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Brown, Marilyn A.

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Making Buildings Part of the Climate Solution with Flexible Innovative Financing

2012-12 , Deitchman, Benjamin , Brown, Marilyn A. , Wang, Yu

Lack of attractive financing remains one of the most significant barriers to energy-efficiency improvements in commercial buildings. This paper examines a flexible financing policy that would support state and local initiatives via loan loss reserves, tax lien financing, revolving loans, performance contracts, and on-bill programs. We examine the impact of different levels of subsidy covering different numbers of technologies, ultimately selecting a 10% subsidy for 64 qualifying technologies. This policy would save almost half a quad of energy in 2020 and 1.04 quads in 2035, producing net social benefits of $105 billion and a benefit/cost ratio of 1.9. Technologies with significant growth in market share include advanced fluorescents and variable-air-volume ventilation systems. Case studies of other technologies illustrate the advantage of optimizing financial assistance to reflect product maturity and cost-competiveness. A 10% subsidy would produce an estimated ten-fold increase in the amount spent on highefficiency equipment in 2035, and the $3.9 billion subsidy in that year would have only an 11% rate of free ridership.

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Smart-Grid Policies: An International Review

2012-08 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Zhou, Shan

The electric power systems of many industrialized nations are challenged by the need to accommodate distributed renewable generation, increasing demands of a digital society, growing threats to infrastructure security, and concerns over global climate disruption. The “smart grid” – with a two-way flow of electricity and information between utilities and consumers – can help address these challenges, but various financial, regulatory, and technical obstacles hinder its rapid deployment. An overview of experiences with smart-grids policies in pioneering countries shows that many governments have designed interventions to overcome these barriers and to facilitate grid modernization. Smart-grid policies include a new generation of regulations and finance models such as regulatory targets, requirements for data security and privacy, renewable energy credits, and various interconnection tariffs and utility subsidies

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Economic Development and the Clean Economy

2012-01-25 , Pollin, Robert , Brown, Marilyn A. , Porzecanski, Roberto

According to “Sizing the Clean Economy” by the Brookings Institution: The clean economy, which employs some 2.7 million workers, encompasses a significant number of jobs in establishments spread across a diverse group of industries. Though modest in size, the clean economy employs more workers than the fossil fuel industry and bulks larger than bioscience but remains smaller than the IT-producing sectors. Most clean economy jobs reside in mature segments that cover a wide swath of activities including manufacturing and the provision of public services such as wastewater and mass transit. A smaller portion of the clean economy encompasses newer segments that respond to energy-related challenges. These include the solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, fuel cell, smart grid, biofuel, and battery industries. In the context of the Southeast, Georgia and Metro Atlanta, where are these jobs found and what are the prospects for future job creation?

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Reviving Manufacturing with a Federal Cogeneration Policy

2011-10 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Cox, Matthew , Baer, Paul

Improving the energy economics of manufacturing is essential to revitalizing the industrial base of advanced economies. This paper evaluates a federal policy option aimed at promoting industrial cogeneration – the production of heat and electricity in a single energy-efficient process. Detailed analysis using the National Energy Modeling System and spreadsheet calculations suggest that industrial cogeneration could meet 18% of U.S. electricity requirements by 2035, compared with its current 8.9% market share. Substituting less efficient utility-scale power plants with cogeneration systems would produce numerous economic and environmental benefits, but would also create an assortment of losers as well as winners. Multiple perspectives to benefit/cost analysis are therefore valuable. Our results indicate that the federal cogeneration policy would be highly favorable to manufacturers and the public sector, cutting energy bills, generating billions of dollars in electricity sales, making producers more competitive, and reducing pollution. Traditional utilities, on the other hand, would likely lose revenues. From a public policy perspective, deadweight losses would be introduced by market-distorting federal incentives (ranging annually from $30 to $150 million), but these losses are much smaller than the estimated net social benefits of the federal cogeneration policy.

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Making Buildings Part of the Climate Solution by Overcoming Information Gaps through Benchmarking

2012-09 , Cox, Matthew , Brown, Marilyn A. , Sun, Xiaojing

This paper focuses on the impact of benchmarking the energy performance of U.S. commercial buildings by requiring utilities to submit energy data to a uniform database accessible to building owners and tenants. Understanding how a commercial building uses energy has many benefits; in particular, it helps building owners and tenants focus on poor-performing buildings and subsystems, and enables high-performing buildings to participate in various certification programs that can lead to higher occupancy rates, rents, and property values. Through analysis chiefly utilizing the Georgia Tech version of the National Energy Modeling System (GT-NEMS), updating input discount rates and the impact of benchmarking shows a reduction in energy consumption of 5.6% in 2035 relative to the Reference case projection of the Annual Energy Outlook 2011. It is estimated that the benefits of a national benchmarking policy would outweigh the costs, both to the private sector and society broadly. However, its geographical impact would vary substantially, with the South Atlantic and New England regions benefiting the most. By reducing the discount rates used to evaluate energy-efficiency investments, benchmarking would increase the purchase of energy-efficient equipment thereby reducing energy bills, CO2 emissions, and conventional air pollution.

