Marilyn A. Brown

Georgia Institute of Technology | GT · School of Public Policy

Electricity planning often employs average production costs and efficiencies, assuming that energy companies are homogeneous. In reality, firms are heterogeneous in the scale, cost and efficiency of their power generation, leading to various adaptive behaviours such as differentiated investments in CO2 reductions and offsets. This has resulted in m...

Low-carbon ammonia can be produced at relevant scales through the conventional Haber-Bosch process paired with carbon capture and sequestration (blue ammonia) or using a renewable-driven Haber-Bosch process with hydrogen sourced from water electrolysis (green ammonia). The feasibility of each technology depends on the cost and availability of metha...

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) are one of the most prevalent and impactful clean energy policies implemented by states in the U.S. This paper investigates the regional spillover effect of RPS policies using a directed dyad panel dataset of renewable electricity generation in U.S. states from 1991 to 2021. Regional spillover effect is measured...

The rapid reduction in the cost of renewable energy has motivated the transition from carbon-intensive chemical manufacturing to renewable, electrified, and decarbonized technologies. Although electrified chemical manufacturing technologies differ greatly, the feasibility of each electrified approach is largely related to the energy efficiency and...

Relocating pollution-intensive factories is one of the most effective measures to meet mandatory environmental regulations in developed cities while simultaneously imposing environmental pressure on the receiving cities. Existing studies often assume that relocated plants produce the same or higher emissions when relocated. However, the current pol...

Since the Energy Policy Act of 1992, federal facilities have increasingly used performance contracting to finance energy and water efficiency measures. Utility Energy Performance Contracts (UESCs) have received less attention despite having similar goals and processes as Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs). This paper provides a comparison...

Estimating the technical potential of carbon-abatement options involves straightforward calculations, while estimating the achievable potential is more challenging. We illustrate this by examining solar photovoltaics (PV). We estimate that a 92% gap exists between the achievable and technical potential for rooftop solar in Georgia and it is shrinki...

Significance Only 22 states in the United States have climate action plans, and of these, only six consider carbon mitigation, negative emissions, and equity issues. In the absence of robust federal or state policy action, there is a need for subnational carbon abatement planning. However, many of the most robust frameworks for carbon abatement are...

The electrification of transportation and the integration of EVs with buildings connected to clean grids has been touted as one of the key solutions to the global decarbonization challenge. Cities are on the frontlines of current and future electrification, as they depend on and drive electricity generation, distribution, and use. City actors also...

Decarbonizing the electricity system is a low-cost climate pathway that the US could lead by example to achieve science-based 2030 emission-reduction goals. However, fossil energy lock-in is inhibiting the infrastructure transition, and new fossil fuel infrastructure continues to be commissioned across the globe and in the US. Simultaneously, clima...

Distributed energy systems (DES) are the focus of increasing attention as a means of improving the sustainability performance of power and heat production. However, many studies have shown that distributed energy systems have a higher cost than conventional centralized energy generation (CCEP). Previous studies on economic analysis of DES has gener...

Subnational entities are recognizing the need to systematically examine options for reducing their carbon footprints. However, few robust and comprehensive analyses are available that lay out how US states and regions can most effectively contribute. This paper describes an approach developed for Georgia—a state in the southeastern United States ca...

Using bibliometric methods, we examine the persistently high energy bills borne by low-income households in the U.S. This is a mystifying problem in today's age of abundant and low-priced electricity and fossil fuels. After decades of energy-efficiency programs and targeted policies, the average low-income household still spends a disproportionatel...

We develop a methodology for estimating the number and types of jobs that would result from investments in energy efficiency in homes, businesses, and industry. The methodology involves the development of input-output (I-O) bills of goods that characterize how energy-efficiency funds would be spent across sectors of the economy. The methodology bui...

While the environmental benefits of carbon taxes are well documented, their employment impacts are not. We simulate an escalating $25/tCO2 tax on the U.S. electricity system and estimate the resulting employment effects using a computable general equilibrium model. Meta-modeling of the results reveals how carbon taxes influence costs, prices, fuel...

