Electrocatalytic transformation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into chemical feedstocks offers the potential to reduce carbon emissions by shifting the chemical industry away from fossil fuel dependence. We provide a technoeconomic and carbon emission analysis of possible products, offering targets that would need to be met for economically compelling industrial implementation to be achieved. We also provide a comparison of the projected costs and CO2 emissions across electrocatalytic, biocatalytic, and fossil fuel-derived production of chemical feedstocks. We find that for electrosynthesis to become competitive with fossil fuel-derived feedstocks, electrical-to-chemical conversion efficiencies need to reach at least 60%, and renewable electricity prices need to fall below 4 cents per kilowatt-hour. We discuss the possibility of combining electro- and biocatalytic processes, using sequential upgrading of CO2 as a representative case. We describe the technical challenges and economic barriers to marketable electrosynthesized chemicals.

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What would it take for renewably powered electrosynthesis to displace petrochemical processes

Designing microgrid energy markets : A case study : The Brooklyn Microgrid

Microgrids are now emerging from lab benches and pilot demonstration sites into commercial markets, driven by technological improvements, falling costs, a proven track record, and growing recognition of their benefits. They are being used to improve reliability and resilience of electrical grids, to manage the addition of distributed clean energy resources like wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) generation to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and to provide electricity in areas not served by centralized electrical infrastructure. This review article (1) explains what a microgrid is, and (2) provides a multi-disciplinary portrait of today's microgrid drivers, real-world applications, challenges, and future prospects.

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Microgrids: A review of technologies, key drivers, and outstanding issues

Prosumers are agents that both consume and produce energy. With the growth in small and medium-sized agents using solar photovoltaic panels, smart meters, vehicle-to-grid electric automobiles, home batteries and other ‘smart’ devices, prosuming offers the potential for consumers and vehicle owners to re-evaluate their energy practices. As the number of prosumers increases, the electric utility sector of today is likely to undergo significant changes over the coming decades, offering possibilities for greening of the system, but also bringing many unknowns and risks that need to be identified and managed. To develop strategies for the future, policymakers and planners need knowledge of how prosumers could be integrated effectively and efficiently into competitive electricity markets. Here we identify and discuss three promising potential prosumer markets related to prosumer grid integration, peer-to-peer models and prosumer community groups. We also caution against optimism by laying out a series of caveats and complexities.

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Electricity market design for the prosumer era

Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth: Panel data evidence from developing countries

This paper concentrates on ‘middles’ and ‘middle actors’ in energy systems and introduces a “middle-out” framework for examining and supporting systemic change to a lower carbon society. We propose this “middle-out” approach as a complement to “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies. Our approach suggests that two essential elements for successful systemic change are actors’ agency and capacity, where ‘agency’ refers to actors’ abilities to make their own free choices, and ‘capacity’ refers to actors’ abilities to perform the choices they made. We argue that due to their position between top and bottom actors and between technology and implementation, middle actors play crucial functions in the transition process. Their abilities are based to their own agency and capacity which they can exercise to influence the agency and/or capacity of other actors. The paper discusses middle actors vis-a-vis ‘intermediaries’ and demonstrates the value of the middle-out approach. Through elaborated examples of three middle actors – congregations, building professionals, and commercial building communities – it shows how middles exert influence upstream (to top actors), downstream (to bottom actors) and sideways (to other middle actors) through mediating, enabling and aggregating both themselves and others. A few weaknesses of this approach are discussed as well.

More than filler: Middle actors and socio-technical change in the energy system from the “middle-out”

A ‘middle-out’ perspective is used to investigate potential roles for professionals and practitioners in creating societal change. Social and technological innovations are commonly seen as either being induced from the ‘top-down’ or evolving from the ‘bottom-up.’ Instead, a ‘middle-out’ perspective focuses on agents of change that are located in the middle, between the top and the bottom. This perspective shows that middle actors can affect change in several different directions: upstream, downstream and sideways. By linking the top and bottom more explicitly, this approach is both an alternative and complementary to ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ efforts to implementing low-carbon innovations and practices in society. One particular kind of ‘middle’ in the built environment is explored: the role of building professionals to encourage (or discourage) societal change. Focusing on the demand side of the energy system, case studies of building professionals in the domestic and non-domestic sectors are used to em...

Yael Parag

Papers

Microgrids: A review of technologies, key drivers, and outstanding issues

Electricity market design for the prosumer era

More than filler: Middle actors and socio-technical change in the energy system from the “middle-out”

A middle-out approach for improving energy performance in buildings

Network approach for local and community governance of energy: The case of Oxfordshire