top of page


September 23, 2021

https://www.eenews.net/articles/1000-corporations-vs-utility-execs-who-is-right-on-100-clean-power/America

1,000 corporations vs. utility execs:

Who is right on 100% clean power?


A new blueprint from a billionaire-led coalition that includes some of the nation’s largest corporations is backing ambitious clean energy policies being pushed by President Biden, even as utility executives are expressing doubts about them.


Known as America Is All In, the coalition has more than 1,000 corporate members, with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as chair.


 

Advancing the energy transition requires an honest discussion of costs, outages and land, analysts say


Recent extreme weather-driven outages around the country, and threats of more, make clear the urgent need to transition to a variable and distributed resources power system that eliminates the emissions aggravating the climate crisis, scientists agree.


 

Able to power 50,000 homes, the ‘world’s largest floating wind farm’ takes another step forward


Statkraft is one of several major companies involved with floating offshore wind projects. One advantage of floating turbines is that they can be installed in deeper waters compared to bottom-fixed ones.

 


Solar companies say new tariff proposal would devastate the industry

  • The Solar Energy Industries Association is urging the Department of Commerce not to implement tariffs on solar imports from Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

  • The U.S. imports 80% of its panels from the three countries, according to SEIA.

  • The industry trade association said new tariffs would cost the industry 18 gigawatts of new solar installations by 2023.

  • In August an anonymous group filed a petition with the Department of Commerce seeking new tariffs.


 

Department of Energy chief says ‘our hair should be on fire’ after summer of widespread climate disasters

Climate change became a personal event for a third of Americans this summer. Urgent efforts to decarbonize global industries will be expensive and will ultimately create jobs, Granholm underscored on Wednesday.


“By the end of this decade, the global market for clean energy and carbon reduction technologies is going to reach $23 trillion — at a minimum,” Granholm said. “And so we want to corner that market by building clean energy supply chains and solutions here, sourced in America with American labor.”


 

What it Will Take the U.S. to Build a 100%

Renewable Electric Grid


 

Energy, utility sectors feel 'most exposed' to cybersecurity threats, survey finds


With layers of protection, including cyber insurance coverage, business leaders might feel insulated from threats. However, with sophisticated threats mounting,

it's difficult to predict where and how an attacker evades protections.


Companies in the utilities and energy sector feel the most exposed to

cyberthreats, according to 40% of Beazley respondents.

 

Related Topic

Tech CEOs promise billions of dollars in

cybersecurity support


President Joe Biden met with tech, financial services, energy and utilities, and insurance CEOs, including the heads of Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, raising concerns about cybersecurity gaps in the private sector. There's also a growing concern that the skilled cybersecurity workforce in the U.S. is insufficiently growing to meet demand.


Biden issued a cybersecurity executive order in May calling on the private sector to improve information sharing, set higher software security standards and break down silos between the public and private sectors.


 

How the Resilient Energy Subscription market mechanism will help finance community microgrids

by Craig Lewis, Executive Director of the Clean Coalition


Hurricane Ida, the California wildfires and the Texas winter storm are just a few recent examples in the growing list of disasters around the United States that highlight both the dangers of climate change and the increasing need for resilience. To fight climate change, we need to deploy much more clean energy. To enhance resilience, we need to ensure that a significant portion of the clean energy is generated locally. And to deliver an unparalleled trifecta of economic, environmental and resilience benefits, we need to unleash renewables-driven community microgrids.


But how do we finance community microgrids and properly value their significant resilience benefits?


 

New technology needed to meet utility decarbonization goals, EEI, others warn


Industry leaders and executives at the National Clean Energy Week conference warned that completely decarbonizing the U.S. electric grid will require continued advances in crucial areas like long-duration energy storage.




Updated: Sep 23, 2021

September 17, 2021

Extreme weather keeps knocking out America's power. Here's what we must do.

Opinion by Jennifer M. Granholm


The image of a collapsed electrical tower and power lines that Hurricane Ida tossed into the Mississippi River illustrated a fundamental challenge facing the nation: Our power systems weren't built to withstand extreme weather events. Without major investments to reinforce, modernize and clean our grid, the question will not be whether it fails, but when.



 

Related Topic


Biden's spending bill could be Democrats' last hope of achieving meaningful climate action as crisis worsens.


After decades of inaction from the United States on climate, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats face a reckoning. Biden has big climate ambitions, vowing in April to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.