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Making Buildings Part of the Climate Solution by Pricing Carbon Efficiently

2012-07 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Cox, Matthew , Sun, Xiaojing

This report examines the impact of instituting an economy-wide tax on CO₂ emissions in the United States, focusing especially on the changes such a tax would have on the energy and carbon profile of the commercial buildings sector. In terms of energy intensity, a carbon tax is estimated to deliver faster and deeper reductions in the commercial sector than in the rest of the economy. Still, its 6.3% energy intensity improvement falls short of the Better Buildings goal of a 20% increase in the energy efficiency of commercial buildings by 2020. On the other hand, the carbon tax scenario nearly meets the Waxman-Markey and Copenhagen economy-wide carbon reduction goals for 2020, due partly to a more carbon-lean power sector. The effects of carbon taxes on commercial buildings would be technologically transformational and geographically widespread. While energy expenditures would rise and more capital would be required for energy-efficiency upgrades, the avoided pollution and the reduced CO₂ emissions would generate significant human health and ecosystem benefits. To be successful, a broad community of constituents would need to accept the temporal mismatch between immediate costs and long-term benefits.

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Evaluating the Risks of Alternative Energy Policies: A Case Study of Industrial Energy

2012-01 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Baer, Paul , Cox, Matthew , Kim, Yeong Jae

Numerous studies have shown the potential for U.S. manufacturing to cut its energy costs by installing more efficient equipment that offer competitive payback periods, but the realization of this potential is hindered by numerous obstacles. This paper evaluates seven federal policy options aimed at revitalizing U.S. manufacturing by improving its energy economics while also achieving environmental and energy reliability goals. Traditionally, policy analysts have examined the cost-effectiveness of energy policies using deterministic assumptions. When risk factors are introduced, they are typically examined using sensitivity analysis to focused on alternative assumptions about budgets, policy design, energy prices, and other such variables. In this paper we also explicitly model the stochastic nature of several key risk factors including future energy prices, damages from climate change, and the cost of criteria pollutants. Using these two approaches, each policy is “stress tested” to evaluate the likely range of private and social returns on investment. Overall we conclude that the societal cost-effectiveness of policies is generally more sensitive to alternative assumptions about damages from criteria pollutants and climate change compared with energy prices; however, risks also vary across policies based partly on the technologies they target.

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Making Buildings Part of the Climate Solution by Enforcing Aggressive Commercial Building Codes

2012-09 , Sun, Xiaojing , Brown, Marilyn A. , Jackson, Roderick , Cox, Matthew

This paper examines the impact of an aggressive commercial building codes policy in the United States. The policy would require both new construction and existing buildings that undergo major modifications to comply with higher building shell efficiency and more stringent equipment standards similar to the latest versions of the ASHRAE 90.1 Standard. Using the Georgia Tech version of the National Energy Modeling System (GT-NEMS), we estimate that the building codes policy could reduce the energy consumption of commercial buildings by 0.94 Quads in 2035, equal to 4% of the projected energy consumption of commercial buildings in that year. In the four targeted end-uses – space heating and cooling, water heating and lighting – estimated energy consumption would be 17%, 15%, 20% and 5% less than the Reference case forecast in 2035, respectively. The reduction of electricity and natural gas prices along with the consumption decline could save commercial consumers $12.8 billion in energy bills in 2035 and a cumulative $110 billion of bill savings between 2012 and 2035. The environmental benefits of the policy could also be significant. In 2035, 47 MMT of CO2 emissions could be avoided, generating cumulative benefits of $17 billion by 2035. The estimated benefit-cost ratio of this policy within the commercial sector is 1.4, with a resulting net benefit of $59 billion. The positive spillover effect of this policy would lead to an even higher economy-wide benefit-cost ratio.

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Going Green: Sustainable Technologies

2012-04-19 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Lively, Ryan P. , Simpson, Mark

Dr. Ryan Lively, a Postdoctoral Scholar in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, at Georgia Tech, delivered a presentation on novel low-energy intensity separations for biofuels, focusing the potential of Algenol processes for alternative energy production. Mr. Mark Simpson, doctoral student in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech, presented: “The Solar Vortex: Electrical Power Generation Using Buoyancy-Induced Vortices.” Mr. Simpson explored how artificially induced vortices could be harnessed to capture thermal energy. He presented his prototype technology for this purpose, identified the low environmental impact of this novel technology, and presented preliminary findings of its energy efficiency relative to traditional energy sources. Dr. Marilyn Brown delivered a presentation entitled: “The Closing Door on 450 ppm CO or 2° C Rise in Global Temperature.” Dr. Brown addressed the critical role of energy efficiency in meeting national and international energy consumption and CO emissions reductions. Georgia Tech and Duke University have collaborated to advance research in this area and are the only two universities in the U.S. that utilize the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) to model and forecast energy consumption. The NEMS is the major system utilized by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for such energy modeling and forecasting.

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Climate Change and Global Energy Security: Debate and Book Signing

2011-11-11 , Brown, Marilyn A. , Sovacool, Benjamin K. , Curry, Judith A. , McGrath, Robert T. , Norton, Bryan G. , Orlando, Thomas M. , Deitchman, Benjamin

Four faculty at Georgia Tech participated in a debate focusing on the theses of the newly published textbook (Climate Change and Global Energy Security) coauthored by Marilyn Brown (Georgia Tech) and Benjamin Sovacool (Vermont Law School). The book submits that our world already has most of the sustainable energy technologies it needs to do this, but it faces a system of reinforcing barriers that support incumbent technologies, handicap innovation, and prevent change.

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