A self-organizing map (SOM) method is adopted in this paper following the maximum flux principle (MFP) to evaluate the energy security level of 30 countries. An integrated and comprehensive index is proposed, which consists of sixteen indicators spanning three dimensions – energy production, energy consumption and environment. Results show that the...

Electricity and transportation systems in industrialized countries are undergoing transformations that, if coordinated, could improve the resilience and environmental performance of energy systems. The electrification of transportation and the expansion of renewable electricity can be leveraged by the bidirectional smart charging of electric vehicl...

The United States (US) federal administration is relaxing energy policies (EPs), with yet uncharacterized effects on ambient air quality. The complex effects of EPs coupled with uncertainties associated with future climate have hindered past quantification. Here, we integrate model simulations to show that compared with a scenario of continued EPs...

1 Urban Electrification: A Knowledge Pathway Towards an Integrated R&D Agenda Executive Summary This white paper is an outcome of a workshop on urban electrification. 2 It outlines a vision for advancing a research and development (R&D) agenda to thoroughly examine the characteristics and relationships among urbanization and electrification and cit...

Electricity powered by biomass is expanding. We examine four recent biopower plants and global benchmarks to assess their overall performance, confirming the characterization of biomass as an "intermediate" resource for power production. Electricity from biomass is more expensive than energy efficiency, natural gas, wind, or solar but substantially...

The original publication had two errors. The abstract was not included and figure 3b was a repetition of figure 6. The original publication was updated.

Smart‐grid architectures can integrate a diverse set of electricity resources, including large power plants as well as distributed renewable resources, electric energy storage, demand response, and electric vehicles. This chapter begins by providing an overview of barriers that hinder smart‐grid deployment and the drivers that motivate it. It revie...

Despite the commitment of the Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit end-of-century global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, few have studied mitigation pathways consistent with such a demanding goal. This paper uses a fully integrated engineering-economic model of the U.S. energy system, to explore the ability of the U.S. electrici...

Fostering the global development of low-carbon technology is crucial to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. This paper analyzes the effect of energy-efficiency policies on lighting patenting between 1992 and 2007, using data for 19 OECD countries. We examine levels of energy-efficiency RD&D expenditures (representing a technology-push approach) an...

Drawing from examples in Germany, California, and Australia, we show that large scale integration of renewable energy in existing electricity grids does not necessarily lead to cheaper electricity, the strengthening of energy security, or the enhancement of economic equity. Indeed, efforts to integrate renewable energy into the grid can thwart effo...

Climate change has far-reaching effects on human and ecological systems, requiring collaboration across sectors and disciplines to determine effective responses. To inform regional responses to climate change, decision-makers need credible and relevant information representing a wide swath of knowledge and perspectives. The southeastern U. S. State...

This chapter focuses on the well-documented misalignment between energy-related behaviors and the personal values of consumers, which has become a major source of angst among policymakers. Despite widespread pro-environmental or green attitudes, consumers frequently purchase non-green alternatives. The chapter identifies 50 theoretical approaches t...

Climate change has far-reaching effects on human and ecological systems, requiring collaboration across sectors and disciplines to determine effective responses. To inform regional responses to climate change, decision-makers need credible and relevant information representing a wide swath of knowledge and perspectives. The southeastern U. S. State...

The electric power systems of many industrialized nations are challenged by the need to accommodate distributed renewable generation, increasing demands of a digital society, growing threats to infrastructure security, and concerns over global climate disruption. The “smart grid”—with a two‐way flow of electricity and information between utilities...

The Chinese power sector faces a significant challenge in attempting to mitigate its CO2 emissions while meeting its fast-growing demand for electricity. To address this challenge, an analytical framework is proposed that incorporates technological learning curves in a technology optimization model. The framework is employed to evaluate the technol...

Prior research has shown that land use patterns and the spatial configurations of cities have a significant impact on residential energy demand. Given the pressing issues surrounding energy security and climate change, there is renewed interest in developing and retrofitting cities to make them more energy efficient. Yet deriving micro-scale reside...

