Publications

Energy Equity advocates and researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are building a body of work surrounding equity in the power system. 

Advancing Equity in Grid Planning and Operations Summit Report

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-National Lab Equity Summit was held on February 5, 2024, by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, focusing on equity in grid planning and operations. It was part of the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) project, Advancing Equity in Grid Planning and Operations. Staff from seven national laboratories and various DOE offices participated in the summit alongside leading energy equity experts from states and utilities to discuss challenges and opportunities to incorporate equity into grid planning and operations. The summit participants identified more than 25 DOE-funded projects related to this topic. The summit aimed to connect DOE and lab researchers working on grid-related equity issues, share information on current and planned projects, and inspire participants through panel discussions. Kelly Crawford, Energy and Environmental Justice Senior Advisor in the DOE Office of Equity and Environmental Justice, emphasized the importance of energy justice and community engagement in grid planning. The summit included two panels of industry leaders from utilities, state public utility commission, state energy office, and industry consultants who shared their perspectives on equity challenges and successes. Panelists also discussed the role of utilities in promoting equity and how data modeling and technical needs could advance equity in grid planning and operations. Read the report.

A guide to residential energy storage and rooftop solar

State net metering policies and utility rate tariff structures

To make progress on decarbonization goals, federal and state governments are offering financial incentives and policies to promote renewable energy systems like solar panels and batteries. With the cost of these systems decreasing and electricity rates rising, more households find it financially beneficial to switch to renewables. However, the rules and support for renewable energy vary by state, making it hard for people to decide if it's worth it for them. This paper aims to help households by discussing the factors affecting the performance and payback of renewable systems, offering a quick reference table for each state. By analyzing five representative states, the study shows that states with supportive policies and higher electricity rates offer the most benefits for residential renewable energy adoption. Read the paper.

A targeted approach to energy burden reduction measures

Comparing the effects of energy storage, rooftop solar, weatherization, and energy efficiency upgrades

As energy prices rise and climate change brings more extreme and frequent days of heating and cooling, households must allocate more of their income to energy bills, increasing their energy burden. Many strategies are employed to alleviate high energy burden, such as weatherization, energy efficiency, and energy storage and rooftop solar, though the benefits of each scale based on factors such as climate, housing characteristics, and energy behaviors. This study used variation in these factors across the United States to create a set of representative houses to investigate the variable responses to different energy burden reduction measures in the simulation environment GridLAB-D. Comparison of modeled energy and bill savings determined weatherization to have the most variability in energy and bill savings, often providing comparable and even greater energy and bill savings to energy storage plus rooftop solar at a fraction of the cost; energy storage provided the most consistent bill savings, determined primarily by the rate tariff used for energy arbitrage; and appliance efficiency upgrades provided minimal energy and bill savings. The results of the analysis can be used by policymakers, utilities, communities, and individuals to tailor energy burden reduction programs, policies, and spending to maximize local benefit. Read the paper.

A comparison of building system parameters between affordable and market-rate housing in New York City

Low-income households in the United States experience higher than average energy burdens (defined as the proportion of household income spent on energy utilities), and many of these households struggle to simultaneously pay for rent, energy, and basic household necessities. The analysis presented here examines whether the underlying characteristics of buildings and their energy systems could contribute to this disparity for affordable housing residents in New York City. The results of this analysis indicate that the building-level installed equipment in large (greater than 50,000 square feet) affordable housing buildings in New York City is more efficient than that in market-rate buildings, but this trend largely disappears when considering overall building characteristics, such as location, size, or age. Read the paper. 

Advancing the state of energy equity metrics

Metrics are an emerging area of importance for the operationalization of energy equity as they may guide investment and policy decisions that shape the energy system along this transition. This paper aims to advance energy equity metrics for use in regulation, planning, and operations of the electricity system within the United States. Metrics were surveyed from the literature and distilled to a set that identifies which stakeholders may be associated with which metrics. Read the paper. 

Advancing Energy Equity Considerations in Distribution Systems Planning 

This paper proposes an iterative framework for advancing energy equity as an objective of the DSP process, showing how measurement strategies, or metrics (informed by conceptual foundations of energy justice), can be applied to benchmark equity performance at various stages. The results demonstrate how equity-aware planning could reveal the limitations of the traditional DSP process as DAC regions are found to have lower DER hosting capacity and higher outage vulnerability. Overall, this work provides insights on the need to incorporate energy equity as an integral part of the DSP process. Read the paper.

