Renewable biomass and biomass derived fuels could readily replace fossil fuels in many of the present energy utilization applications with concomitant environmental benefits. Gasification is a form of biomass energy conversion producing a fuel that could substitute for fossil fuels in high efficiency power generation and CHP applications. While fossil fuel resources are heavily concentrated in ...

We estimate the impact of large changes in the relative prices of natural gas and coal from 2005-2011, due primarily to “fracking,” on regional electricity marginal costs and air pollution emissions from electricity producers. We find strong evidence that natural gas is displacing coal as baseload. We estimate marginal emissions over the generation profile for each region in the U.S. using a no...

A study of future energy requirements and of the potential of various energy sources (coal, oil, gas, nuclear power, hydropower and solar energy) indicates that the contribution to be made by nuclear fission, now competitive with conventional energy sources, will grow steadily over the next few decades. Whereas the amount of fuel which has to be fabricated each year for the operation of a nucle...

[1] Sulfate aerosol from burning fossil fuels not only has strong cooling effects on the Earth’s climate but also imposes substantial costs on human health. To assess the impact of addressing air pollution on climate policy, we incorporate both the climate and health effects of sulfate aerosol into an integrated-assessment model of fossil fuel emission control. Our simulations show that a polic...

Rapidly declining gasoline prices from their record high during the summer of 2008, while ethanol prices remained relatively high, made it difficult for many bio-fuel policy modelers to fully explain the impacts of U.S. bio-fuel policies on fuel prices. Using profitmaximization models for blenders, refiners, and distillers, we conduct a comparative static analysis to measure the relative magnit...

This paper studies a dynamic game where each of two large blocs, of fossil fuel importers and exporters respectively, sets either taxes or quotas to exercise power in fossil-fuel markets. The main novel feature is the inclusion of a “fringe” of nonstrategic (emerging and developing) countries which both consume and produce fossil fuels. Cumulated emissions over time from global fossil fuel cons...

[1] Characterizing flow patterns and mixing of fossil fuel-derived CO2 is important for effectively using atmospheric measurements to constrain emissions inventories. Here we used measurements and a model of atmospheric radiocarbon (C) to investigate the distribution and fluxes of atmospheric fossil fuel CO2 across the state of California. We sampled C in annual C3 grasses at 128 sites and used...