Rhodium Group’s Energy & Climate practice analyzes the effects of policy and market developments on greenhouse gas emissions and energy systems, and provides actionable information about the impacts of climate change. We help public and private decision-makers understand what kind of climate and energy future we are on track for, and what matters most for reducing greenhouse gas emissions—at the state, national, and international levels.
By combining policy expertise with a suite of detailed energy-economic models, our research provides unique, data-driven insights into the impacts of energy and climate change policy and real-world developments on greenhouse gas emissions, energy markets, economic output, and clean technology pathways.
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Since the US enacted the IRA, manufacturing has emerged as the fastest-growing segment of investment in clean energy technologies. We assess the state of key clean technology supply chains for solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles.
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Using our newly developed Federal Investments in Energy Innovation database, we can, for the first time, observe what US public funding for research, development, demonstration, and deployment looks like by technology and stage.
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We estimate how much energy costs could rise for households and industry if Congress chooses to roll back and repeal key pollution regulations and energy tax credits.
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Next-generation geothermal energy has a number of advantages in meeting growing electricity demand from data centers. We estimate how much of this demand could potentially be served by geothermal over the next decade.
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This note is the third in a series of quarterly briefings comparing clean technology deployment and manufacturing trends in Europe and the United States as part of a collaboration between Bruegel and Rhodium Group.
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In the final quarter of 2024, clean energy and transportation investment in the United States totaled $70 billion, reflecting a slight 1% decline from the previous quarter but a 6% increase from the same period in 2023.
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One key driver of sustained industrial emissions is the growth of emissions associated with petrochemical manufacturing in the US, which we estimate could rise by 6-32% by 2030 over today's levels.
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Decarbonization in the transportation sector faces three key barriers: cost, namely a “green premium,” a slow pace of stock turnover, and limits on the availability of feedstocks and fuels.
Trustworthy, integrative data is at the core of Rhodium’s research and services. Our team uses a suite of custom-built datasets and energy-economic models to analyze the effects of policy and market developments on energy systems and greenhouse gas emissions at the international, US, and state levels.
The ClimateDeck—a partnership of Rhodium Group and Breakthrough Energy—provides global and US 50-state greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory data and projections, energy market outlooks, and analysis of energy and climate policy developments.
The Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project with MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, tracks public and private investments in the full landscape of climate technologies in the United States.
The Climate Impact Lab combines climate science, econometrics, and big data analytics to advance understanding of the real-world social impacts and economic costs of climate change.
FY22 and FY23 budget numbers include Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 appropriations for energy RD&D.
The IIJA included roughly $88 billion in funding for clean energy, transportation, and fuel and charging infrastructure. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimates suggest that spending from the IRA clean energy provisions has increased to nearly $666 billion.
We do not include the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 because the bill itself does not directly provide funding for developing and deploying clean energy technologies.
Credit subsidy costs are effectively the cost of the loan or loan guarantee to the federal government. We estimate the credit subsidy cost for each project based on the procedures prescribed by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 for energy programs.
EDF’s Climate Innovation Funding Tracker is the only database of the three mentioned that captures federal spending on climate innovation across multiple federal agencies. However, a significant amount of congressional funding that is being tracked in their database beyond DOE is not related to clean energy technology innovation. We find alignment between our estimates and theirs as it relates only to congressional appropriations to DOE in support of clean energy technologies.
Using Stanford temperature-at-depth data yields directionally similar results. In the 20% green premium baseline, we find 56-62% the national deployment we report for the Project InnerSpace temperature-at-depth maps. At a 50% green premium, this increases to 76-89% of capacity reported above. Regionally, 13 of 15 top markets for deployment are the same between the two cases.
Europe in this note is defined as the EU-27, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK.
The description of the manufacturing process is accurate for the most common type of batteries, including lithium-ion. Advances in sodium-ion chemistries or solid state cells are exciting but, for simplicity, are not covered.
Assuming a battery pack size of 60 kWh.
Assuming GWP20, US petrochemical lifecycle emissions total 340 to 445 MMT of CO2e per year in 2023.
Under a GWP20, primary petrochemical emissions total 140 to 214 MMT of CO2e per year.
Assuming GWP20, derivative emissions total 110 to 140 MMT of CO2e per year.
Assuming GWP20, the range of 2030 emissions is 351 to 603 MMT of CO2e.
