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Assessing the Multiple Benefits of Clean Energy: A Resource for States
Citation:
Assessing the Multiple Benefits of Clean Energy: A Resource for States.
Impact/Purpose:
Many state environment, energy and economic development officials are looking closely at clean energy as they explore its ability to achieve multiple objectives but are not familiar with all the costs and benefits or how they are derived. Assessing the Multiple Benefits of Clean Energy: A Resource for States describes the multiple benefits of clean energy and compiles and explains the range of tools and approaches states can use, from basic to sophisticated, to estimate the potential environmental (greenhouse gas, air pollution, air quality and human health), economic and energy system benefits of clean energy. This makes it easier for state analysts and decision-makers to effectively manage analyses, critically review results that may be presented to them, and make informed recommendations about the clean energy options they should explore or the approaches or tools appropriate for evaluating them.
Description:
Clean energy provides multiple benefits. The Multiple Benefits Guide provides an overview of the environmental, energy system and economic benefits of clean energy, specifically energy efficiency, renewable energy and clean distributed generation, and why it is important to think about multiple benefits, as opposed to individual ones, or costs alone. It presents the analytic tools and approaches available for estimating potential direct energy (i.e. electricity) impacts as the foundation for deriving multiple benefits. The Resource compiles information about the different analytic models and approaches- across a variety of disciplines and rigor levels - available for states to estimate energy systems, environmental (including greenhouse gas, conventional air pollution, air quality and human health) and economic (e.g.costs savings, jobs) benefits. It also describes when the different approaches and tools are suitable to use (e.g. long-term versus short-term study, regulatory analyses versus screening process). Finally, the Resource provides links to and case studies of analyses states have used to support the use of clean energy through the estimation of multiple benefits.