Assessing the energy equity benefits of energy storage solutions 

This study aims to characterize the energy equity and community benefits of energy storage systems (ESS) under the following three use case models: utility ESS that are operated within the distribution system, community-owned ESS, and behind-the-meter ESS that are customer-owned to serve the household. A resource adequacy analysis of a representative feeder subject to six outage scenarios is performed to assess energy access as a key equity metric in each use case. Read the paper.

Analysis of Energy Justice and Equity Impacts from Replacing Peaker Plants with Energy Storage

In this paper, we discuss the relationship between energy storage and social equity by assessing the use of energy storage to replace natural gas-fired (NG) peaker plants. Peaker plants are disproportionately located near disadvantaged communities and tend to be older and high emitters of health-affecting fine particulate matter and other pollutants. This paper investigates the equity implications of NG peaker plant replacements with battery energy storage in the context of Washington State’s peaker plants to highlight the human-centered values of retiring the plants. Read the paper.

Assessing the energy equity benefits of mobile energy storage solutions

Rapid market growth and ambitious climate goals to increase adoption of all types of electric vehicles necessitates that decarbonization, resilience, and energy equity and justice strategies are simultaneously employed to keep pace with the evolving social and policy climate. This study aims to characterize the energy equity and community benefits of mobile energy storage solutions (MESS) via a storage adequacy analysis of energy access for the following three use-cases—utility-scale networks of MESS assets that are operated within the distribution system; community public transit MESS assets; and behind-the-meter personal vehicle MESS assets. Read the paper.

A socio-technical assessment of marine renewable energy potential in coastal communities

Coastal communities face unique socio-ecological risks and vulnerabilities due to their geography and related resource dependencies. Marine renewable energy (MRE) is one promising solution for augmenting coastal resilience and environmental sustainability while increasing energy security, energy affordability, and socioeconomic benefits. The socio-technical nature of energy transitions more broadly necessitates place-based and multidisciplinary analyses to gain a full picture of the needs of communities. This article uses potential MRE development (specifically tidal energy) in two coastal communities as a lens to explore how social perceptions and MRE's technical potential might be integrated to improve alignment between community values and energy development. Read the paper.

Energy Equity Opportunities in Distributed Wind Hybrid Systems for Rural Loads

Distributed wind (DW) hybrid systems have potential to provide energy equity benefits for rural loads. However, project developers and end-users do not understand these benefits well. This report outlines energy equity opportunities that result directly from DW-hybrid projects and proposes a framework that demonstrates how to advance equity in DW-hybrid systems, which can enhance existing resilience and valuation tools by incorporating a way to include equity considerations. Read the report. 

Just Transition Principles

Prepared for the APEC Energy Working Group Workshop on Promoting a Just Energy Transition

Across the world, many economies are lessening their reliance on fossil fuels for power and energy production and increasing their use of clean energy. The member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) represent significant portions of the world’s population, global nominal gross domestic product, and world trade. This report offers just transition principles from international frameworks that are tailored for APEC economies and provides further points of consideration and examples illustrating how they can be applied in practice. Read the report. 

Energy Equity Database

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) partnered with E9 Insights to screen two years' worth of policy documents (e.g., bills, dockets, and executive orders) identified through keyword searches for energy equity and similar terms.

Their search produced 95 state legislative, executive, and regulatory actions directed at electricity and natural gas utilities. They found that 22 states and D.C. were adopted energy equity-related measures between January 2020 and July 2022.

Additional categories of information were tracked for each equity action. Some equity actions have multiple attributes and were disaggregated into unique entries and assigned a unique identifier to enable summary analysis conducted by LBNL and PNNL. Download the Database and Read the Report.

Advancing Energy Equity in Grid Planning

Traditionally electric grid planning strives to maintain safe, reliable, efficient, and affordable service for current and future customers. As policies, social preferences, and the threat landscape evolve, additional considerations for power system planners are emerging, including decarbonization, resilience, and energy equity and justice. Relative to traditional objectives, these emerging objectives are not well integrated into grid planning paradigms. View presentation slides.

