For many countries like the US, or places like the EU, policy becomes the primary driver in enabling a transition away from fossil fuels. This is where a country like Bhutan can provide valuable insights though it is vastly different in its economic and political structure.
Bhutan is carbon negative and produces 99% of it’s energy needs from hydro
A utility’s sole purpose isn’t to buy as much solar as they humanly can afford. Their purpose to ensure uptime across the grid and service all of their customers while making money and dealing with regulatory checks and balances.
The cleantech community was shaken today when Eric Wesoff announced on his new blog that GreenTech Media was shutting down.
We need to prioritize building a “personalization layer” between utilities and energy consumers to enable grid infrastructure renovation plans to truly reduce 40% of the US total carbon emissions
Epic Cleantec’s fully customizable systems process wastewater onsite, creating treated (non-potable) water, captured heat, and high-quality soil amendments that can be used at the building
Climate Tech startups that are in the process of finding a path to commercialize ground-breaking technology that has the potential to reduce carbon emissions tend to struggle with go-to-market.
Remora Carbon is building a device that captures the carbon emissions from a semi-truck. They sell the captured carbon dioxide to concrete producers and other end-users, helping companies earn new revenue while meeting their climate commitments.
Terraformation is working on fighting climate change through scaling reforestation efforts. Their team starts at the ground level for reforestation projects, where they come to assess the land, plan out what seeds and native trees are in the region, plan and monitor using their apps and sustain and scale projects through financing mechanisms such as carbon offsets.
Pachama enables remote verification over the life of reforestation projects by utilizing satellite data mixed with AI to ensure reforestation projects are being maintained and are performing for the life of the project.
In some cases it does make sense for utilities to island customers from their electric grid and BoxPower is one such company helping service that need.
Yotta [yah-tah] Energy – founded by Omeed Badkoobeh and Vikram Iyengar – is building a solution to address the system design and standardization as well as the project economics challenges plaguing solar installers in closing more deals in the C&I market.
For many countries like the US, or places like the EU, policy becomes the primary driver in enabling a transition away from fossil fuels. This is where a country like Bhutan can provide valuable insights though it is vastly different in its economic and political structure.
Bhutan is carbon negative and produces 99% of it’s energy needs from hydro
Roughly a third of all emissions that come from the agriculture sector is driven by factory farming and meat production.
A utility’s sole purpose isn’t to buy as much solar as they humanly can afford. Their purpose to ensure uptime across the grid and service all of their customers while making money and dealing with regulatory checks and balances.
While microgrids and distributed energy resources (DERs) have picked up in popularity over the past few years within a small, yet vocal audience of energy infrastructure enthusiasts – like myself – it has demonstrated slow adoption.
When it comes to hitting our ambitious renewable energy goals, be it by 2030 or 2050, the rate at which we are building isn’t fast enough. A lot of the reason for that is because of the number of parties involved in building and energizing a single solar or wind project.
The Made In America Tax Plan Banks On Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies And Re-Working Existing Investment Tax Credits (ITCs)
A credit card that plants trees every single time you make a transaction. Started by a Peter Theil Fellow, with a strong background and track record.
David Energy wants to vertically integrate these software solutions with the traditional retailer model.
The cleantech community was shaken today when Eric Wesoff announced on his new blog that GreenTech Media was shutting down.
Span adds strategic investors Munich Re Ventures and Amazon Alexa Fund to support growth and provide integrated energy solutions for homes.
Before Axiom Cloud there was Axiom Energy. Both companies were set out to make commercial refrigerators efficient. Axiom Cloud made it out.
LAVO is betting that hydrogen becomes ubiquitous in the residential/consumer space as well – proposing a 40 kWh hydrogen battery that competes with the Powerwall 2 – which has 3x less capacity than the first iteration of a hydrogen battery from LAVO.
Carbon capture technologies is an emerging market in the cleantech space that needs to be watched as it is likely to be instrumental in enabling a future that actually results in a world where our climate crisis has been avoided.
Ando (backed by Jigar Shah) and Atmos (Led by Ravi Mikkelsen & Pete Hellwig) offer savings accounts that are designed to help you grow your money and help the environment at the same time.
