This week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that rather than investing in the Haynes, Harbor and Scattergood natural gas power plants to meet the requirements of a 2010 law related to a practice known as once through cooling, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will phase them out in favor of renewable energy.

The Jackson Smart Energy District aims to achieve the parent firm’s 2040 clean energy goals some 15 to 20 years earlier. Those goals include producing 40 percent of the district’s energy needs from on-site renewable sources.

As renewable energy proliferates, major players like Hitachi, ABB and GE are seeing value in combining grid and generation business units.

India has drawn global attention since it started awarding wind power projects at record-low tariffs, spurring optimism that renewable energy could supplant the nation’s abundant coal resources in electricity generation.

The Indian government’s Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved measures to promote the hydropower sector that include declaring large hydropower projects to be part of the non-solar renewable purchase obligation (RPO).

A trailblazing wind-solar hybrid project in western Minnesota could be a preview of what’s to come as renewable developers look for new ways to bolster projects.

According to an analysis by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), new solar and wind generating capacity has taken the lead over natural gas and all other energy sources for the first month of 2019.

RenewableUK highlighted last week that Great Britain’s onshore and offshore wind farms generated more electricity than any other source of power last week.

On Friday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the state’s groundbreaking Energy Transition Act (ETA) into law, meaning that by 2045, the state should be fully powered by clean, carbon-free electricity.

Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is building a 247-MW wind farm that will help the company more than double its use of renewable energy by 2021. The company hired EDF Renewables North America to construct it in a Build and Transfer Agreement (BTA) worth approximately $370 million.

Idaho Power unveiled a goal Tuesday to provide 100-percent clean energy by 2045 on the heels of an announcement that it will purchase 120-MW of solar energy through a PPA with Jackpot Holdings at a price of less than US $0.022 cents per kWh.

Over the past week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced multiple funding opportunities to renewable energy research including $130M for early-stage solar and $28M for wind. Further, the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium announced up to $7M in funding for offshore wind.

MAN Energy Solutions, VERBUND and New Brunswick Power are all experimenting with zero-carbon hydrogen as a future fuel source. Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems is also considering the alternative.

Amazon.com announced today that it plans to purchase the energy produced by three new renewable energy projects as part of its long-term goal to power all Amazon Web Services (AWS) global infrastructure with renewable energy. These projects – a 91.2-MW wind farm in Donegal Ireland, a 91-MW wind farm in Bäckhammar, Sweden, and a 47-MW wind farm in Tehachapi, California – will deliver an expected 670,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of renewable energy annually.

Climate change is picking up pace in Europe, thrusting farmers and power generators onto the front lines of a battle with nature that threatens to upend the lives of the half billion people who occupy the world’s biggest trading bloc.

The Redford Center, a California-based non-profit co-founded in 2005 by Robert Redford and his son, James, announced that every morning, from April 15-22, 2019, the organization will post an episode a day of "Renewable Therapy for Climate Anxiety," a conversational mini-series featuring Filmmaker, James Redford, and Matthew Nordan, clean energy investor and managing partner at MNL Partners. In each two-minute installment, the pair explores questions that nag environmentalists when it comes to renewable energy. Watch the first episode below.

This weekend at its “Earth Day Every Day Fair,” Green Mountain Power announced an energy vision to have a 100 percent carbon free energy supply by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The utility said the move is among the most aggressive carbon targets for a utility of GMP’s size in the country.

Building solar and wind energy projects on potentially contaminated lands can be a golden opportunity, both effective and cost-effective, for developers. The 120-acre Reilly Tar & Chemical Corporation Superfund site was recently redeveloped with a utility-scale solar farm and is a prime example of the reuse potential inherent in thousands of Superfund sites, brownfields, retired power plants, and landfills.

Citing planning delays, a global renewable energy developer has canceled plans for a major wind project in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Last week, LM Wind Power said it had successfully manufactured the world’s first wind turbine blade to surpass 100 meters in length.

This week LM Wind Power, a subsidiary of GE Renewable Energy, announced its plan to recruit 300 additional employees at its wind turbine blade manufacturing site in Bergama, Turkey.

This week global energy and infrastructure group, Eversheds Sutherland, announced that it helped Ball Corporation secure two virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) – one wind and one solar – for a total of 388 MW of new renewable energy. According to Ball, these agreements will allow the company to power 100 percent of its corporate, packaging and aerospace operations electricity load in North America with renewable energy by the end of 2021.

Energy advisory and certification body DNV GL has launched a new digital platform for renewable energy power purchase agreements.

