Energy Systems Consulting Perspectives

OnLocation presents the third and final blog in a series that identifies the top environmental and energy policy challenges for 2021 and beyond. This blog focuses on policies aimed at expanding the use of clean fossil-fueled technologies in the power and industrial sectors with the goal of reducing pollution while preserving fuel diversity, improving grid reliability, and utilizing low-cost domestic sources of coal and natural gas.

Arguably the biggest overarching challenge today is to mitigate the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. All energy-using sectors, including the power and industrial sectors, use a mix of energy sources that include fossil fuels (coal, oil and/or natural gas) that release energy-related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions in the atmosphere. But what if these fossil-fueled technologies could capture and store CO₂ instead of emitting it? These technologies exist today but in most cases are too expensive to implement without policy incentives.

This series of blogs provides policymakers, especially state energy offices and non-governmental organizations, with a clear vision of the benefits of each approach to reducing CO₂ emissions, how different policy options can enable them, and considerations to make when choosing a path forward. Finally, we recommend integrated energy modeling for analyzing the various policy options.

Frances Wood and Sharon Showalter at OnLocation co-authored a paper that was recently published in the journal Energy Policy titled “Could congressionally mandated incentives lead to deployment of large-scale CO₂ capture facilities for enhanced oil recovery CO₂ markets and geologic CO₂ storage?” The paper describes the results of a joint study performed in coordination with the Stanford University Energy Modeling Forum, an organization that promotes the use of energy policy models to improve the understanding of important energy and environmental issues. Other organizations involved in the study include the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Electric Power Research Institute. The study was performed using five energy models, including a customized version of the National Energy Modeling System created by OnLocation and referred to here as the CTUS-NEMS model.

A compelling new report released by the American Petroleum Institute (API) in early September highlights the negative consequences expected from recent proposals that would ban federal leasing of public lands and waters for natural gas and oil development in the United States. The API report, “The Consequences of a Leasing and Development Ban on Federal Lands and Waters,” concludes that such a ban would result in significant negative impacts on U.S. energy security, the economy, and the environment.

Recently there have been calls for a ban on U.S. oil and natural gas production using hydraulic fracturing (also known as “fracking”), and several states have passed laws banning its use. To investigate such a policy initiative, the American Petroleum Institute (API) turned to OnLocation to provide quantitative modeling and analysis to determine the impacts of an outright ban on fracking. API chose OnLocation because of its reputation for respected and timely analysis of this nature.