Here’s our release from @acadiacenter.bsky.social today: acadiacenter.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/u...

@kevinjkircher.com @roselund.bsky.social here’s what an optimized renewable mix looks like for New England in 2050, from @acadiacenter.bsky.social’s analysis last year. See part 1 of our report here:

acadiacenter.org/resource/the...

Electrification drives major RE buildout needs.

Reach out to and support a federal worker today. It has been an unthinkable week.

That’s my starting five. How about yours?

Join @acadiacenter.bsky.social and CATF tomorrow to hear more (seriously) about the evolving grid mix for New England and what it means for infrastructure siting, permitting, and community engagement. See you there!

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Finally, the bigger #interregional #transmission context: most studies only contained limited information on transmission capacity additions as well as net imports into the region. Check out more on our cross-border work via the NGPF project: acadiacenter.org/resource/the...

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On #solar, the studies envision tremendous further growth in the region by 2050. Models prefer the cheaper utility-scale solar by ~3:1, but as our report details, it's an open question whether siting realities on the ground will bring forth a greater share of smaller distributed solar.

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That brings us back to supply mixes for New England. Here’s how the studies aligned on capacity deployments, annual generation totals, and capacity factor. Note the tradeoffs within the study on combustion resources (amount left online by 2050 vs. annual run-time):

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Something we noticed along the way: the level of rigor around input assumptions for projected increases in #demand is quite low relative to the #supply side. Many models included only rough/static assumptions; others included no information at all on, e.g., building shell #efficiency.

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…and for increases to annual load for the region. We also unpacked the differing drivers for each: winter peaks driven primarily by #heatpumps, and annual load growth driven primarily by #electricvehicles.

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But of course, the region’s supply mix is modeled in response to assumptions around growing demand, both for increases first in peak demand, which is projected to shift from summer to winter in the 2030s (note comparison to findings in ISO-NE’s 2050 Transmission Study) …

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To answer that question, we looked at 5 recent studies modeling the evolution of the New England grid under net zero by 2050 scenarios. Short answer: potentially quite a lot (of stuff)! Led by new #solar, #wind, and #storage capacity, plus #transmission.

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Our report is about #siting, #permitting, and #communityengagement around clean infrastructure (solar , wind, storage, transmission, grid infrastructure, etc.) in New England, so we started out by asking ‘roughly how much stuff are we going to need to build?’ Here's a preview:

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For Thanksgiving reading pleasure, #EnergySky, here's a thread unpacking the first half of the report @acadiacenter.bsky.social and CATF released yesterday. Make sure to register for the first of two webinars on the report – taking place next week on 12/5:

us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

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Hey #EnergySky! Are you working on siting, permitting, and community engagement around clean infrastructure? Check out @acadiacenter.bsky.social's new report out today with Clean Air Task Force, examining community-focused pathways for decarbonization in #NewEngland. Lots of good stuff to dig into!