Science, Technology, and Public Policy

David Kearn argues that even in the absence of restrictive resource and budgetary constraints, a focus on identifying and achieving concrete objectives that will position the United States and its allies to effectively deter aggression in critical regional flashpoints should be the priority given the stressed nature of the defense industrial base and the nuclear enterprise.

Kari A. Bingen and Heather W. Williams write that if Russia plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space to target satellites, the threat is definitely serious—and the U.S. should act fast.

How can electricity sector policymakers in developing countries ensure financial viability of utilities while also extending electricity access and minimizing the environmental impact of electricity supply? This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze synergies and trade-offs between policies for financial reform of utilities, extending electricity access, and solar PV deployment in the case of Uttar Pradesh in India.

How can China make good on its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060? In Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China, a team of experts from China and the United States explains how China's near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for a smoother and less costly national energy transformation.

This article examines both the premise and prescription of the argument to integrate renewable electricity in developing countries through elements of the standard model (such as a wholesale spot market, or an independent system operator for dispatch). This is done by highlighting the differences between power sector reform experiences in the developing and developed worlds, and the causal mechanisms underlying these differences.

Daniel Schrag argues that in order to reestablish the United States as a serious partner in addressing global climate change, the president must make good on the original standards of the Paris Agreement.

A large part of operating costs in urban water supply networks is usually due to energy use, mostly in the form of electricity consumption. There is growing pressure to reduce energy use to help save operational costs and reduce carbon emissions. This study shows how a hybrid linear and multi-objective optimization approach can be used to identify key energy consumption elements in a water supply system, and then evaluate the amount of investment needed to achieve significant operational gains at those points in the supply network.

The authors argue that more determined efforts to globalize renewable energy transmission can confer significantly higher economic and environmental benefits from renewables on billions of people. This can be done by exploiting spatial differences between electricity loads and net renewable generation across time zones (temporal arbitrage) and latitude (seasonal arbitrage). Using very long distance, ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission infrastructure, temporal and spatial arbitrage can move low-cost clean electricity from areas with excess capacity to high demand zones in other countries and even continents.

In this paper, a quantitative Waste to Energy Recovery Assessment (WERA) framework is used to stochastically analyze the feasibility of waste-to-energy systems in selected cities in Asia.

In this report, the authors conduct a benchmarking analysis for energy and CO2 emissions intensity of the steel industry among the largest steel-producing countries.