Worldwide investments in clean energy projects have hit a six-year low.

Yesterday, National Grid, through its competitive non-regulated unit National Grid Ventures (NGV), completed its $100 million acquisition of Geronimo Energy - a wind and solar developer in North America. The deal, which was announced on March 7th, 2019, has now satisfied all regulatory requirements and closing conditions.

Gas peaker plants may be among the first casualties of a new Minnesota law requiring utilities to include energy storage as part of their long-range plans.

In late 2018, I put out the call to see how many fellow energy nerds I could gather to indulge me in combining my passion for energy analysis and clean power policy with my love of fantasy sports. By the end of January 2019, I had my cast of characters who somehow thought this idea was as fun as I did (isn’t the Internet the greatest tool for finding people who share your interests?) and I released my Draft Preview. Coordinating this draft among 14 different teams with different time zones and schedules chock-full of actually helping to save the planet proved no easy task, but by the end of March we had conducted 5 rounds of picks for a total of 70 selections in this Inaugural Fantasy Energy League!

Germany-based clean-energy fund Hep Kapitalverwaltung AG agreed to invest $50 million to $80 million annually in a partnership to develop small solar projects in the U.S.

GE Renewable Energy announced at HydroVision that it has signed two hydropower contracts in the U.S. one for FirstLight’s Northfield Mountain project and one for PG&E’s Caribou One hydropower station.

Namibia’s state-run utility will build four plants powered by renewable energy over the next five years as the southern African nation seeks to guarantee local supplies and cut its use of fossil fuels.

The Lockett Wind farm in Wilbarger has the potential to generate more than 700,000 MWh of renewable energy per year, enough to power the equivalent of 70,000 homes. 

Finnish energy technology group Wärtsilä has signed an EPC contract for a 100 MW/100 MWh total capacity energy storage project in southeast Asia.

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

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.

Last week at the HydroVision International plenary session, a panel of three CEOs — Darrel T. Anderson, President and CEO IDACORP and Idaho Power, Mitch Davidson, CEO and Managing Partner, Brookfield Renewable Power, and Paul Jacob, President and CEO, Rye Development — along with moderator Elizabeth Ingram, Content Director, Clarion Energy, discussed both the merits and the challenges of hydropower development in the United States and Canada.

Steve Sawyer, 63, Senior Policy Advisor and former Secretary General of the Global Wind Energy Council, passed away on July 31, 2019 of a sudden and aggressive lung cancer.

According to the latest forecast by BloombergNEF (BNEF), energy storage installations (not including pumped hydropower) around the world will multiply exponentially, from 9GW/17GWh deployed as of 2018 to 1,095GW/2,850GWh by 2040.

ENGIE Storage has announced it will supply and operate a 19 MW/38 MWh portfolio of six energy storage sites that will contribute to the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target Program and participate in ISO-New England wholesale markets.

Digitalisation is one of the biggest enablers of the global transition to clean energy. From intelligent asset management, to Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things. Find out how digitalisation is transforming the management, operation and maintenance of renewable energy assets, and driving a more efficient renewable world.

The Skeleton Creek project will be located in three Oklahoma counties

The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation from Equinor Energy Ventures and Evergy Ventures

The four proposed central Virginia lithium-ion projects will cost about $33 million to build and offer 5-years’ worth of test data, according to Dominion.

South Australian energy storage company 1414 Degrees and Stone & Wood Brewing Company have agreed to undertake a feasibility study for the integration of 1414 Degrees’ electrically charged Thermal Energy Storage System (TESS-IND).

According to Vattenfall, the project will help provide less pronounced energy peaks and an overall more efficient use of energy infrastructure

Coming on the heels of Gap’s announced 90-MW PPA with Enel Green Power, BloombergNEF released its 2H 2019 corporate energy market outlook in which it said that corporations signed contracts to purchase 8.6 GW of clean energy in 2019 through July, up from 7.2 GW at the same time last year.

The national average price of wind power purchase agreements dropped to below 2 cents/kWh in 2018, according to the annual Wind Technologies Market Report released by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The UK’s North West Hydrogen Alliance (NWHA) is calling for government investment in hydrogen projects to meet ambitious carbon reductions targets in Britain.

A new battery made from affordable and durable materials generates energy from places where salt and fresh waters mingle. The technology could make coastal wastewater treatment plants energy-independent and carbon neutral.

The renewable energy transition promises to reduce carbon emissions, but it’s happening at different speeds around the world. Read on for some key insights from BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook 2019, which provides a detailed road map to the future.

