The idea of communities, cities, states, or countries being powered by 100 percent renewable energy used to be perceived as fantasy. Enter the Go 100% Renewable Energy Project, which aims to perpetuate the clean energy movement by creating a revolutionary online platform that showcases real-time 100 percent renewable energy progress. So far, the project has mapped 8 countries, 59 Cities, and 61 Regions/States, representing more than 62 million people who have set, reached, or surpassed official 100 percent renewable targets in at least one sector (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling). Discover what’s driving the shift to 100% RE, the common trends emerging, and learn more about the Go 100% project with Founding Director of the Renewables 100 Policy Institute Diane Moss!

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.

A report that examines statements about rolling blackouts made by regional grid operator ISO-New England, shows that sustained growth of renewables, and not more gas, will boost reliability of New England’s electric power system.

Utilities and independent power producers (IPPs) plan to invest $110 billion through 2025 to build new, natural gas-fired power plants. They, their shareholders and society would be better served were that capital invested in new, distributed, renewable power generation and distributed energy resources (DERs), including utility-customer demand response and energy efficiency programs, the Rocky Mountain Institute says.

According to Martin Lim, COO of Electrify.Asia, a company facilitating peer-to-peer energy trading across the distribution grid, blockchain technology doesn’t take utilities out of the equation, but rather it adds another layer of potential revenue for them and helps reduce the cost of delivering energy to homes and businesses.

Reparations for the worst-ever U.S. natural gas leak will involve cow-dung duty.

It was California’s biggest fire yet. In late July and August, wildfires devastated an area north of San Francisco far bigger than New York City, destroying more than 100 homes and injuring 2 fire fighters. It’s just one in a rash of fast-spreading blazes that have killed at least 56 people this year and last in the Golden State.

Earlier this week SIMEC ZEN Energy announced details of the first of many planned renewable energy projects for South Australia. The Cultana Solar Farm, a 280-MW solar power plant expected to generate 600 GW-hours of energy annually in Australia’s sunny climate is expected to begin construction in early 2019 according to details in a press release.

Yesterday another milestone was reached in California’s march toward a 100 percent renewable energy mandate with the passing of SB100 by the Assembly. The bill will require the state to receive 50 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2026; 60 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045. The current law requires the state to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030.

It can be hard to get your head around just how much energy the world uses. Expressed in terms of oil, it was equivalent to almost 14 billion metric tons of the stuff in 2017. That’s like burning through all of Russia’s proved reserves in the space of 12 months, which is, in technical terms, a lot.

When innovators come up with the idea for the next great technological breakthrough, the first roadblocks to seeing that idea to fruition are typically funding. Among renewable energy inventions, this need is typically filled through wealthy private investors, venture capital firms, or government grants. But today, in the age of the Internet, budding entrepreneurs have taken their funding needs online through crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Egypt has the potential to meet up to 53 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The Egypt Renewable Energy Outlook, released in Cairo last week in the presence of Egyptian government officials and regional decision makers, found that pursuing higher shares of renewable energy could reduce the country’s energy bill by up to $900 million annually in 2030.

Latest market outlook report predicts that the country will get more than half of its power from hon-hydro renewables by 2030.

Digital solutions could revolutionize energy trading if they were adopted more widely across the market.

Marubeni Corp., the Japanese trading house for whom coal makes up about a quarter of its power generation, never expected renewable energy prices to plunge as much as they have.

One of the first unbiased, major comprehensive reviews of blockchain has concluded that the technology is “actually delivering on its promises in a number of areas directly related to energy”.

It’s been a turbulent and exciting 2018 over at Renewable Energy World. We have a new parent company, Clarion Energy, and we, as a media outlet, are doing more than ever to support the dynamic and top-quality energy events in the Clarion Energy Power and Energy Series, with shows focused on energy all across the globe.

Renewable energy projects were marked by distinctive trends and characteristics in 2018: frothy M&A market driven by a crush of liquidity and a shortage of project supply; a highly competitive environment among investors and lenders for an inadequate supply of projects...

Renewable energy muscled out coal to become Germany’s biggest source of electricity for the first time last year, helped by a surge in solar panel installations and coal-plant closures.

Crowdfunding has become a popular tool for people and organizations to use to test out their new ideas for green products while securing funds to begin operations. The most well-known crowdfunding websites, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, have helped a significant amount of projects in renewable energy and sustainability get off the ground, projects that have been the focus of previous installments in my ongoing articles series about crowdfunding in energy.

This week at the Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), political and business leaders from around the world outlined the far-reaching geopolitical implications of an energy transformation driven by the rapid growth of renewable energy.

Utilities and renewable-energy advocates have long had a complicated relationship. Yet the prospect of PG&E Corp. tipping into bankruptcy by the end of January has sent shivers through the solar-and-wind sector.

GE announced today that it sees a future in housing its renewable generation businesses (onshore and offshore wind, hydropower) alongside its grid businesses which include substations and transformers plus solar, storage and distributed energy resource (DER) control software. GE Renewable Energy CEO Jerome Pecresse said in a press conference that the move will simplify the lives of GE’s customers by giving them one point of contact for all of their renewable energy power needs.

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 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.

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

While solar roads have been criticized as impractical and inefficient, a Georgia foundation says they will continue to be part of its research lab for greener highways.

Findings in a recently published European Union report showed that the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia make up over 30 percent of the EU countries that have already met their 2020 renewable energy targets.

Trump's proposed budget severely cuts the EPA and DOE's efficiency and renewables offices, but allocates funding for R&D, clean coal and advanced nuclear.

Last week, the Energy Web Foundation (EWF) announced it had officially signed more than 100 affiliates in an effort to become the world’s largest blockchain ecosystem.

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.

Buildings account for nearly four-tenths of U.S. energy consumption through heating, cooling and other electricity use, according to the Energy Information Administration. And if that energy comes from fossil fuels, it releases more greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change.

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

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.

Gravity Renewables has acquired the 10.5-MW Dahowa Hydroelectric Project, located on the Batten Kill River in Greenwich, Washington County, N.Y.

This week, Xcel Energy announced plans to retire its last two coal plants in the Upper Midwest a decade earlier than scheduled. The acceleration of the coal closures is part of the company’s clean energy transition that includes expanding wind and solar, using natural gas and operating its Monticello nuclear plant until at least 2040.

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.

United Parcel Service Inc. has agreed to buy the equivalent of 170 million gallons of renewable natural gas from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. over the next seven years in what the company described as the biggest-ever deal involving the alternative fuel.

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.

Anheuser-Busch President and CEO Michel Doukeris wouldn't give financial details of the agreement, but says it's a smart investment

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?

According to an analysis by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), U.S. electrical generating capacity by renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) has now - for the first time - surpassed that of coal.

German utility EnBW has acquired French wind and solar developer and operator VALECO.

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

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said it would invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to expand its data center infrastructure in the Netherlands.

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.

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

Japan’s trade ministry is setting stricter rules for production and sales of renewable energy in what it says is a drive to speed up development of projects and ensure stable power supply.

Statkraft AS, Norway’s state-owned power company, said it plans to plow as much as 60 billion kroner ($8.1 billion) into renewable energy around the world in the coming years after the government boosted its funding.