Can a home be beautiful, powered entirely by solar energy, use sustainable heating and cooling systems and save it’s owners roughly $3,500 a year? Why, yes it can. Just ask Joanne Coons, who built her award winning, single-family, Net Zero Energy Home in 2010. Sustainable Woman Joanne talks Net Zero standards, efficient appliances and goods, her 10kW solar panels and more.

Utilities are a natural partner for the geothermal heat pump (GHP) industry. Why? Because utilities have a broad consumer base and infrastructure, and need to both build load (sales) and levelize that demand to make the most efficient use of their electrical generation capacity throughout the year.  GHPs are a technology that fills that niche.

This week Autogrid announced that it entered into a partnership with Swell Energy to provide software for managing Swell’s growing fleet of distributed energy resources (DER).

Utilities across the country are increasingly taking a proactive role on initiatives to advance clean energy and grid modernization. But to hear a utility CEO like Kipp focus unequivocally on one of the most critical drivers for the growth of solar and storage was striking — and yet another sign of the sector’s ongoing transformation.

Experts from Rocky Mountain Institute, the Advanced Energy Economy Institute and America’s Power Plan have released a new report that shows why new utility business models are key to the energy transition.

As utility customers invest more in advanced energy technologies, buildings are becoming dynamic energy hubs. Anywhere, anytime, a building could be a consumer, storage point, or generator of energy. And a building’s energy profile could change instantaneously as it responds to signals from internal controls, the grid operator, or third parties to deploy assets like controllable water heaters, smart equipment, solar, and storage.

When California voted to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, it sent a signal to the market about which types of power generation technologies will remain competitive into the future. And according to Mike Ferguson, Director, North America Energy Infrastructure and Sustainable Finance with S&P Global Ratings, what California does, other states may soon follow.

Ontario plans to cut carbon gas emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, setting reduction targets for industries and encouraging private investments in clean technologies.

The fact that approximately 74 percent of Europe’s population are city-dwellers is a testament to how people have been drawn to cities throughout history. Whether for a lack of job opportunities in rural areas or possibilities for a better lifestyle, unfortunately the unprecedented speed and scale of urbanization does put tremendous pressure on a city’s resources, often resulting in detrimental environmental impacts.

2018 was another defining year for the lithium supply chain as the global population continued to make remarkable strides towards the implementation of clean energy and transportation. Although the clean energy and transportation industries are only in their early days, it has become apparent that renewables and electrification of transportation are an irreversible trend, one that has begun to disrupt many established industries.

It’s hard to find a common thread between the business models of Gap, Bloomberg, Cox, Salesforce and Workday but today they are announcing that they all have one big thing in common: their desire to clean up their organizations’ energy supply by using renewable energy.

Last week, Sunrun announced that its bid to supply 20 MW of residential solar + storage capacity into the New England ISO Forward Capacity Market for 2022-2023 was approved. According to Chris Rauscher, Director of Policy and Storage Market Strategy for Sunrun, this is not a pilot project or an experiment in any way.

Today, Smithfield Foods and Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE) announced that they have formed a joint venture called Monarch Bioenergy to produce renewable natural gas (RNG) across Smithfield’s hog farms in Missouri.

Yesterday, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) announced the launch of the Access Clean Energy Savings (ACES) initiative. ACES provides technical assistance to help rural electric cooperatives and public power utilities apply for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Electric Savings Program (RESP), which provides zero-interest 20-year loans for improving energy efficiency.

This week the University of Nevada, Reno announced two discoveries in the Great Basin by the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology using a previously untried method for finding unknown, hidden geothermal resources.

Big Oil wants to put a box in your hall closet that works like a human brain, can cut the lights, stop the refrigerator and will know how you move about in the privacy of your home better than you do.

Seattle, WA-based LevelTen Energy helps corporate buyers of renewable energy find and purchase energy from solar and wind projects within North America through its procurement platform. The company says its solution reduces the cost, complexity, and risk of renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPAs), by incorporating analytics, aggregation, and process best practices.

Here’s the latest wrinkle in the battery boom: National Grid Plc is paying consumers to tap electricity from their power-storage systems.

Last week in San Antonio, Texas, about 150 DISTRIBUTECH stakeholders convened to discuss industry trends, best practices for marketing and sales in the utility industry and set the educational agenda for the 2020 event.

Last week, Corvias announced that it had entered the final phase of its geothermal installation and energy upgrades effort at the U.S. Army’s Fort Polk in West-Central Louisiana, a milestone that once complete will not only modernize the aging infrastructure but save the Army significant money and benefit military families.

A new report from Navigant Research released this week says that revenue from device and data management technologies could grow from approximately $14.8 billion in 2018 to more than $22.1 billion in 2027 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.6%.

The latest crop of utility participants includes NRG Energy, Cleco Corp., Entergy, Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, AEP’s distributed energy ventures group AEP OnSite Partners and Hindustan Power from India.

Belgium-based Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V. is sponsoring a research program at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) that may dramatically reduce the incidence of post-natal fatalities in developing countries.

Australian urban planning and design and economics consultancy Cistri is using its evidence-based insights to help Asian developers design and plan urban communities that enhance quality of life.