On Monday evening this week Congress passed a bill that extends the solar ITC at 26% out for another 2 years.
QuantumScape recently announced their breakthrough in developing a solid state battery cell. This new cell can charge to 80% within 15 minutes – while also packing
This $100M round led by Sidewalk Labs – the same firm that tried building a “smart city” in Toronto – is going to help OhmConnect subsidize and front the cost of deploying smart thermostats.
Microgrids are an emerging grid architecture as we are learning day by day. More utilities are beginning to see the advantages of having such an
Plug Power (NASDAQ: PLUG) is already a leader in the hydrogen space and expected to be one of the behemoths going forward focused on building out a truly green hydrogen network.
Earlier this year California passed a mandate to phase out the sale of gas powered vehicles by 2035. With President-Elect Joe Biden winning the election it’s no surprise of the timing that these 28 companies joined forces to help drive legislation to ban the sale of gas powered vehicles by 2030.
The rise of solar farms grid wide happened in the early 2000s and really kicked into high gear in the early 2010s.
PanelClaw one of the remaining few independent solar racking companies in the industry globally has reportedly been acquired by Esdec.
For years people were short on Apple, Amazon, Tesla (still are) and many other companies that still stand tall and strong today.
Net Metering has been one of the big value contributors in the residential solar market. Allowing homeowners to receive equal bill credits for every kWh of energy they send back into the grid via a Net Metering program makes the incentive to go solar easy to understand.
Nextera is now larger than ExxonMobil based on market capitalization.
Let me begin by saying Pachama is one of my favorite up and coming startups that has entered into the market selling carbon offsets to corporations.
The evidence in the Hidenburg report show how the company has been faking videos of it’s trucks functioning, lying to people about the tech they have, and manipulating the “booked revenue” Nikola has closed on.
Quantumscape is currently going public via a newly popularized SPAC route – something Nikola (NKLA) and other clean tech companies have been utilizing.
In Vectren’s territory, based on reports from Lawrence Berkley, solar is actually worth $0.13/kWh.
EnerVenue raised $12M in a seed round to commercialize Nickel-Hydrogen based batteries to compete with Lithium Ion for grid scale storage.
The rolling blackouts were claimed to have been both for power safety, but also because of capacity based issues. This claim that capacity was the issue was being challenged by “experts” that monitor and watch the grid – claiming that capacity wasn’t the issue but a grid management issue that caused the need for the outages.
The Hyperion XP-1 is everything a hydrogen and car enthusiast has dreamed of. The perfect hybrid of ridiculous and borderline unnecessary performance specs while also doing right by the environment.
This past week death valley recorded 130 F temp numbers and due to this excessive heat crazy thunderstorms and weather patterns seem to be on the horizon, especially for Northern California. The California ISO even declared a stage 3 emergency to protect the grid from causing wildfires or entirely collapsing due to excessive heat.
Amazon partners with Vector to make all of Australia a smart grid; Tesla may become a utility in Germany; Microsoft is committed to the hydrogen economy
Hanwa Q Cells buy one of the last standing battery optimization software companies – Geli OS.
the DOE loaned Tonopah Solar Energy LLC $737 Million to fund its solar thermal plant in Nevada. Sadly, Tonopah filed for bankruptcy while still owing the government $425 M on its loans
NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo sent out one of the largest solicitations for renewable energy within the state of NY. In turn setting the bar for what kind of actions need to be taken to address climate change across the US and abroad.
Ford really did the trick this week with exciting car enthusiasts across the US in the new all electric Ford Mustang Mach E.
The nationally covered blackouts in The Bay Area last year was a pivotal point for accelerating policy & enabling battery storage to surge in popularity.
This past week has shed light on how across the US hydrogen is making its mark today and where all its breaking ground.
Net Zero Communities are developments or pilots that have been actively piloted in various parts of the world, but still today the value prop of buying a net zero home hasn’t been fully developed.
With capital from ABB to Khosla Ventures – Natron is hoping their Persian Blue & Sodium Ion based battery can out perform Lithium in reactivity, used minerals and environmental risk.