The world is watching closely to see whether the US will deliver on that promise, as the President's climate envoy, John Kerry, prepares to meet with global leaders in November for the United Nations climate summit.



 


Political Climate: Senator Heinrich is not

compromising on climate.

Why Democrats’ sweeping $3.5T budget plan could spur the biggest

economic pivot in the country’s history.

 

Related Topic


Electrifying America’s Future Resolution

By modernizing the power grid and building a clean and carbon-free energy economy, the U.S. will become a leader in advanced 21st century industries and a net exporter of clean energy.

by Sen. Martin Heinrich


 

How House Democrats plan to attack climate change


Congressional Democrats laid out a series of proposals Monday on how to combat climate change as part of the $3.5 trillion budget package bill currently being negotiated.

The Build Back Better Act, as President Biden’s proposal to invest in U.S. infrastructure is known, was introduced in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and places mitigating and adapting to climate change at its center.


 

Green energy powering South Australia

to become global player


South Australia is a world leader in green energy, with about 71 per cent of its energy produced from renewable sources.

The state is now using its expertise to help other nations kick green energy goals.

Famous as the home of the Hornsdale Power Reserve, also known as the Tesla big battery, South Australia is exporting its green energy prowess internationally.

 

The Solar Futures Study explores solar energy’s role in transitioning to a carbon-free electric grid.


Solar has the potential to grow from 3% of the U.S. electricity supply today to 40% by 2035 and 45% by 2050. Find out more in the @ENERGY and @NREL Solar Futures Study report on solar energy’s role in a carbon-free future:


 

New tools give utilities insight into grid capacity

to host more solar, storage

A new paper, Key Decisions for Hosting Capacity Analyses, published today by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC), shares key lessons about a new grid mapping tool that can help utilities and states better integrate clean energy technologies on the electric grid.


 

Related Topic


Report emphasizes need for storage-friendly policy shifts after

solar saturation

Customer-sited solar is a major untapped opportunity, which could see 167 million households and 23 million businesses worldwide hosting their own clean power generation by 2050, according to a joint report by research firm BloombergNEF and Schneider Electric. These deployments will unlock major decarbonization benefits, but policy and tariff design will be critical to enable them.



Updated: Sep 23, 2021

September 1, 2021

California's growing storage fleet is beginning

to impact energy markets as envisioned,

says grid operator

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is seeing signs of storage resources' ability to shift energy between different times of the day. The storage on the grid is said to be "impressive," but CAISO does have some concerns.





 

Related Topic


California approves 11.5 GW of new clean resources

in largest-ever single procurement order



 

Interior Department Announces Environmental Review of Proposed Wind Energy Facility in the

North Atlantic

Project could generate up to 1,300 megawatts of renewable energy, power nearly 600,000 homes.



WASHINGTON — As part of the Biden-Harris administration’s goal to deploy

30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind energy by 2030, the Department of the Interior today announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) plans to conduct an environmental review of a proposed commercial-scale wind project offshore New York.

 


Wind and solar account for 90% of new utility-scale energy additions to U.S. grid in first half of 2021

Data from both FERC and the U.S. EIA confirm that nearly all new U.S. electrical generating capacity additions in the first six months of 2021 were from renewable energy sources, this according to analysis from the SUN DAY Campaign.


 

As battery storage booms,

investors spend big on startups

A "huge uptick in interest" in battery storage as utilities install variable solar

and wind generation said FlexGen CEO Kelcy Pegler Jr.




 

Biden administration aims to cut costs for solar,

wind projects on public land

LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The Biden administration plans to make federal lands cheaper to access for solar and wind power developers after the clean power industry argued in a lobbying push this year that lease rates and fees are too high to draw investment and could torpedo the president's climate change agenda.


 

Biden infrastructure plan takes on

EV charging’s inequality problem

Sept 1 (Reuters) - The Biden administration has an ambitious $7.5 billion

plan to expand electric vehicle charging to underserved areas,

but it must first overcome a host of obstacles that have

discouraged private investment in more equitable char


 

10 Reasons to Love Water Batteries


Every summer, millions of people across the country stay indoors to keep cool and stay healthy. In a summer like 2021’s record-setting heat wave, there’s nothing more satisfying than the feeling of a crisp, air-conditioned room.


But heat is not just inconvenient; it can be dangerous.


If everyone cranks up their air conditioning or turns on fans, the grid

—which can short-circuit!


One of the biggest ways our grid avoids short-circuiting? Water batteries.



 








bottom of page