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Review of the Drawdown Georgia Solutions Tracker

Marilyn Brown, PhD, NAE, NAS, AAAS, CEM

Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainability

School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tracking Climate Solutions:

Electricity Sector

January 3, 2024

Good afternoon. My name is Marilyn Brown, and with support from RCAF, I have been leading the DDGA research program since 2019, in collaboration with many universities and NGOs across the state. Today’s seminar is part of our initiative to track (and activate) the deployment of climate solutions in Georgia.

I will start off this webinar by giving an overview of the ‘series’ that this webinar is a part of. And I’ll highlight some of Drawdown Georgia’s recent accomplishments.

Then we will turn to today’s two fantastic speakers: Bryan Jacob and Jeff Pratt .

They will share their thoughts about the opportunities and challenges of rooftop solar in Georgia and the current and evolving policy landscape.

This session is being recorded and your mics and videos will be muted throughout.

Please use the chat option to ask questions or comment. Several graduate students are keeping an eye on the chat and will identify questions that the speakers could answer during the Q&A session.

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5 high potential electricity solutions for Georgia

Rooftop Solar

By adding 295,000 new 5 kW home solar systems.

Large-scale Solar

Cogeneration

Demand Response

Landfill methane

By adding 10 new 100 MW large-scale solar installations and 36 new 5 MW community solar projects.

By adding 16 new 25 MW cogeneration plants that generate electricity with waste heat from industrial processes.

If 187,000 additional households shifted 10% of their peak electricity use to off-peak times.

By opening 4 typical landfill facilities with 5 MW gas-to-energy systems.

How each solution could reduce

1 MtCO2-e in Georgia:

Cost per tCO2-e (in $2021)

Source: Brown, MA. et al. (2021). “A Framework for Localizing Global Climate Solutions and their Carbon Reduction Potential,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (31); https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100008118

$-130.4 to -28.7

(with net metering)

$-4.3 to 78.5 (higher # includes back-up gen or storage)

$-196.8

$6.7

$-12.6

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Agenda

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1:00 Welcome & Intro to Drawdown Georgia (Marilyn Brown)

--Please use “chat” for asking questions

--We will be recording this session; the PPT will be posted, but not the video

1:10 Drawdown Georgia's emissions tracker (Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond)

1:20 Navigating the beta version of Drawdown Georgia's solutions tracker (Taylor Clark goes off-line to demo the tracker and data documentation)

1:35 Solution pages, CEJST/LIDAC + Gini coefficients (Marilyn Brown and Ryan Anthony)

1:45 Insights from Drawdown Georgia's website and blogs (Suprita Chakravarthy)

1:50 Q&A (Marilyn Brown)

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Agenda

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11:00 Welcome & Intro to Drawdown Georgia (Marilyn Brown)

--Please use “chat” for asking questions

--We will be recording this session, but will not post the video

11:10 Drawdown Georgia's emissions tracker (Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond)

11:20 Navigating the beta version of Drawdown Georgia's solutions tracker (Taylor Clark goes off-line with a demo of the tracker and the data documentation)

11:30 Alternative mobility, biking, and EV dashboards + Gini coefficients (Marilyn Brown and Ryan Anthony)

11:45 Q&A and next steps (Marilyn Brown)

Intro to Drawdown Georgia

Since its creation in 2019, the Drawdown Georgia Research Team has expanded & diversified, & our research is making a difference�

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The Drawdown Georgia Research Team

A Research Advisory Panel was created in 2023 (more here)

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Track and Estimate Solution Impacts

Diversify Advisors & Research Team

Track and Share GHG Emissions

Profiles

Intro to the Drawdown Georgia Research Program

Mature Business Engagement

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Drawdown Georgia’s emissions tracker�

Marilyn Brown and Bill Drummond

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The Emissions Tracker provides a foundation for tracking solutions

Primary goal: help understand �Georgia's GHG emissions by making them as local, timely, and accessible as possible.