Communities in Energy Transition

Exploring best practices and decision support tools to provide equitable outcome

The U.S. coal industry has been in a state of decline for the past decade, a trend ushered by flat electricity demand, increased regulatory pressure, and market competition from cost-competitive clean energy sources. The receding economic viability of the coal industry has been acutely felt by the communities with immediate economic ties to coal-fired generation. With the energy transition underway, the question of how to engage communities as stakeholders in the decision-making process and address their needs through an equitable and just transition remains unresolved. To that end, this paper explores the economic, environmental, and social challenges presented by the energy transition at the community level, highlighting four case studies from transitioning coal-dependent communities across the United States to ultimately identify best practices in coal plant decommissioning processes. This paper weaves these community identified best practices into two support tools—a decommissioning checklist and a redevelopment decision-making framework—that can be used to engage communities in the power plant retirement decision, the site reclamation phase, and eventual redevelopment of the site and revitalization of the surrounding community. Read the paper now.

Review of Energy Equity Metrics

In October, PNNL published a literature review to support efforts to develop an energy equity metrics framework. PNNL reviewed the available literature, surveyed work in progress on the topic, and solicited expert feedback to lay the groundwork for metrics development and provide reference material for energy equity research and development applications. This literature review identified three distinct equity metric types: target population identification, investment decision making, and program impact assessment. Read the literature review now.

Energy Storage and Power Plant Decommissioning 

The report examines three fossil-fuel power plant decommissioning strategies to assess the role of energy storage in enabling an equitable clean energy transition future. The analysis showed how storage could enable reduction of fossil-fuel sources from the grid while enabling increased renewable energy integration into the electric grid. The report also offers recommendations for future work, including the need to further develop the non-energy benefit attributes of energy storage systems with a focus on the benefits accrued to local communities. Read the report. 

FERC Workshop Summary Report

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory supported a public workshop for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Office of Public Participation. The purpose of the workshop was to engage interested parties in potential technical assistance associated with electricity market proceedings. This memo includes all materials that were submitted into the FERC record and offers a brief summary of opportunities related to technical assistance. Read the summary report now.

Coal-dependent Communities in Transition: Identifying Best Practices to Ensure Equitable Outcomes

This report examined the role of communities in the coal power plant decommissioning process and provided community-identified best practices to ensure an equitable process. The experiences of four coal-dependent communities—Wise County, VA, Muskegon, MI, Anderson County, TN, and Becker, MN—are presented as case studies to understand the impacts of the decommissioning process, and associated best practices, from the communities’ perspective. The report results highlight the need to recognize that the decommissioning decision-making process must be community-based to be equitable. Read the report now.

Business Models for Coal Plant Decommissioning

Aging coal-fired power plants are retiring across the United States. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory studied coal-fired power plant decommissioning business models to support program development for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) to engage with communities affected by power plant retirement processes. Evaluating and reducing the impact on coal-dependent communities from phasing out coal production is a crucial piece of nationwide economic development and community-directed engagement in the clean energy future. Read the report now.

Energy Storage for Social Equity Roundtable Pre-Readers and Roundtable Report

In support of the Office of Electricity Energy Storage program, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), hosted a roundtable to explore the relationship between energy equity and energy storage. These pre-readers were developed as resources for event attendees:

Download the Final Roundtable Report now.

Energy Equity and Environmental Justice Workshop Report

On December 11, 2020, 28 PNNL staff members discussed research to advance energy equity and environmental justice at a two-hour internal workshop. The primary purposes of the workshop were to baseline existing efforts at the laboratory and brainstorm future research activities. The workshop report documents the conversation, outcomes, and next steps. Read the report now.

Energy Storage as an Equity Asset

Energy storage is a key enabler to the widespread adoption of renewable energy, transmission, and distribution demands in the power grid. Not surprisingly, it also has the potential to greatly contribute to a power grid that is not only decarbonized and resilient, but also equitable and just. A just energy transition means giving justice and equity due consideration during the transition from fossil fuels to a grid that is largely powered by renewable energy sources, and ensuring that benefits are distributed equitably. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity – Energy Storage sponsored Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to conduct a comprehensive review of how energy storage deployment can advance equitable outcomes for the power system. The paper describes the four tenets of energy justice – distributive, recognition, procedural, and restorative – and how they can inform the equity dimensions of storage project design and implementation. Read the report now.

Electricity Rate Affordability

Mapping electricity rate affordability metrics can shed light on potential inequities and cost burdens that often disproportionately impact underserved communities. Affordability is defined as the ability to provide electric services at a cost that does not exceed customers’ willingness or ability to pay for these services. As part of Grid Modernization Lab Consortium (GMLC), researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, created a tool that compiles publicly available data and displays electricity rate affordability metrics at both the state and county level. GMLC released a report defining and describing metrics that measure the impact of electricity costs on residential and commercial customers. Read the report now.