SMARTS’s new publication: “Costs of demand-side solutions for decision-making”

⚡❗Recent geopolitical tensions and volatile energy prices have intensified concerns about energy security, adding urgency to demand-side measures that reduce or shift how people and businesses use energy, rather than how it is supplied. Yet, without cost data comparable to that available for supply-side solutions like solar and wind, demand-side solutions remain underutilized in policy and investment decisions. This study closes the gap by providing a validated method for comparing the costs of demand-side interventions with supply-side alternatives.

Highlights:

💸 A standardized method to compare the costs of demand-side and supply-side solutions

🔎 The same energy service can cost 10%-94% lower than current lifetime baseline costs

📑 53-98% of demand-side solutions cost less than supply-side benchmarks

✅ Demand-side solutions act as resilience hedges and no-regret climate options 

Authors: Joyashree Roy Jingjing Zhang Michelle Johnson-Wang Eric Masanet Shreya Some Muhammad Huzaifa Butt Hon Leung Curtis Wong Leila Niamir Luis Martinez Souran Chatterjee Benigna Boza-Kiss Minghao Xu Nan Zhou

Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2026.102668

#firstfuel #well-being #energy #demand #climate #mitigation #costs #marginalabatementcost #levelizedcostofenergy #avoid-shift-improveframework #technology-behavior-infrastructureframework