NREL provides analysis, outreach, training, and technical assistance to state and local government leaders as part of its mission to transfer knowledge and innovation to solve the nation's energy challenges. The goal of this work is to support informed decision making with credible, technology-neutral, accessible, and timely resources.
The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published a report that aligns solar policy and market success with state demographics. By organizing the 48 contiguous states into four peer groups based on shared non-policy characteristics, the NREL research team was able to contextualize the impact of various solar policies on photovoltaic (PV) installations.
NREL was funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to participate in disaster recovery strategic planning efforts between federal, state, and local agencies. Two NREL teams were dispatched to New York and New Jersey in February-April to support FEMA's implementation of the National Disaster Recovery Framework—a guide for Federal support that promotes effective recovery efforts and provides a flexible structure for disaster recovery managers at all levels to operate in a unified and collaborative manner.
From fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012, U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam reported an energy use reduction of 24% and a 42% decrease in energy costs. Those figures they directly attribute to the NREL-led energy assessment trainings they participated in and the subsequent implemented energy-saving retrofits.