Renewables reduce carbon production when they replace power plants that use fossil fuels, but it’s possible that something like a solar panel could have a measurably greater impact if it’s built in a region with more carbon emissions and less renewable energy proliferation.
Clearloopa carbon reduction subsidiary of solar developer Silicon Ranch, and WattTimea data-driven nonprofit that researches carbon emissions has written a white paper titled “Curing Carbon Blindness: How Carbon-Focused Renewable Energy Development Can Accelerate Decarbonization and Combat Environmental Inequality in the US.” The goal of the document is to provide a clearer framework for which regions in the United States could benefit most from renewable energy developments such as solar energy.
World of solar energy spoke with white paper co-authors Laura Zapata, CEO and co-founder of Clearloop, and Laura Corso, VP of strategic growth at WattTime, about the disparity in carbon production and reduction among US regions and where renewable energy deployment will have the most impact could have .
This interview has been edited for brevity.
SPW: In what areas do you see the most value in carbon reduction through the introduction of solar or other renewable energy plants?
Laura Zapata: We haven’t seen much sustainable development in the center of the country. We’re starting to split up the different balancing authorities. Our grid in the United States is a patchwork of grids, depending on how you divide it. But essentially the Southeast, where Clearloop is located, is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and those are things on the margins that we can really tear down and clean up.
Laura Corso: If we focus initially on some of these southeastern and southern midlands, we see where the penetration of renewables has been greater, particularly in the Southwest Power Pool region, but it has been very wind-biased. And so having a focus on an alternative, renewable good with a different distribution profile helps to balance different times of the day, where often the wind will be a great resource overnight, while the sun will of course this will counteract during the night. day. So if we can focus not just on renewables in general, but also on the types of renewables in these regions, that could also have very different impacts.
What was the process like to identify these regions most in need of renewable energy?
LZ: To start, the first thing you can look at is the overall network mix, what resources exist in a given region. In Tennessee and Mississippi, those areas in particular, it’s very clear that the preliminary base load associated with those regions – the nuclear, the hydro – is all great, but what’s on the margins is often very dependent on that fossil resources. That’s the high level we need to look at, breaking down the country into the different ways the grid is balanced. You can easily see which generators respond most often in the margin. And at a high level, that’s a perfect way to focus on it. As you dig deeper and deeper into the specifics of the sub-regions, you may start to see variation in terms of the impact a particular project will have within them. pile.
LC: What we’re looking at is that high level, the site-specific, marginal emissions, and then really combining that with our specific resource or radiation intensity, and then the distressed community index. We put all those things together, and what we come up with is: how many watts of solar do you have to build in a given area to offset a ton of carbon?
If you’re comparing different states, it’s a rough way to think about it because some states are divided into different grids, so that gets a little more complicated. But roughly speaking, if you look at those different states, you see that it takes 80 W of new solar to offset a ton of carbon in a place like California versus a place like Louisiana, where there’s 30 W of new solar energy is needed to compensate. a ton of carbon.
What we’re trying to do then is say, “You can build something smaller and get more bang for your buck when it comes to carbon.” And we can do that in more of these communities.
I’m curious about that jump between the wattage needed to offset a ton of carbon between California and Louisiana.
LZ: The basis is always the marginal emissions, right? What is the carbon intensity of the network in that specific location? What we’re saying in this white paper is that it really matters, location and time really matter in the United States. But location is what sets renewable energy development apart because the carbon impact you can have as a result of where you go really matters.
How complicated is it to collect national data on CO2 production?
LC: From an emissions perspective, there was no marginal emissions data until Watt Time was founded. So that was one of the first keys that we tried to unlock, it was basically making data available that can be used in these decisions. As we learn more about each grid, and more data is available, the model gets smarter and grows.
Finding financial companies and organizations is a very big hurdle in this area, and we need to find more and more ways and means to make that possible. The first thing that we can do, and that has clearly been really highlighted, is to prioritize the low carbon and emissions element of decision-making. It’s great that there are so many more companies focusing on decarbonization, doing VPPAs and thinking about this, but often the emissions avoided can be a deciding factor after other criteria are taken into account. And I think Clearloop is really looking at this from a different angle, saying that we want to make this one of the first criteria used when deciding on new projects.
How do you lead these companies that are trying to reduce their carbon emissions so they can make a bigger impact, rather than going where it might be easiest?
LZ: This is the intersection of: if you want to do something good for the environment, you can also do something good socially, where you combine these two things and say: by going after the most carbon-intensive networks: you also focus on some of the most underserved communities and you can bring new clean energy infrastructure to life in a community that hasn’t seen any development in years.
The impetus, and the real driving force for me to start Clearloop, was that we could do something here in the woods, and being a Tennessan, and a proud one, I wanted to see more investment in my home state. If we see all this private capital out there, let’s get it invested in my home state. Then when you look at the data and see the disparity, that in some cases, per state, you can achieve 50% more emissions reductions – that’s shocking.
Are there common features between these regions that cause more CO2 emissions?
LZ: I think at the intersection between fossil fuel dependence and distressed communities, where you see poverty and chronic underinvestment, you see that the overlap is real. This idea of intersectionality, where you also see high-poverty communities and fossil fuel-dependent communities, is all intertwined. You don’t see that as much in the Rockies – the socio-economic factors that we focus on as well. But you see it in the Mississippi Delta further out. You see that these are the same places where we haven’t invested infrastructure in a long time.
LC: There are certainly similarities you could find, but this doesn’t necessarily apply 100% to all fossil regions today. It depends on what those different comparable metrics are. There are certainly some from a socio-economic point of view that have similar characteristics. But then when you look at one region versus another, they can also look very different in terms of population, in terms of just the overall industry.
What do you hope to achieve by publishing this white paper?
LZ: This white paper is a blueprint. It is a map that says: this is where we have to go, here is the treasure. Now it’s time for action. Let’s really scale the action we’ve seen so far and the success we’ve seen so far. It’s a very clear way of saying that the treasure is here and it’s worth it. It is worth it to have fair access to clean energy, to start investing and to go through the difficulty of being first and pioneering different ways to unlock it.
The full white paper ‘Curing Carbon Blindness: How Carbon-Focused Renewable Energy Development Can Accelerate Decarbonization and Confront Environmental Inequities in the US’ can be accessed. here.