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Across recent years, there has been a growing prevalence of extreme weather events throughout the United States, posing significant challenges to the reliable and resilient operation of power systems. Specifically, summer droughts threaten to severely reduce available generation capacity to meet regional electricity demand, potentially leading to power outages. This underscores the importance of accurate resource adequacy (RA) assessment to ensure the reliable operation of the nation's energy infrastructure. Accurately evaluating the usable capacity of regional generation fleets is a challenging undertaking due to the intricate interactions between power systems and hydro-climatic systems. This paper proposes a systematic and analytical framework to evaluate the impacts of extreme summer drought events on the available capacity of various generating technologies, incorporating both meteorological and hydrologic factors. The framework provides detailed plant-level capacity derating models for hydroelectric, thermoelectric, and renewable power plants, facilitating evaluations with high temporal and spatial resolution. The application of the proposed impact assessment framework to the 2025 generation fleet of the real-world power system within the PJM and SERC regions of the United States yields insightful results. By analyzing the daily usable capacity of 6,055 at-risk generators across the study region, it shows that the summer capacity deration is most significant for hydroelectric and once-through thermal power plants, followed by recirculating thermal power plants and combustion turbines. In the event of the recurrence of the 2007 southeastern summer drought event in the near future, the generation fleet could experience a substantial reduction in available capacity, estimated at approximately 8.5 GW, compared to typical summer conditions. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the usable capacity of the generation fleet would suffer an even more significant decrease under conditions of increasingly severe summer droughts. The proposed approach and the findings of this study provide valuable methodologies and insights, empowering stakeholders to bolster the resilience of power systems against the potentially devastating effects of future extreme drought events. [Display omitted] • A systematic summer droughts generating capacity assessment framework is developed. • Capacity derating models for various generation technologies are presented. • The impacts of summer droughts on generating fleet in PJM and SERC are studied. • Impact of extreme summer drought on usable capacity of generators is significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristic features of 21st-century corporate capitalism – monopoly and financialization – are increasingly being recognized by public health scholars as undermining the foundations of human health. While the "vectors" through which this is occurring are well known – poverty, inequality, climate change among others – locating the root cause of this process in the nature and institutions of contemporary capitalism is relatively new. Researchers have been somewhat slow to study the relationship between contemporary capitalism and human health. In this paper, we focus on one of the leading causes of death in the United States; cancer, and empirically estimate the relationship between various measures of financialization and monopoly in the US healthcare system and cancer mortality. The measures we focus on are for the hospital industry, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Using a fixed effects model with different specifications and control variables, our analysis is at the state level for the years 2012–2019. These variables include data on population demographic controls, social and economic factors, and health behavior and clinical care. We compare Medicaid expansion states with non-Medicaid expansion states to investigate variations in state-level funded health insurance coverage. The results show a statistically significant positive correlation between the HHI index in the individual healthcare market and cancer mortality and the opioid dispensing rate and cancer mortality. • We analyze how corporate capitalism is related to cancer mortality. • Recently, corporate capitalism has become more common in the healthcare industry. • We find a correlation between hospital net revenue, profit, and cancer mortality. • There is a link between the HHI index in insurance markets and cancer mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the relationship between income inequality and carbon emissions in the United States between 1929 and 2019. We contribute to the literature by studying if and how the relationship has varied over time. To this end we estimate a band spectrum regression model and a smooth-varying coefficients model. Our results show that higher inequality was associated with lower emissions during the early part of the sample and higher emissions towards the end of the sample. • Whether the level of inequality affects carbon dioxide emssions is unclear. • We test the association between income inequalty and carbon dioxide emissions. • We find that the relationship varies over time. • Changes in consumption patterns may partially explain the time varying effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activists and scholars increasingly blame neoliberalism for the failure to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but there is insufficient research that