This grant funds a study by a multidisciplinary team of scholars, led by Destenie Nock of Carnegie Mellon University, that will deploy various research methodologies to examine three aspects of household energy insecurity across multiple states. The first dimension to be studied is to better understand the energy-limiting behavior often employed by marginalized and low-income households to better afford energy services. Analyzing detailed household energy use data across three states (Arizona, Illinois, and a mid-Atlantic state), the team will further develop a new energy insecurity metric—called the “energy equity gap”—which indicates the point at which households across different income and demographic groups turn on air conditioning during hot days (or, conversely, turn on heating during cold days). This metric will help identify hidden forms of energy insecurity that are often hard to assess, or are typically ignored, in more traditional measures of energy use and well-being. Second, the team will undertake a case study that will examine the effectiveness of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, the Weatherization Assistance Program, and other state-level programs designed to help low-income households pay their energy bills. Team members will analyze over a decade’s-worth of household data from these programs, focusing on the state of Minnesota, to identify the extent that eligible households do or do not take advantage of these programs. Third, the team will develop a publicly available dashboard of utility disconnection policies from across the country to enable researchers to begin to compare and analyze intra- and inter-state differences in such policies and their subsequent effects on energy insecurity.

An important under-explored issue within energy systems literature is understanding the challenges that arise when two energy and environment goals conflict with one another. In particular, there is a desire to install more large-scale renewable energy generation resources to decarbonize the electricity sector, yet the siting of these power sources is increasingly occurring on sensitive and vulnerable lands that often serve as critical habitats for endangered species. This grant led by Rebecca Hernandez at the University of California, Davis will explore the challenges that arise when these two energy and environment goals conflict. Grant funds will allow Hernandez to explore this “renewable energy vs. conservation” tradeoff, exploring the West and Southwest regions of the United States to map and model the overlap between current and future conservation needs and renewable energy installation locations. The team will also engage a range of stakeholders to identify community preferences associated with these tradeoffs, with a particular focus on Indigenous nations and tribal communities. Funds will allow Hernandez to produce at least 4 peer-reviewed articles examining the conflict associated with species threatened by climate change and renewable energy development; produce detailed maps of range shift patterns for current and future renewable energy impacts on endangered species; undertake 2 stakeholder workshops; train 1 graduate student and 1 postdoctoral fellow; and produce a publicly accessible Climate-Smart Siting Guide for public distributions.

Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) have a substantial, critical impact on the function of the energy system. Each RTO and ISO is structured and governed differently, yet there is little research on how each of these entities operate. This grant builds on previous Sloan-funded research and provides ongoing support to an interdisciplinary research network, called the RTOGov network, that has is filling this knowledge gap, bringing together scholars from multiple disciplines and institutions. Now led by Seth Blumsack at Pennsylvania State University and Stephanie Lenhart at Boise State University, RTOGov will study how these entities operate and function, how each compares or contrasts with one another, and how differences in organizational structure and governance impact the service they provide to energy systems and customers. This phase will allow scholars in the network to undertake more comparative regional governance studies across institutions as well as examine broader policy issues associated with federal requirements for RTO governance. Building on practitioner collaborations established during the first phase of the project, RTOGov scholars will focus on sharing lessons learned to contribute to the formation of emerging RTO-like entities that are actively being designed in regions like the Southeast, Mountain West, and Alaska. Grant funds will allow RTOGov to produce at least 12-15 papers for academic journals in multiple fields and associated policy briefs or white papers; engage a diverse range of 25-30 additional contributing scholars; support the training of at least 8-10 students; and continue to provide guidance to practitioners. RTOGov also plans to organize and host 6 semi-annual research workshops that will gather participating researchers, contributors, and advisory committee members.

Researchers have developed a new generation of energy system models representing U.S. electricity generation, transmission, and demand that promises to help decisionmakers understand how different policies will speed or inhibit the decarbonization of the U.S. energy system. Yet these models differ in various respects, and there is a need to gain insight about how these individual energy system models compare to one another. To fully unlock the decision-making usefulness of these powerful next generation energy system models, a nuanced understanding is needed to determine how the evaluations produced by these models vary and what features of the models explain such variance. This grant supports research by a multi-institution team led by Oleg Lugovoy at the Environmental Defense Fund to compare a set of cutting-edge, open-source electricity system planning models across a range of different decarbonization scenarios. Lugovoy’s team will compare four models (known as GenX, Switch, Temoa, and USENSYS) using the PowerGenome platform to conduct their comparisons and analyze the results. The models will be compared across two decarbonization scenarios, a business-as-usual scenario and a high-renewables scenario, all drawing on the same input data. Grant funds will allow the team to produce 4-6 publications, train 2 postdoctoral researchers in energy system modeling intercomparison, produce a GitHub data repository, and disseminate model comparison results to practitioner stakeholders. Finally, the team will convene 2-4 public workshops to train those interested in learning how to use the open-source models and the results of the model intercomparison project.