policy solutions outlined in broad terms in “Policy Design for the Anthropocene.” Part 3 will focus on “Coasian” rights-based instruments, taking a closer look at tools that limit overall pollution to create markets where there were none before.

Posted in Economics, Markets 101, Social Cost of Carbon / Leave a comment

Policy Design for the Anthropocene

By / Bio / Published: May 10, 2019

There’s no denying we humans are changing the planet at an unprecedented pace. If carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is any guide, that pace is increasing at an increasing rate. For those so mathematically inclined, that’s the third derivative pointing in the wrong direction.

Enter The Sixth Extinction, The Uninhabitable Earth, Falter, or simply the “Anthropocene”—us humans altering the planet to the point where the changes are visible in the geological record, ringing in a new epoch.

A team led by Earth systems scientists Johan Rockström and Will Steffen developed the concept of “planetary boundaries” in 2009. They identified nine major systems where humans are altering fundamental Earth systems—from climate change to land-system change to stratospheric ozone, and gave us now infamous spider graphs summarizing the all-too dire warnings (Figure 1).

Planetary boundaries, tipping points, and policies (Figure 1 from “Policy design for the Anthropocene”)

It is all the more significant, that both Rockström, now director of the famed Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and Steffen joined another large, multidisciplinary team ten years later to focus on “Policy design for the Anthropocene.” This team, led by EDF senior contributing economist Thomas Sterner, focused on the solutions.

The good news: there are many.

Table 2 summarizes the crowded field of approaches at the disposal of policymakers. It also shows the decisions to be made when deciding among them.

Policy instruments (based on Table 2 from “Policy design for the Anthropocene”)

How to choose?

Choosing among the many options available quickly moves from policy design to politics.

Take climate change as an all-too prominent example. For one, the obvious first step is to agree that there is a problem in the first place. Denying the problem is not going to get us anywhere near a constructive debate about policy solutions.

One big political decision then is to identify who benefits from acting—or conversely, who pays the costs. If the rights go to the polluter, it’s the victims who pay—all of us, in the case of climate change. If the rights go to society, it’s broadly speaking the polluters who pay. The difference is as stark as between permits on the one hand, and outright bans on the other.

Price or rights-based policies?

Often the decision how to act is among two broad buckets of policies: price or rights-based. The two are broadly speaking two sides of the same coin. Rights generate prices, and prices imply rights.

The difference plays out between carbon pricing and tradable permits. One fixes the price level, the other the amount of emissions. Cue endless academic debates about which instrument is better under which circumstances. Details, of course, do matter.

And this also brings us immediately back to politics. A big difference between price and rights-based policies, is that the latter implies that the political horse-trading doesn’t affect the overall quantity of pollution, at least to a first approximation. Whether tradeable permits are auctioned off—with polluters paying the full price—or whether they are given away for free doesn’t, at first, make a difference. Overall emissions reductions stay the same. I’m saying “at first,” because, any money raised could be spent intelligently on further emissions reductions.

Environmental effectiveness, economic efficiency, political efficacy

The larger point is that (almost) everything is possible. The problems might be dauntingly large. The solution space is similarly large. It’s also clear that no single decision criterion is enough.

Environmental effectiveness is key. Economic efficiency is similarly important.

Achieving the environmental goal is like building a train to the right station. That’s clearly the most important step. Economic efficiency is akin to building the fasted possible train. Just being fast doesn’t help, if the journey goes in the wrong direction. But efficiency implies that one can achieve the same goal at lower cost, or more at the same cost.

But smart policy design, of course, is not enough. It takes political will to get there. Designing policies that pass political muster is clearly one criterion, especially in a polarized environment.

Getting the policy minutiae right is important, but it’s also clear, of course, that politics trumps all. Policies don’t inspire action. Visions of a better future, and a just transition do.

This is party 1 of a 5-part series exploring these policy solutions outlined in broad terms in “Policy Design for the Anthropocene” in more detail. Part 2 will focus on “Pigouvian” price instruments, taking a closer look at fossil fuel subsidies and carbon pricing.

Posted in Cap and Trade, International, Politics / Leave a comment

How smart congestion pricing will benefit New Yorkers

By / Bio / Published: April 9, 2019

This post was co-authored with Maureen Lackner

Last week, New York became the first American city to adopt congestion pricing—a move that should benefit both the city’s crumbling transit system and the environment.