Visitor centers at large hydro projects in the U.S. nearly became an endangered species after 9/11. Fears about additional attacks on critical infrastructure led to restricting public access to many hydro projects, putting visitor centers in jeopardy.

President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from 2008 levels over the next 10 years by shifting to renewable energy sources such as solar power.

Political deadlock over Australia’s clean energy future is prompting companies such as Vestas Wind Systems A/S and Acciona SA to increasingly turn to rival markets for growth.

Stocks of clean-energy companies are proving to be better investments than those of companies that produce most of the Western Hemisphere's power, and are outperforming the rest of the stock market as well.

The evidence is found in the New York Stock Exchange Bloomberg Americas Clean Energy Index. Its 141 companies, all based in North and South America, returned 32.62 percent in the past two years. In contrast, the 40 conventional-energy companies in the Standard and Poor's 500 Energy Index returned 1.02 percent over the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Clean energy also is beating the rest of the stock market. The Clean Energy Index is up 6.02 percent so far this year. Lagging behind are both the S&P 500 and the Russell 3000 Index, which gained 3.12 percent and 3.86 percent respectively in 2015.

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said 13 percent of power stations burning lignite, a cheap form of coal, would be phased out by 2021 under a program to cut power industry pollution. The government abandoned talks on proposals to impose a climate-change fee that the industry said would have forced mines and plants to close, threatening jobs.

Scotland-based power and environmental consultant Aquatera Ltd. Has entered into a partnership with the Nagasaki Marine Industry Cluster Promotion Association in an effort to help Japan bolster its marine energy sector through international collaboration.

Development-ready sites, with existing reservoirs for new pumped hydro energy storage plants, offer generation potential of 2,291 GWh, according to a newly released report from the eStorage Project.

Venezuela's government is lifting electricity rationing that began more than two months ago due to drought and rising temperatures that affected water levels at the 1,500-square-mile Guri Reservoir.
 

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has approved a supreme decree to carry out final design studies for the 3,251-MW El Chepete and 425-MW El Bala hydro projects in La Paz department.

Bernadette A. Hernandez-Sanchez, Ph.D., is a chemist and now the first female researcher from Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) to receive the Outstanding Technical Achievement award from Great Minds in STEM.
 

The user selection board of the €11 million (US$11.8 million) Funding Ocean Renewable Energy through Strategic European Action (FORESEA) project has awarded “Recommendations for Support” to 15 offshore renewable energy technologies, according to an announcement today from FORESEA.  

New research shows that small run-of-river (ROR) hydropower projects can provide just as much baseload stability as reservoir-based hydropower plants while being highly responsive to real-time grid and market changes. This means that as the U.S. seeks to expand renewable energy sources without compromising reliability, one option is more flexible (and profitable) hydropower that doesn’t involve dams.

It was a milestone deal, not for its size but for the number of parties. In January, five big companies, each with differing energy requirements and renewable strategies, agreed to pool their investment and collectively purchase 42.5 megawatts from a North Carolina solar project.

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in a ‘Green New Deal’ for the United States. It is seen as a way to solve pressing environmental, employment and economic problems with a single comprehensive plan. Modeled on Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created jobs, invested in large infrastructure projects, and pulled the US out of the Great Depression, the Green New Deal is a modern version of that program, but with green energy investments, 21st century job training, and deficit reduction as the key components.

Cities and renewable electricity have, respectively, become the habitat and energy of choice globally. The two are increasingly inseparable. Urbanization and electrification trends have turned cities and the grid into leading platforms for human activity, presenting unique opportunities for today’s utilities to partner with municipalities to achieve their smart city goals.

A new career map, Careers in Climate Control Technology, provides a first-of-its-kind interactive, visual tool to showcase the employment opportunities that exist in the swiftly growing HVAC/R industry – Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration. The sector is on track for projected growth of 15 percent from 2016 to 2026.

Climate-conscious Vermont utility, Green Mountain Power, is partnering with Tesla Inc. as it aspires to install battery systems in every home it serves.

Yesterday, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) announced the launch of the Access Clean Energy Savings (ACES) initiative. ACES provides technical assistance to help rural electric cooperatives and public power utilities apply for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Electric Savings Program (RESP), which provides zero-interest 20-year loans for improving energy efficiency.

Oil companies, automakers and consumer products manufacturers will unleash a campaign for a U.S. tax on carbon dioxide emissions even though it may lead to higher prices for their products.

Big Oil wants to put a box in your hall closet that works like a human brain, can cut the lights, stop the refrigerator and will know how you move about in the privacy of your home better than you do.

The nation’s largest electric grid operator is grappling with how to prevent state climate policies from merely pushing emissions — and costs — across state lines.

As the sun sets on California’s solar farms, a backup energy source deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains springs to life.

Eos Energy Storage is manufacturer and supplier of the zinc-based Aurora 2.0 battery system for Duke Energy's McAlpine substation and as a behind-the-meter solution at the University of California, San Diego. 

Homeowners and businesses may now have an easier time getting solar panels on rooftops thanks to software developed at Sandia.

Nigerian distributed utility company, Arnergy, announced it has raised $9 Million in a Series A round of funding led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund), EDFI ElectriFI and All On.

Here’s the latest wrinkle in the battery boom: National Grid Plc is paying consumers to tap electricity from their power-storage systems.