British people need to fly less, drive electric cars, eat little meat and turn their home thermostats down to 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit) in order to rein in greenhouse gases damaging the planet.

Even though there is only one small existing offshore wind farm in the Northeast, the 30-MW Block Island wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, two announcements this week highlight the growing economic importance of the region's burgeoning offshore wind industry.

Last year was the first time since 2001 that growth in renewable power capacity failed to increase year on year.

As of 2018, the city of Los Angeles boasted close to 350 MW of installed local solar power, according to reports. Its solar capacity increased some 44 percent year over year.

This week, Enel S.p.A. announced the opening of its newest Innovation Hub in Boston at Greentown Labs, the largest cleantech startup incubator in the United States. The Hub will provide Enel, one of the world’s leading power companies, access to Greentown Labs’ startup community and innovation expertise.

This week energy developer BayWa r.e. published its Energy Report 2019, which surveyed 1,200 European corporations about their attitudes toward renewable energy.

This week, diversified real estate acquisition and development firm Commercial Development Company and transmission developer Anbaric said they plan to build a renewable energy center at Brayton Point Commerce Center in Somerset, Massachusetts. The site is the former home of the Brayton Point Coal Plant, the cooling towers for which were demolished two weeks ago. (video of demolition at the end of article at this link).

Ameren is preparing to test a Canadian company’s software that could someday help usher in a radically different business model for the utility.

The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved the PPA with utility National Grid for 400 MW in wind power capacity from the Revolution Wind project. Project developer DWW Rev 1 LLC is a joint venture of New England utility Eversource and Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind.

State-run NTPC Ltd., India’s largest coal-fired power producer, is appointing a new head of its renewables team to speed up its expansion into clean energy, according to a company official with knowledge of the plan.

As the world responds to the challenges of climate change, energy systems are evolving, and evolving fast. The past 10 years have seen the rise (and dramatic cost reduction) of renewable energy such as wind and solar, to the extent that they are no longer considered alternative energy. They have become mainstream energy sources. Now, what will be the “next big thing” as the world shifts to a low carbon future?

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) said that is has begun operation of its electric thermal energy storage system (ETES), a milestone in the development of energy storage solutions, according to the company.

On June 12, Target corporation said it was increasing its renewable energy goals by committing to source 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The goal applies to all of Target’s domestic operations.

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule and simultaneously repealed the Clean Power Plan (CPP).

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the twin forces of privatization and deregulation of public infrastructure services ascended to a global paradigm of progress and development. Government management of services such as telecommunications, transportation, water, and energy was deemed inefficient, underperforming, and monopolistic. Private industry – accountable to the profits and losses of an open market and, thus, believed more efficient than government – was proclaimed the better way for consumer choice and a more efficient use of taxpayers’ expenses.

BlackRock Real Assets is aiming to boost its renewables power portfolio in Asia by as much as 10-fold as it seeks to keep pace with the world’s fastest-growing region for green energy.

An Abu Dhabi-based company that builds drilling platforms for oil giant Saudi Aramco plans to diversify into renewable energy by supplying gear for offshore wind farms.

On July 1, Public Service of New Mexico filed a plan with regulators in the state for how it plans to get to a 100 percent emission-free power by 2040. The utility reviewed four scenarios, all of which involved the early retirement of the San Juan Coal Plant, to arrive at its recommended path forward.

Clarion Energy’s Teresa Hansen, vice president of global content, for a webcast Wednesday  will be making some important announcements regarding this year’s event in New Orleans. Hansen also will offer key details on content, the exhibit floor and resources available to attendees.

The projects include a 999-MW wind facility being built north of Weatherford, a 287-MW wind facility being built southwest of Enid, and a 199-MW facility being built south of Alva. They are being developed by Invenergy.

Missouri’s smallest investor-owned utility is charting a dramatically different course two years after being acquired by new owners.

The Skeleton Creek project will be located in three Oklahoma counties

Dustin Yellin, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based artist whose intricate 3D photomontages adorn the likes of New York’s Lincoln Center, wants to draw your gaze to climate change. Not in a subtle way, either. He plans to stand an oil supertanker on its end in the ground—a structure soaring 1,000 feet into the air.

The Trump administration cast the fate of the nation’s first major offshore wind farm into doubt by extending an environmental review for the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt has unveiled changes to the implementing regulations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that Interior says is “designed to increase transparency and effectiveness and bring the administration of the Act into the 21st century.”

It may be time to start building power plants in Texas again.