Few rigorous studies have attempted to accurately measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from offshore oil and gas facilities or sites that flare natural gas. Similarly, it is also important to measure GHG emissions from onshore operations that flare natural gas, a common occurrence at shale fracking sites. Getting better estimates of GHG emissions from offshore oil and gas sites and natural gas flaring sites can have a marked effect on our understanding of actual emissions from these understudied domains of energy production. This grant funds a coordinated field campaign, led by Eric Kort at the University of Michigan, to rigorously measure emissions from offshore oil and gas production facilities and onshore natural gas flaring sites. The research team will estimate GHG emissions by combining and synthesizing remote sensing satellite data with direct observations collected from a series of aircraft flights over multiple oil and gas production sites. The study will target offshore production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and off the California and Alaska coasts, and it will measure emissions at flaring sites in both west Texas and North DakotaХs Bakken Shale. Remote sensing data will be pulled from a recently launched environmental monitoring satellite called TROPOMI, and by a new satellite to be launched by the Environmental Defense Fund. If successful, the project will deploy sensor technologies in novel ways, collect and integrate data across multiple scales, and break new scientific ground by making more detailed measurements of GHG emitting sites than had previously taken place.

This project tackles a particularly pressing challenge with respect to sensor development and deployment: the ability to quickly identify damage to energy infrastructure and water pipelines following wildfires and other natural disasters. Wildfires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters have the potential to damage, degrade, or destroy wires, pipelines, and other vital parts of AmericaХs energy and water infrastructure. Yet public and private utilities have very limited ability to detect when and where such damage has occurred. This grant funds a project led by Erica Fisher of Oregon State University to develop, construct, and test new sensor technology that could be used to detect environmental damage to energy and water infrastructure. Over the next three years, Fischer and her team aim to develop low-cost, low-powered sensors capable of withstanding the high temperatures common in wildfires. The team plans to test these sensors in the laboratory on a number of representative materials used in energy and water pipeline infrastructure and in simulated real-world conditions in a buried pipeline network located on the Oregon State campus. They will also conduct two case studies in locations that recently experienced devastating fires (Santa Rosa and Paradise, California) that will allow them to test and integrate data across multiple scalesСremote sensing data, in situКsensor data, and crowdsourced social media informationСto develop a tool that stakeholders can use to better monitor potential pipeline damage more quickly and efficiently.

This grant supports a cohort of three postdoctoral fellows in data curation for energy social science, overseen by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). One fellow will be placed at each of the following three institutions, involving both their respective energy research centers and university libraries: Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Michigan Energy Institute, and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to recruiting, selecting, and placing the postdoctoral fellows, CLIR organizes training programs and mentorship activities throughout the two-year fellowship program. This includes an initial introductory summer institute, regular mentoring calls with fellows and their institutional hosts, funding for travel to present at and attend conferences, and a pool of resources to help initiate collaborative projects developed by the fellows. This second phase of CLIR postdoctoral fellowships builds on a successful first round of fellowship support that is nearing conclusion. The program offers a unique opportunity to train the next generation of scholars and practitioners, while simultaneously providing core energy research institutions with expertise in cutting-edge data science analysis.

Funds from this grant will allow researchers from Resources for the Future and the University of Chicago to study how consumers respond to time-varying electricity pricing schemes. One component of this project is undertaking a unique field experiment in collaboration with a smart thermostat company called Ecobee. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) will look at how 4,000 households use a new product feature available on Ecobee thermostats that gives households the ability to program their thermostat to automatically adjust air conditioning schedules to take advantage of different time-of-use electricity rates. The second research component is a methodological project that will attempt to use machine learning techniques to replicate a previously conducted RCT that examined consumer energy use under different electricity pricing schemes. If successful, the developed methods are likely to be applicable in generating more accurate counterfactual comparative groups in the many situations where conducting an RCT of energy consumers is not feasible. Findings from both components of the project will be disseminated through a final workshop that will engage stakeholders from multiple sectors in discussing the potential impacts of increased adoption of time-varying electricity pricing programs.

This grant supports an effort by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to increase scholarly attention to how market and government forces impact innovation in the energy sector. NBER will hold two open calls for papers, one on what can be learned from recent successes and failures in energy technology, and a second on the forces that contribute to breakthroughs in energy technology innovation. Fourteen projects in total will be selected for support from those responding to the calls and NBER will organize a research conference for each call where supported papers will be presented and discussed. Finally, NBER will hold a third conference aimed at sharing research findings with energy decision-makers and other interested stakeholders.

Temoa (Tools for Energy Model Optimization and Analysis) is a modern, open source software platform for modeling energy systems. Developed by Joe DeCarolis at North Carolina State University, Temoa is a model modeling framework. It’s open source, well-documented, small enough to run without access to huge computing resources, and accompanied by guides and tutorials that make its features accessible for new and experienced modelers alike. Funds from this grant support a project led by DeCarolis and his collaborator, Paulina Jaramillo of Carnegie Mellon University, to utilize Temoa to create an Open Energy Outlook report for the United States. The report will lay out several scenarios for how the U.S. energy system might evolve over the coming decades, including detailed consideration of how sector specific developments in buildings, electricity, fuels, heavy industry, policy and economics, and transportation might contribute to that evolution. The report promises to be an important complement to the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook and other similar modeling efforts. Grant funds will support two iterations of the Open Energy Outlook Report, intra-team meetings and workshops, and development of the Temoa model to support the new analysis.

Regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) are key parts of the U.S. electricity system. Although RTOs and ISOs operate wholesale electricity markets that serve about two-thirds of U.S. electricity customers, there is very little research comparing how these institutions work, what influence stakeholder groups have on their behavior, or which aspects of these institutions might be portable to similar organizations. This grant funds a collaborative project, co-led by Kate Konschnik, who directs the Climate and Energy program at Duke University and associate professor Seth Blumsack of Pennsylvania State University, to undertake a set of studies to explore these and related questions associated with the governance, structure, and operation of RTOs and ISOs. Konschnik and Blumsack have assembled a multidisciplinary group of researchers from economics, law, public policy, energy systems operations, and engineering to contribute to this effort. The project will produce approximately 10 academic research articles across multiple fields, in addition to associated policy briefs or white papers for broad dissemination to a wide range of stakeholders. Grant funding will cover graduate student participation, direct support for research expenses, and bringing participating scholars together to ensure project coordination.