Decarbonizing the global electricity system is expected to contribute significantly to mitigating climate change. A significant body of research has focused on the development of low-carbon power systems; hence, this bibliometric review is timely. We assess the global scientific research on low-carbon electricity both quantitatively and qualitative...

Energy efficiency (EE) is rapidly growing in many markets today, but its its cost-effectiveness and potential for growth are being hotly debated. These controversies impede public and private investment in efficiency programs, products, and services. As the stakes rise, the debate has heated up and the need grows to clarify the disagreements and di...

As temperatures across the globe hit record highs and extreme climate events multiply, interest in least-cost CO2 mitigation pathways is growing. This paper examines the pros and cons of strengthening demand-side options in strategies to reduce carbon emissions from the U.S. electricity sector. To date, demand-side management in the U.S. power sect...

This article deals with the nexus between energy policymaking and ideology. The article builds and expands upon a theoretical social constructivist analytical strategy, or framework, put forth for the purposes of conducting energy policy analysis. It then addresses criticism that this strategy constitutes “postmodern mush” that has no place in ener...

Building energy consumption makes up 40% of the total energy consumption in the United States. Given that energy consumption in buildings is influenced by aspects of urban form such as density and floor-area-ratios (FAR), understanding the distribution of energy intensities is critical for city planners. This paper presents a novel technique for es...

The expansion of distributed solar necessitates additional research into the impacts on both utilities and their customers. In this paper we use New Jersey solar data, PJM market data, and demand profiles from a PJM utility to investigate rate and bill impacts of large-scale solar penetration. In addition to the subsidization of solar adopters by n...

The revolutionary boy at the barricades was memorably envisioned in Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People (1830) and Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables (1862). Over the course of the nineteenth century, images of the Paris urchin entered the collective social imaginary as cultural and psychic sites of memory, whether in avant-garde...

Keen and Apt (2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 124014) ask if high penetrations of cogeneration are good for society? For industrial combined heat and power systems, the answer is affirmative. For commercial cogeneration, on the other hand, the costs and benefits depend on market rule, rates, and policies.

For more than 20 years, the large-scale application of flue gas desulfurization technology has been a dominant cause of SO2 emission reductions. From 1994–2004, electricity generation from coal increased, but the shift to low-sulfur coal eclipsed this. From 2004–2014, electricity generation from coal decreased, but a shift to higher-sulfur subbitum...

This paper presents a methodology for the calculation of household travel energy consumption at the level of the traffic analysis zone in conjunction with information that is readily available from a standard four-step travel demand model system. The methodology presented in this paper embeds two algorithms. The first algorithm provides a means of...

Realizing the ambitious commitments of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) will require new ways of meeting human needs previously met by burning fossil fuels. Technological developments will be critical, but so will accelerated adoption of promising low-emission technologies and practices. National commitments will be more achievable if inte...

How climate change might impact energy demand is not well understood, yet energy forecasting requires that assumptions be specified. This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between global warming and the demand for space cooling in buildings. It then estimates two key parameters that link energy for space cooling to cooling degree day...

This study used the GT NEMS model to analyze how the proposed federal regulation on carbon emissions will impact investments in the U.S. electricity generating capacity at the federal and Census Division level for 2016-2030. Results show that in order to reduce emissions by 32% by 2030, cumulative investments will increase from 399 to 414 billion U...

Water managers throughout the world are increasingly challenged to provide reliable and affordable water supplies to growing human populations, under conditions of climate variability and competing demands. At the same time, there is growing recognition of the interconnections between water and energy use (the water-energy nexus), and calls for int...

More than 1000 cities in the United States have signed the Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, yet few have created comprehensive estimates of their energy consumption and carbon emissions footprints. In this paper, we provide estimates of both of these measures for residential and commercial buildings in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the...