Energy Vault, the creator of a new way to perform utility-scale energy storage, announced that SoftBank Vision Fund (Vision Fund) invested $110 million in its Series B funding round. Energy Vault will use the funds to accelerate global deployment of its technology, which enables renewables to deliver baseload power for less than the cost of fossil fuels 24 hours a day, said the company. As part of the investment, Andreas Hansson, Partner for SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join the Energy Vault board of directors.

Virginia’s energy office is exploring whether to align the state with a billion-dollar New York clean energy financing program.

The financial benefits of buying and selling locally produced energy from rooftop solar, wind turbines and batteries within communities have been revealed in a test case run by energy tech firm LO3 Energy.

The Chinese government recently issued a whitepaper on the status and prospects of the hydrogen fuel and fuel cell sectors, indicating that energy derived from hydrogen will become an important part of the Chinese energy network.

Last week, the Hawaiian Electric Companies began Hawai‘i’s largest procurement effort for renewable energy resources to end the use of coal and reduce reliance on imported oil for power generation, moving the state closer to its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

President Donald Trump said he was not willing to sacrifice the abundant fossil energy wealth of the U.S. on “dreams” such as renewable power.

This week, Scottish software company Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) announced that it will be expanding into Europe after completing successful trials with a utility company in Germany.

In a region of the world where coal is still king, there is room for renewables. This was a takeaway from the Ministerial Address and Joint Opening Keynote at POWERGEN Asia and Asian Utility Week. The two annual events kicked off Tuesday, Sept. 3, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In conjunction with North America’s Smart Energy Week, LG Electronics (LG) is underscoring its role as a top player within the U.S. residential solar market at the 2019 Solar Power International Conference.

Ameren Missouri, a unit of Ameren Corp., filed plans with the Missouri Public Service Commission to build three solar + storage facilities across Missouri

Lincoln Clean Energy (LCE), Ørsted’s U.S. onshore company, issued the final notice to proceed on its 230-MW Plum Creek wind facility in Wayne County, Nebraska. This follows the final investment decision from Ørsted’s Board of Directors.

NorthWestern Energy has announced plans to upgrade its 8-MW Madison Powerhouse with the installation of four new turbine-generator units.

Minnesota’s largest utility wants to change how the state calculates its trailblazing “value of solar” rate as it faces a potential spike in payments to community solar operators.

The global energy supply is turning greener.

The 2019 Sustainable Energy in America factbook was released this week by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BloombergNEF) and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE). The factbook highlights a number of key trends in sustainable and renewable energy growth, emissions and jobs in the sector. Take a glance at the six charts below to learn more.

This week independent power producer Marubeni and LO3 Energy said they have started a pilot project in Japan where LO3 will administer an energy marketplace using blockchain to connect a number of Marubeni’s power production facilities, including renewables, with offices and factories around Japan in a virtual marketplace. The project will simulate energy transactions to test the viability of the concept with the ultimate goal of creating a full-scale commercially operational network in the future.

Under a 20-year agreement, AES will provide APS with the storage capabilities powered by Fluence’s Advancion platform.

California-based solar developer Sunpin Solar said that Direct Energy Business, a subsidiary of Centrica PLC, signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the full output of the recently completed 96.75-MW DC / 74.8-MW AC ColGreen North Shore Power Plant.

South Africa plans to expand use of renewable power as the coal-dependent nation expects traditional, centralized generation plants to “disappear,” Energy Minister Jeff Radebe said.

In early February, during DistribuTECH, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) hosted a workshop to discuss what requirements are necessary for successful distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) deployment.

In late February, Hawaiian Electric Companies announced that they have achieved a consolidated 27 percent renewable portfolio standard in 2018, even with the loss of Hawaii Island’s geothermal resource for most of the year following the Kilauea volcanic eruption. Hawaii has a goal of reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

Mayors from cities across the U.S. are stepping up and committing to broad and inspirational action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize local energy systems. This leadership is especially critical given lack of federal climate action, but translating a mayoral commitment to reality can be a challenge.

A new paper is being launched today at the House of Lords in London that challenges government, regulators and companies working on clean energy to make gender diversity a key priority. The paper has been produced by the EWiRE network, set up by Regen to provide a vibrant network for women working in clean energy.

As of the end of 2018, China’s renewable energy installation capacity had reached 728 GW, an increase of 12 percent from a year earlier, according to statistics released by China’s National Energy Administration. This breaks down into 352 GW (up 2.5 percent) for hydro, 184 GW (up 12.4 percent) for wind, 174 GW (up 34 percent) for photovoltaic (PV) and 17.8 GW (up 20.7 percent) for biomass. Renewable energy accounted for 38.3 percent of the country’s total installed power capacity, a rise of 1.7 percentage points.