�

Additional goal:

Monitor progress toward net zero
To do this we must separately track both emissions and removals�

The Emissions Tracker is available at:

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Where are the power plants serving Georgia?

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Drawdown�Georgia

by the

Numbers��A free, quarterly,

county-level,

email-based,

subscription

newsletter

Go to drawdownga.org.

At the bottom of the page click on Subscribe to Emissions Data.

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http://bit.ly/3RKedCa

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What electrification adoption rates are needed to meet our national climate goals? See Rewiring America (2023)

According to rewiring America, Space Heating

Currently, 16 percent of U.S. homes use electric heat pumps for space heating (and cooling). We find that nationally, electric heat pump sales need to be accelerated approximately three times over business-as-usual by 2032. This tells us that we need to inspire 703,000 sales of electric heat pumps over baseline in 2024, and 4.5 million sales of electric heat pumps over baseline cumulatively in the next three years.

Last year was the first year that U.S. heat pump sales outpaced fossil fuel furnace sales.

Water Heating

Currently, just one percent of U.S. homes use electric heat pump water heaters for water heating. We find that nationally, heat pump water heater sales need to be accelerated more than 10 times over business-as-usual by 2032. This tells us that we need to inspire 50,000 sales of heat pump water heaters over baseline in 2023, and 542,000 sales of heat pump water heaters over baseline cumulatively in the next three years.

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What electrification adoption rates are needed to meet our national climate goals? See Rewiring America (2023)

According to rewiring America, Space Heating

Currently, 16 percent of U.S. homes use electric heat pumps for space heating (and cooling). We find that nationally, electric heat pump sales need to be accelerated approximately three times over business-as-usual by 2032. This tells us that we need to inspire 703,000 sales of electric heat pumps over baseline in 2024, and 4.5 million sales of electric heat pumps over baseline cumulatively in the next three years.

Last year was the first year that U.S. heat pump sales outpaced fossil fuel furnace sales.

Water Heating

Currently, just one percent of U.S. homes use electric heat pump water heaters for water heating. We find that nationally, heat pump water heater sales need to be accelerated more than 10 times over business-as-usual by 2032. This tells us that we need to inspire 50,000 sales of heat pump water heaters over baseline in 2023, and 542,000 sales of heat pump water heaters over baseline cumulatively in the next three years.

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The Emissions Tracker tells us a lot about what different climate solutions might achieve

● Emissions from electricity declined by 15.8%

Emissions from electricity decreased across all four sectors and especially in commercial buildings (19.4%)

19.4%

18.3%

10.5%

14.3%

● Georgia Power’s 2023 Integrated Resource Plan calls for 4 GW of utility solar and 1 GW of battery storage that will lower emissions further, as well as expanded natural gas power purchases.

● Its Interim Plan proposed in 2023 calls for investing in and purchasing more power (mostly natural gas) to meet an “extraordinary” growth in demand.

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What has motivated adopters of rooftop solar?

What has hindered interested non-adopters?

Our Energy and Climate Survey of 1800 GA households told us a lot about barriers to adopting rooftop solar—GA is 43^rd in the nation

- Environmental benefits of rooftop solar are important motivators

- “High upfront costs” are key to non-adoption

- Solar anchors other climate solutions such as EVs and heat pumps

Source: Brown, M.A. and O.S. Chapman. 2023. “The Importance of co-adoption pathways,” Joule, 7(11): 2421-2422. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2023.10.015

Green Power EMC is making a big difference (President Jeff Pratt)

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To support “peer-suation” and solution activation, we’ve developed the “beta” version of an interactive Solutions Tracker for Georgia

Sector 1

Sector 2

Sector 4

Sector 5

Sector 3, Solution 1

Sector 3, Solution “n”

Landing Page

Sector 3

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Documentation available here

Drawdown Georgia Solutions Tracker Home

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Electricity Solutions

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��

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Navigation Bar

Dynamic titles, legends, and statistics

Solutions Tracker Tour: Large-Scale Solar