Marilyn A. Brown is an endowed Professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Public Policy. Previously, she held leadership positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She has authored more than 250 publications and four books including Climate Change and Global Energy Security (MIT Press, 2011). Her research focuses on the design an...

Recent literature on demand response raises questions about the long-term capacity and carbon emissions impacts of expanding its deployment. To provide economy-wide insights into how demand response, capacity planning, and carbon emissions might interact in the future, we perform economic forecasts using a computational general equilibrium model ba...

This paper provides a global overview of the design, implementation, and evolution of building energy codes. Reflecting alternative policy goals, building energy codes differ significantly across the United States, the European Union, and China. This review uncovers numerous innovative practices including greenhouse gas emissions caps per square me...

Sustainable economic development requires the efficient production and use of energy. Combined heat and power (CHP) offers a promising technological approach to achieving both goals. While a recent U.S. executive order set a national goal of 40 GW of new industrial CHP by 2020, the deployment of CHP is challenged by financial, regulatory, and workf...

Policies to improve end‐use energy efficiency have invoked great interest over the past several decades because the reduction of energy waste is often the fastest, cheapest, and cleanest energy resource. Most energy‐efficiency (EE) programs and policies to date have been implemented in industrialized nations. This article reviews some of the more i...

This landmark work lauds the benefits of decreased energy consumption, investigating its relationship to public policy and analyzing its potential billion-dollar benefits to the U.S. economy. U.S. consumers tend to use energy indiscriminately?something they may no longer be able to do with impunity. This game-changing book asserts that reducing ene...

This article correlates energy policy and practice with the multidimensional concept of energy security and empirical performance over forty years. Based on an analysis of 22 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development between 1970 and 2010, it concludes that many industrialized countries have made limited progress toward...

Alexander Smith studies energy policy as a doctoral candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Public Policy. His work focuses upon electric power policies and policies toward science, technology, and innovation. Smith has worked with NEMS-based models to forecast impacts of growth in demand response and other energy futures and has w...

This paper estimates the economically achievable potential for improving electricity end-use efficiency in the USA from a sample of policies. The approach involves identifying a series of energy efficiency policies tackling market failures and then examining their impacts and cost-effectiveness using Georgia Institute of Technology's version of the...

Improving the energy efficiency of the built environment and expanding the use of distributed energy to power energy services are two low-carbon approaches that have received considerable attention over recent years. Both of these electricity resource options could be fostered by supportive smart grid technologies and policies, enabling a two-way f...

Numerous studies have shown the potential for US manufacturing to cut its energy costs by installing more efficient equipment that offers competitive payback periods, but the realization of this potential is hindered by numerous obstacles. This paper evaluates seven federal policy options aimed at revitalizing US manufacturing by improving its ener...

A smart grid is an electricity network that can (1) cost-efficiently integrate a diverse set of generators, (2) enable consumers to play an active role in managing the demand for electricity, and (3) operate at high levels of power quality and system security. Policies to promote smart grids include net metering tariffs and time-of-use pricing; int...

US cities are beginning to experiment with a regulatory approach to address information failures in the real estate market by mandating the energy benchmarking of commercial buildings. Understanding how a commercial building uses energy has many benefits; for example, it helps building owners and tenants identify poor-performing buildings and subsy...

We compare electric and diesel urban delivery trucks in terms of life-cycle energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and total cost of ownership (TCO). The relative benefits of electric trucks depend heavily on vehicle efficiency associated with drive cycle, diesel fuel price, travel demand, electric drive battery replacement and price,...

This paper develops a typology of suburbs based on profiles of community need. It illustrates that suburbs vary greatly in their needs for community development and that their dimensions of hardship combine such that suburbs cannot be placed along a continuum on which every dimension of need increases. Suburbs having similar overall levels of need...

This paper examines the spatial dynamics of suburban crime. Four hypotheses are developed postulating a decreasing central city-suburb disparity in crime rates, persistence in the relative crime rates of individual suburbs, a growing heterogeneity in the levels of crime faced by individual suburbs, and an increasing regionalization of suburban crim...