In highly dense areas such as lower Manhattan – where valuable road space is quite limited by its urban geography — congestion pricing allows for a better management for improving vehicle traffic flow. Since the 1950s, economists and transportation engineers have advocated for this market-based measure, which encourages drivers to consider the social cost of each trip by imposing an entrance fee to certain parts of cities—in this case, Manhattan below 60th street. These fees should both discourage driving, thus reducing traffic, while—in New York’s case—raising needed funds for the subway and city buses. These pricing plans have been successful in reducing congestion in places like Singapore and parts of Europe. They have provided additional social benefits, like reducing asthma attacks in children in Stockholm by almost half and cutting traffic accidents in London by 40 percent.

New York will formally introduce this policy instrument in 2021. And while many of the pricing decisions have been deferred, 80 percent of the revenue collected will go to the subway and bus network; 10 percent will go to New York’s commuter rail systems that serve the city. Those setting rates can look to existing pricing models and research to price for success.

Cristobal Ruiz-Tagle, an EDF High Meadows Fellow, spoke with Juan Pablo Montero – a leading environmental economist, fellow Chilean and member of our Economics Advisory Council – about his research on congestion pricing, and what New Yorkers can and should expect.

CRT: What’s the best case scenario of New Yorkers with this pricing plan?

JPM: The latest report from INRIX ranked New York as the fourth most congested city in the United States. New Yorkers lose an average of 133 hours per year in congestion—just sitting in a car and not moving, or moving very slowly. The cost of congestion per year in New York is $9.5 billion—the largest cost in the country. So that’s the starting point.

 To solve the problem, you need to set the congestion fee sufficiently high. In Santiago, we ran a study and found it should be around $14 per day. In New York as far as I understand, they’re proposing for passenger vehicles of around $12. It’s a little lower than what we see in London (£ 11.50), but I expect New Yorkers are still going to get most of the benefit from less congestion.

 The most important element of the plan is what you do with the resources collected. The proposal here is to improve public transportation. We did a study on this in Santiago and showed that if you don’t put the money back into the transportation system, the poor will be much worse off. We’re proposing something similar in Santiago–that you use the funds to both improve infrastructure and lower fares. That’s the only way to do it without turning it into a regressive policy.

CRT: Are there other benefits to these plans besides reducing traffic and improving public transportation?

 JPM: Maybe people will starting using bike lanes more frequently—or people are willing to walk more because their public transportation is better. There could be more outdoor activities. Those additional benefits are important, but they’re hard to quantify. 

 CRT: In addition to a congestion pricing plan, London also has a pollution fee, which started on April 8th. Do you think these kinds of fees will further reduce emissions and improve health? Or is there something else that should be considered?

JPM: They should, but it’s important to understand the local vehicle fleet—especially how old it is. The cars that contribute the most to local air pollution are very old cars. In terms of global pollutants—namely CO2—they’re roughly the same. Local pollutants—nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, etc., are much worse in older fleets. So if the fleet is new—younger than 10 years—you may not see as much as a reduction as if the fleet is very old or if you have ban on diesel pollution. People with lower incomes are more likely to leave their cars at home when charged for driving or with a congestion fee—and they tend to use older vehicles that emit more pollution.

 CRT: The age of local fleets has been important in other parts of the world, right? Especially when cities tried non-market-based measures like vehicle restrictions.

 JPM: Yes, Mexico City placed a uniform restriction on vehicles in 1989 without making any distinction between newer, cleaner cars and older, dirtier ones. You could only drive your car into the city for a limited number of days per week, so people went out and bought second cars that they could then use on the off days. And the cars they bought were older, which were dirtier. So in that way, the plan backfired.

CRT: It sounds like there are many ways to structure these congestion pricing plans:

JPM: Yes. There are ways to introduce dynamic pricing. You don’t want to keep these prices fixed forever in case the policy response wasn’t as expected. Ideally, you want to change prices based on location and time of day. This may eventually happen, but I don’t think it’s prudent to push for that today. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

We are finally seeing this policy instrument taken seriously—and it will be very interesting to see which city is next. LA? Seattle? Washington, DC?

Congestion pricing should provide New Yorkers with a number of benefits, including cleaner air, better public health and a modernized public transit system, all while reducing that maddening gridlock in downtown Manhattan. EDF is part of a coalition of groups supporting New York’s congestion pricing plan.

