Blog

NREL identified ten climate finance levers that could be applied to USAID programs to increase the scale of investment in clean energy and energy efficiency in partner countries.

• 02/28/2024
• Sophie Schrader

The scale of the climate crisis can feel overwhelming. Wondering how you can help in 2022? We pulled together our top tools and trainings for addressing climate change through development work.

• 01/27/2022
• Neeha Mian

After many years of partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) national laboratories on various energy sector studies and programs, the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID's) mission in India realized an opportunity to coalesce these initiatives into an interlaboratory consortium.

• 12/02/2021
• Isabel McCan

When the government of India set a goal of deploying 175 gigawatts of renewable power by 2022, they understood that changes to their power system's operations were needed to achieve that level of renewable power on the grid. India decided to work with USAID and the United States Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop a comprehensive grid integration study identifying operational pathways that would enable India to efficiently meet its renewable energy target.

• 02/20/2020
• Isabel McCan

The USAID-NREL Partnership developed a suite of resources within the Grid Integration Toolkit that provides information about the role that battery energy storage systems (BESS) play in integrating variable renewable energy, such as wind and solar, into large-scale power systems.

• 10/17/2019
• Isabel McCan

Hanzel Cubangbang first learned about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in college. It became his dream to one day see the campus and conduct the types of research he was studying firsthand.

• 10/11/2019
• Isabel McCan

Understanding the economic impacts of renewable energy development is critical to reaching scale in the clean energy transition.

• 10/02/2019
• Sadie Cox, Isabel McCan

In March 2019, the Government of Haiti released an official request for proposals as part of a broader plan to support the development of minigrids. Minigrids generally involve small-scale electricity generation and can advance energy transitions in rural areas by enabling a power supply for communities lacking reliable electricity.

• 09/26/2019
• Alexis Powers, Sadie Cox

Because of the wide array of threats faced by modern energy systems, power sector resilience is increasingly important. It is critical for policymakers, planners, and system operators to safeguard their power systems from these threats by proactively planning for future needs and investing in resilient power systems.

• 09/03/2019
• Sadie Cox, Isabel McCan

Energy efficiency programs provide multiple benefits that align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, including economic opportunity, improved health, gender equity, and better environmental and climate-related outcomes. However, energy efficiency remains an underused resource in developing countries, where citizens have limited access to power, utilities often struggle to keep up with demand, and financial capital for improving quality of service is scarce.

• 08/21/2019
• Alexandra Aznar, Alexis Powers

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently released a report on how the addition of renewable energy could affect power system operations in the Philippines.

• 11/30/2018
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory

To help encourage private investment in this monumental task, NREL has supported the Power Africa Beyond the Grid Program by helping build an enabling environment for bankable, microgrid investments.

• 11/20/2018
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Colombia will host its first renewable energy auction in 2019 after more than a year of coordination with NREL and USAID.

• 11/07/2018
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Distributed solar, the use of small-scale solar distributed over a local area, can be a powerful tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector.

• 11/28/2017
• Alexandra Aznar

USAID and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have partnered to transfer lessons from Texas state's expansion into wind energy to improve transmission planning by integrating renewable energy deployment and transmission system expansion in developing countries.

• 11/16/2017
• Climatelinks