Displaced Emissions Associated with Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

In 2013, under contract with the EPA, Synapse developed AVERT (the Avoided Emissions and Generation Tool). AVERT is an intermediate-complexity, publicly accessible tool for estimating the potential of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs to displace sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide emissions within the continental United States. AVERT is a flexible modeling framework with a simple user interface designed specifically to meet the needs of air quality managers and other stakeholders. It allows non-expert users to easily, quickly, and flexibly evaluate individual unit emissions displaced by energy efficiency and renewable energy programs with a reasonable degree of accuracy, and yet requires little or no electricity system expertise and no specialized resources to operate. After rigorous peer review and beta testing, AVERT was released to the public in February 2014.