Growth in renewable energy in the U.S. over the past decade has been propelled by a number of forces, including rising fossil fuel prices, environmental concerns, and policy support at the state and federal levels. In this article, we review and discuss what are arguably the two most important...

As a market segment for solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption, new homes have a number of attractive attributes. Homebuyers can easily roll the cost of the PV system into their tax-deductible home mortgage and, with rebates and other financial incentives, potentially achieve an immediate net-positive...

Renewables portfolio standards (RPS) have proliferated at the state level in the United States since the late 1990s. In combination with Federal tax incentives, state RPS requirements have emerged as one of the most important drivers of renewable energy capacity additions. The focus of most RPS...

The long economic lifetime and development lead-time of many electric infrastructure investments requires that utility resource planning consider potential costs and risks over a lengthy time horizon. One long-term -- and potentially far-reaching -- risk currently facing the electricity industry...

Installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have been growing at a rapid pace in recent years. In 2009, approximately 7,500 megawatts (MW) of PV were installed globally, up from approximately 6,000 MW in 2008, consisting primarily of grid-connected applications. With 335 MW of...

Concerns about the price and supply of natural gas have deepened in recent years both nationally and in New England. Renewable energy (RE) technologies can directly hedge natural gas price risk by reducing the need to purchase variable-price natural gas-fired electricity generation, and...

Markets for renewable electricity have grown significantly in recent years, motivated in part by federal tax incentives and in part by state renewables portfolio standards and renewable energy funds. State renewables portfolio standards, for example, motivated approximately 45% of the 4,300 MW...

Across the United States, as competition in the supply and delivery of electricity has been introduced, states have sought to ensure the continuation of ''public benefits'' programs traditionally administered or funded by electric utilities. Many states have built into their restructuring plans...

On December 9, the reference case projections from ''Annual Energy Outlook 2005 (AEO 2005)'' were posted on the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) web site. As some of you may be aware, we at LBNL have in the past compared the EIA's reference case long-term natural gas price forecasts...