 

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Accelerating clean energy innovation is key to solving the climate crisis

By / Bio / Published: March 19, 2019

This post originally appeared on Climate 411 and was co-authored by Elgie Holstein

Our nation has a history of tackling big challenges and leveraging the ingenuity of American entrepreneurs to develop solutions that have changed the world – from curing diseases to exploring space to launching the internet. Today, climate change is one of our most urgent global challenges, for which there is little time left to prevent the most destructive impacts. To combat it, we must bring every bit of our nation’s entrepreneurial creativity and scientific excellence to bear. That means accelerating the deployment of existing low-carbon technologies as well as investing in new and emerging innovations that can transform our economy to 100% clean energy. And we have to do it quickly.

Fortunately, there are recent indications that a clean energy innovation agenda can attract bipartisan support in Congress, even as the debate over broader climate policy remains gridlocked. Recently, in the Republican-controlled Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing focused on a bipartisan bill that would invest in research on cutting- edge approaches such as direct air capture (DAC), a “negative emissions technology” (NET) that might someday be able to suck carbon pollution directly out of the air and store it or recycle it into fuel, fertilizer, and concrete.

A complement to conventional approaches to climate mitigation that reduce emissions, NETs remove carbon dioxide that’s already in the atmosphere. They range from technological options like DAC to natural sequestration techniques such as replanting and vitalizing forests and adopting sustainable farming practices that put more carbon into the soil. The Committee also looked at the state of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which can capture carbon pollution from industrial smokestacks, including at power plants, and store it underground.

In the House, the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing highlighting the contributions of one of America’s most successful energy research and development organizations, ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy. Its special mission is to move high-impact energy technologies from the research workbench to the market. Its successes have earned the agency support from a wide array of groups on both sides of the aisle, even as President Trump has proposed ending this popular bipartisan initiative.

Together, these hearings illustrate a growing understanding that investing in emerging technologies that slash carbon pollution is good for the environment and the economy, as well as for maintaining America’s competitive edge in the global clean energy revolution.

Unlocking innovation

In order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the world must reach net-zero emissions – taking as much carbon out of the atmosphere as we put into it – by mid-century. In its recent report on limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasizes that cutting carbon pollution at the pace and scale required to avoid the worst effects of climate change will require rapid development and deployment of an expanded portfolio of low- and zero-carbon options.

In the U.S., we must take advantage of every cost-effective opportunity to cut climate pollution now, while investing in the innovations that will put us on course for net-zero emissions as soon as possible. Doing so will position us to lead the world in new clean-energy technologies, creating millions of new jobs for Americans.

Potential breakthrough technologies are on the horizon, from utility-scale energy storage, which can enable us to use lots more renewable power, to new means of capturing and storing carbon. But innovation and adoption are not happening fast enough, and many of the technologies that can make a difference are not currently cost-effective.

Accordingly, we must put in place the policies and incentives that will drive massive expansion and deployment of existing clean energy technologies such as solar and wind, backed by enforceable declining limits and a price on carbon pollution. At the same time, we must multiply investment in nascent, or even not-yet-dreamed-of, technologies, so that a new supply of clean solutions can be made market-ready, in order to close the emissions gap ahead.

Moreover, we need the pairing of policy frameworks — such as imposing carbon emissions limits and requiring companies to pay when they pollute — with investment in innovative solutions, such as NETs. That will produce a multiplier effect, allowing for greater ambition in curbing greenhouse gas pollution on a faster timeline. Requiring companies to face the true costs of their pollution will lead them to seek out cleaner sources of energy, not just as customers for new technologies, but as production and process innovators. Meanwhile, government investment in critical research will spark the development of new solutions that will be ready for deployment when the market demands them, lowering compliance costs and driving transformative change across the economy.

The case for Congress

While it is encouraging to see Congress engaging in conversations on innovation as a means of addressing climate change, much more work is needed.

Policymakers from both sides of the aisle must commit to investing in the development of clean energy solutions while creating the market conditions necessary to make significant cuts in climate pollution, starting now. They must articulate and act on a vision of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by mid-century.

Investing in innovation is a key piece of the puzzle. So, too, are policies that protect American families and communities while boosting our economy and cleaning our air.

The challenge is significant. Fortunately, America has shown that it is up to the job.

Posted in Energy efficiency, Technology / Leave a comment

How reverse auctions can help scale energy storage

By / Bio / Published: January 24, 2019

This post is co-authored with Maureen Lackner

Just as reverse auctions have helped increase new renewable energy capacity, our new policy brief for the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy argues they could also be an effective approach for scaling energy storage.

