As the world rapidly builds renewable energy infrastructure and transportation networks, the critical minerals' sourcing, processing, and trading will have profound economic, environmental, and geopolitical implications. Ensuring the critical minerals’ supply meets ever-rising demand while navigating the mineral supply chain’s impacts on the environment and society is a daunting challenge.
In the American Southeast, oil and gas developers have shown interest in learning the economics of offshore wind. States and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management have wanted to encourage this interest. This memo sets out steps for state-federal cooperation to encourage offshore wind deployment around and across the...
Electric vehicle charging / Automotive Rhythms / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
The Inflation Reduction Act brims with incentives to invest in lower-carbon economic infrastructure. But, asks one economist, what happens if consumers only respond with vigor to the cash they see moving in and out of their checking accounts? The case for a carbon dividend remains open, according to James K...
Could hydrogen signal a dawn in all sorts of clean infrastructure?
Hydrogen investors say the abundant element can replace carbon throughout economies. Hydrogen skeptics (and shorts) say that producing adequate hydrogen supply requires intolerable amounts of carbon pollution. Some startups are looking at chemistry - and tax credit financing via the United States' Inflation Reduction Act - to increase the supply...
There's too much operating need for carbon-heavy energy, and climate change is too far along, for society to do all its sustainability work through a switch to renewable fuels. Removing carbon from the atmosphere becomes necessary - and financing the removal involves a range of risks.