investigates the theoretical link between neoliberalism and climate paralysis. This paper seeks to fill that gap by presenting a coherent account of how neoliberal ideology has constrained policies to address climate change in the United States. As motivation, we first present evidence suggesting more neoliberal countries perform worse in addressing climate change. We then analyze how three tenets of neoliberal ideology—to decentralize democracy, defund public investment, and deregulate the economy—have stymied climate action in the United States. Finally, we discuss the Green New Deal as a decisively anti-neoliberal framework that seeks to wield the power of the federal government to pursue large-scale public investments and binding climate regulations for rapid decarbonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Comparison of Budyko-based methods to separate catchment and climate effects on flow. • Probabilistic nature of catchment parameter and its uncertainty considered. • New, improved Two-Stage Decomposition method proposed for separation. • Proposed method considers uncertainty in evaporative index using bootstrap method. • Proposed method more robust than using any single earlier-practiced method. Streamflow variability is affected by both climate change and direct human impacts within the catchment. Quantification of the role of these two factors have significant implications for water resources. In recent years, Budyko-based analytical methods have been widely used for such quantification due to their simplicity and efficacy. This paper presents a comparison of such methods to attribute changes in streamflow in four Model Parameter Estimation Experiment (MOPEX) catchments in the contiguous United States. Further, a new, improved Two-stage Decomposition method to separate the role of climate and catchment changes on streamflow is proposed, considering the uncertainty in the catchment parameter that further leads to a range of evaporative index values within a catchment. We find that climate and catchment effects are sensitive to the choice of Budyko equation, disaggregation algorithm and approximation technique. Further, the catchment parameter can be expressed probabilistically, to account for the uncertainty because of limited hydro-meteorological records. The proposed approach employs a bootstrap analysis to obtain the stochastic range of the catchment parameter, considering different choices of Budyko equations. We argue that rather than relying on a single Budyko-based approach for separation of climate and catchment effects on streamflow, the proposed method offers a more robust way by considering the entire range of uncertainty of the catchment parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A comprehensive analysis of data from commercial buildings in United States to identify operational problems and opportunities. • These opportunities were not strongly correlated with building vintage, size, or building type, but were reflective of how the buildings are operated. • This analysis showed that opportunities to improve building operations exist in almost every building. • There was wide variation in whole building energy savings, ranging from 0 to 50% and 0 to 18 $/m2 with median percent annual whole building savings of 12% and median normalized annual cost savings of $1.75/m2. In the United States, as much as 30% of the 19 EJ that commercial buildings consume is considered excess. Much of the excess energy is due to the inability to manage building operations efficiently. Because almost 20% of the total primary energy consumption is associated with commercial buildings, significant energy reductions in this sector are needed to mitigate climate change. Therefore, many cities and states are mandating periodic "tune-ups" of these buildings to eliminate excess energy consumption. Although the benefits of tune-ups and retro -commissioning are clear, focusing these mandates to look for specific opportunities has been a challenge because of the lack of studies that document the prevalence of opportunities. Therefore, we analyzed building automation system data from 151 buildings across the United States to document common operational problems and opportunities to improve building operations. This analysis showed that opportunities to improve building operations exist in almost every building. These opportunities were not strongly correlated with building vintage or size, but were reflective of how the buildings are operated. The prevalence of the top 20 opportunities ranged between 74% and 23%, with 40% of these associated with air-handling units. The rest of the opportunities are associated with schedules, chilled and hot-water distribution, and zone controls. Of the 151 buildings, 69 of them implemented corrective actions of some or all opportunities that were identified. Implementation varied across the Re-tuning categories, with 60% for schedule opportunities, 50% for zone opportunities, over 40% for the air-handling unit and hot-water opportunities, and 35% of the chilled-water opportunities. There was wide variation in whole building energy savings, ranging from 0 to 50% and 0 to 18 $/m2 with median percent annual whole building savings of 12% and median normalized annual cost savings of $1.75/m2. In addition to documenting these key findings, the paper provides a list of opportunities that can be automatically and continuously identified and corrected and offers a list of those opportunities that should be the focus of the mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]