Why we need energy storage

Voters have spoken, and states are moving toward cleaner electricity. Legislatures in Hawaii and California passed mandates for 100 percent clean energy in the electricity sector, and governors in Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Maine, and Michigan have all made similar 100 percent clean energy promises in recent months. These ambitious targets will require large-scale integration of wind and solar energy, which can be unpredictable and intermittently available. Cost-effective energy storage solutions can play a leading role to provide clean, reliable electricity—even when the sun isn’t shining and wind isn’t blowing.

Energy storage systems—ranging from lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries to hydroelectric dams—can provide a wide array of valuable grid services. Their ability to bank excess energy for use at a later date makes them particularly well-suited to address the intermittency challenge of wind and solar. In some cases, energy storage systems are also already cost-competitive with natural gas plants.

However, in order to reach ambitious clean energy targets, we’ll likely need to close a large energy storage gap. One recent estimate suggests approximately 10,000 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy storage may be needed to support a two-thirds renewables domestic electricity mix. In our policy brief, we estimate the United States currently has no more than 10 percent of this utility-scale energy storage capacity available; the actual quantity is likely much lower. Developing vast levels of energy storage will likely be an important factor toward integrating a greater share of renewables into the energy mix. Smart policy design can help drive energy storage prices even further below current historic lows, while ensuring these technologies are procured cost-effectively.

A path forward: using reverse auctions to scale energy storage

Reverse auctions have already helped scale renewables and, when designed well, may also be an effective tool when applied to energy storage. In a reverse auction, multiple sellers submit bids to a single buyer for the right to provide a good or service. In the case of renewables, developers bid to provide a portion of capacity desired by the buyer, typically a utility. This policy tool is gaining in popularity, because, if designed well, it can drive down bid prices and ensure reliable procurement. Globally, the share of renewables capacity procured through reverse auctions is expected to grow from 20 percent in 2016 to more than 50 percent in 2022. It seems likely that auction-induced competition has triggered a fall in renewable prices that some are calling the “Auctions Revolution.”

While examples in Colorado and Hawaii suggest reverse auctions can be effective in procuring energy storage, there’s little guidance on tailoring them for that purpose. We offer five recommendations:

1: Encourage a Large Number of Auction Participants

The more developers bidding into an auction, the fiercer the competition. How policymakers approach this depends on their end goal. In a 2016 Chilean auction, bidding was open to solar and coal developers, and policymakers were pleased when solar developers offered cheaper bids on a dollar per megawatt-hour basis than coal developers. Another approach: signaling consistent demand through auction schedules. Participation in South African renewable auctions increased after auction organizers took steps to give advance notice and instructions for future regular auctions.

2: Limit the Amount of Auctioned Capacity

If competition still seems tepid, auctioneers can always scale down the amount of capacity auctioned. As witnessed in a South African renewable auction, bidders respond to a supply squeeze by decreasing their bid prices.

3: Leverage Policy Frameworks and Market Structures

Auctions don’t exist in a vacuum. Renewable auctions benefit tremendously from existing market structures and companion policies. Where applicable, auction design should consider the multiple grid services energy storage systems can offer. Even if an auction is only focused on energy arbitrage, it should not preclude storage developers from participating in multiple markets (e.g. frequency regulation), as this may help bidders reduce their bid prices.

4: Earmark a Portion of Auctioned Capacity for Less-mature Technologies

A major criticism of early auctions is that they unintentionally favored the same large players and mature technologies. Policymakers shouldn’t forget that energy storage includes several technological options; they can design auctions to address this by separating procurement for more advanced technologies (Li-ion, for example) from newer technologies (zinc air batteries).

5: Penalize delivery failures without damaging competition

Developers should be incentivized to bid their cheapest possible price, but poor auction design can trigger a race to the bottom with ever more unrealistic bid prices. This is especially true if developers don’t believe they will be punished for delivery failures or poor quality projects. Already, some contract terms for energy storage by auctions include penalties if the developer cannot deliver its promised grid service.

Decarbonizing our energy supply isn’t an easy task. Reverse auctions stand out as a possible tool to quickly and cost-effectively increase our energy storage capacity, which will help integrate intermittent renewables. If this market-based mechanism can be tailored to suit energy storage systems’ capabilities (e.g. offering multiple grid services), it could help shift us to a future where we have access to clean energy at any time of day and year.

Posted in Energy efficiency, Markets 101 / Leave a comment