A Spatial-Economic Optimization Study of Swine-Waste Derived Biogas Infrastructure Design in North Carolina

April 2013

This report by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Duke Carbon Offsets Initiative highlights a comparative modeling analysis considering individual and centralized approaches for meeting North Carolina's Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (REPS) mandate for swine. It finds that injecting biogas collected from an optimized network of farms into the natural gas pipeline could be a cost-effective approach to meeting the state REPS.

Author (s): Darmawan Prasodjo, Tatjana Vujic, David Cooley, Ken Yeh, Meng-Ying Lee

A Triple Bottom Line for Electric Utility Regulation: Aligning State-Level Energy, Environmental, and Consumer Protection Goals

April 2013

Energy infrastructure across the United States is aging, and plant retirements are increasing due to a combination of newly implemented and impending environmental requirements and inexpensive natural gas. Utilities and regulators will have to decide how to update or replace aging facilities—estimated at a cost of $1.5 to $2 trillion over the next twenty years. This article in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law explores the opportunities and challenges to aligning state energy, environmental, and consumer protection goals within the current regulatory system, and proposes a “triple bottom line” (“TBL”) approach to state utility regulation to achieve this alignment.

Author (s): Jonas J. Monast, Sarah K. Adair

Metropolitan Gas Cost Vulnerability and the Role of Regional Attributes

April 2013

The U.S. transportation sector continues to provide a variety of challenges to policy makers as a climate issue, an energy issue, and an economic issue. Transportation activity generates nearly 30% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and nearly the same share of energy consumption. Consumers spend, on average, more than $1,400 per year on transportation fuel, an amount that can vary substantially as fuel prices change. All of these are issues that confront policy makers and need solutions. This report presents a first-of-its-kind ranking of gasoline cost vulnerability, or the measure of the economic impact of transportation on typical residents of metropolitan regions.

Author (s): Craig Raborn 

Tackling CO2 Emissions from Existing Coal-Fired Power Plants

March 2013

There is a pressing need for technology improvements that make it cost-effective for coal-fired power plants to capture carbon emissions. Carbon capture and storage technologies are particularly important for the fleet of existing coal-fired power plants, as energy projections suggest that these facilities will continue to provide a major portion of the nation's electric power—and the nation’s CO₂ emissions—for decades to come. 

This paper, the second in the "Deploying Low-Carbon Coal Technologies Series," not only looks at factors affecting domestic coal-fired generation and provides an overview of CO₂ emission projections associated with the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants, but also highlights near-term policy choices. 

Author (s): Brooks Rainey Pearson, Jonas Monast, Jeremy M. Tarr, Jessalee Landfried 

Alternative U.S. Biofuel Mandates and Global GHG Emissions: The Role of Land Use Change, Crop Management and Yield Growth

March 2013

This article in the journal Energy Policy investigates the impacts of the U.S. renewable fuel standard (RFS2) and several alternative biofuel policy designs on global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use change and agriculture over the 2010–2030 horizon. Analysis of the scenarios relies on GLOBIOM, a global, multi-sectoral economic model based on a detailed representation of land use. The results reveal that RFS2 would substantially increase the portion of agricultural land needed for biofuel feedstock production. U.S. exports of most agricultural products would decrease as long as the biofuel target would increase leading to higher land conversion and nitrogen use globally. In fact, higher levels of the mandate mean lower net emissions within the U.S. but when the emissions from the rest of the world are considered, the US biofuel policy results in almost no change on GHG emissions for the RFS2 level and higher global GHG emissions for higher levels of the mandate or higher share of conventional corn-ethanol in the mandate.

Author (s): A. Mosnier, P. Havlik, H. Valin, J. Baker, B. Murray, S. Feng, M. Obersteiner, B.A. McCarl, S.K. Rose and U.A. Schneider

Advancing Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Quantification

February 2013

Better information on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potential in the agricultural sector is necessary to manage these emissions and identify responses that are consistent with the food security and economic development priorities of countries. Critical activity data, what crops or livestock are managed in what way, are poor or lacking for many agricultural systems, especially in developing countries. In addition, the currently available methods for quantifying emissions and mitigation are often too expensive or complex or not sufficiently user friendly for widespread use. This article introduces a series of pieces in a special issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters foces on providing a vision for an improved system for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture.

Author (s): Lydia Olander, Eva Wollenberg, Francesco Tubiello and Martin Herold

Americans Think the Climate Is Changing and Support Some Actions

February 2013

This policy brief presents the results of a recent Duke University survey of American public opinion on climate change and climate policies, which suggests that the percentages of Americans who think the climate is changing and that this change is caused by human activity have reached their highest levels since 2007. Opinions on climate change remain divided across party lines, but the survey found bipartisan support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and for clean energy requirements. However, neither support for carbon taxes nor understanding of carbon markets is widespread. The survey—designed by researchers Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and conducted January 16­–22, 2013—is part of an ongoing effort to inform the climate policy debate, including through assessment of public opinion on policy alternatives.

Author(s): Frederick Mayer, Sarah Adair, and Alex Pfaff

Carbon Markets 15 Years after Kyoto: Lessons Learned, New Challenges

February 2013

Fifteen years after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol and the creation of the first major platform for carbon markest, the prospect for a unified global trading system in the foreseeable future is essentially finished. However, carbon markets are a reality and the design of carbon markets is benefiting from actual experience. The challenge now is to figure out how carbon markets can work in a much more complex world. This article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives offers a comprehensive review of the history of carbon markets to date, lessons learned and recommendations on where we can go in the near future.

Author (s): Richard G. Newell, William A. Pizer and Daniel Raimi

Implications of Alternative Agricultural Productivity Growth Assumptions on Land Management, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Mitigation Potential

January 2013

Future productivity growth in agriculture is necessary to satisfy rising food, fiber, and bioenergy demands, and to contribute to global environmental objectives, including greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. This paper explores alternative crop productivity growth trajectories in the United States and focuses on implications for land use change and emissions on a national scale within the agricultural and forestry systems.

Author(s): Justin S. Baker, Brian C. Murray, Bruce A. McCarl, Siyi Feng and Robert Johansson

Where Is the Carbon? Carbon Sequestration Potential from Private Forestland in the Southern United States

January 2013

In this article, researchers look at the potential of southern forests to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by sequestering carbon. Striving to produce a more realistic assessment of the potential for these forests to sequester carbon in response to future markets or policies, researchers used National Woodland Owner Survey data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program to link landowner demographic and behavioral data with forest conditions. The report also examines barriers to individual nonindustrial private forest participation in carbon offset programs and offers recommendations for overcoming those barriers.

Author(s): Christopher S. Galik, Brian C. Murray, D. Evan Mercer