Energy Storage for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction

States are increasingly adopting ambitious clean energy and climate goals, which will require both renewable generation and energy storage technologies. Energy storage can charge directly from renewables or from the electric grid during periods of high renewable energy production, and then export that energy back to the grid during periods of high demand and low renewable availability. This reduces the need to draw upon fossil fuel resources during high demand times, and thereby reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

However, to ensure that energy storage is used in this manner, state programs and policies designed to incentivize energy storage adoption must also be strategically structured to incentivize greenhouse gas emissions reduction. This webinar featured two different state approaches to reducing emissions with energy storage.

The webinar featured presentations by Brian McAuley, Principal Consultant with Verdant Associates, a consultant group that conducts an annual evaluation report on California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program, and Stephan Wollenburg, Director at Sustainable Energy Advantage, a consulting and advisory firm involved in the design of the Massachusetts’s Clean Peak Energy Standard. Dr. Imre Gyuk, Chief Scientist of Energy Storage Research at the U.S. Department of Energy, gave some brief remarks on this topic at the start of the webinar.

This webinar was a presentation of the Energy Storage Technology Advancement Partnership (ESTAP). ESTAP is a federal-state funding and information sharing project that aims to accelerate the deployment of electrical energy storage technologies in the U.S. ESTAP is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity, managed by Sandia National Laboratories, and administered by the Clean Energy States Alliance.