Sunrun to acquire Vivint Solar for $3.2 Billion which would push Sunrun to 500,000 customers and more than 3 GW of assets on their books. The combined value of Sunrun + Vivint pushes it to an estimated $9.2 Billion based on the closing price July 6, 2020.
Energy Storage is one of the biggest technological advancements we are watching today.
NREL and other labs are also pushing forward on evaluating thermal energy. Companies like Brayton Energy & Echogen have also been participating in various grants to develop a thermal energy storage system with a target price of $0.05/kWh
oday the predominate way of approaching grid modernization is adding IoT like capabilities to as much of the grid as possible, adding new solar and wind farms where possible to fill energy demand and shifting to natural gas as opposed to coal.
When you think about cheaper batteries and where our modern day Energy Storage Solutions will come from, most might think of a PhD student with his graduate students inventing a new material that enables high energy density battery cells at record low prices.
Nanogrids are the new rage with a number of companies emerging with solutions to provide utilities the ability to control and operate home energy loads
Lordstown motors revealed their Electric Pickup truck paired with a politcal rally. It’s interesting because its trying not to be more than a pickup truck.
Solar installers across the US are suprised about Tesla’s claim of “lowest price solar” yeilding concerns about over promising and under delivering.
Enel will begin with 2 – 3 projects first before they decide if now is the right time to invest into more projects. It all comes down to economics.
Lyft or Uber will likely never replace publicly funded transport. But if they enter from a sustainability angle where the state doesn’t have to invest their tax payers money into a large fleet of EVs it could open up the states that didn’t sign up for the ride share hype early on.
Zero Mass Water raised $50M this past week to further the development and deployments of it’s Hydropanels which provide clean drinking water to communities, commercial and industrial properties in over 45 countries.
Tesla has begun to cancel and refund deposits made on the Tesla Solar Roofs to people who had put money down years ago.
California is doing everything they can to provide increased resilience to wildfire impact communities.
NKLA this past week reached $79.73/share and fetched a valuation of over $22B – putting it in the value range of Ford.
Solar and battery storage groups and environmental activists aren’t letting PG&E deploy natural gas based generators to ensure resiliency – citing that it doesn’t help get California closer to their aggressive renewable energy goals.
With supply chains being disrupted and reduced on site staff – O&M teams that are typically out sourced by large asset owners have seen a big hit in their ability to continue to handle maintenance on these systems.
Atom Power has raised $17.8 million Series B to boost production of its all-digital circuit breakers and panels for high-stress C&I properties. Such as factories and data centers to large-scale electric vehicle charging systems.
Net metering might get overhauled to a point where it will most definitely be more valuable to include battery storage or utilize load shaping technologies to get the best value from your solar system.
If the settlement passes state regulators – Xcel energy has scoped with the help of multiple parties, a $23.4M Micro-grid development plan.
Tesla is basically the Apple of cars – rather than partner with other companies, build it inhouse. Tesla finally is beginning to introduce Vehicle to Grid capabilities to their model 3s in the field.
Nano-grids are now becoming all the rage in the market with companies like Span.IO, TouchLight, Peerless-AV and others joining the journey to make the grid optional.
Frontier technology is always “almost” here, but the conversation around a 1 Million Mile Battery Pack has heated up with an old incumbent – GE – joining the conversation. We all have heard of Tesla working on a Million Mile pack, but even with significant jumps in energy density of a single cell it still feels that it will take years before we hear about cars with Million Mile ranges on their packs.
Span.IO raised $10M and seems to be a direct competitor to the Lumin Smart Panel – which helps installers build out an intelligent [app connected] protected loads panel for homeowners that want energy storage.
For a little more than 10 years now we have been hearing the conversation of “flow batteries will beat out lithium ion batteries in the market”.
The two big headlines that stood out the most was Freewire – a battery integrated EV charger – raises $25M in Series A funding to bring their yet to be priced – but likely priced at ~$120K battery integrated fast charger to market. How we got that pricing for Freewire’s boost charging solution – insider info…
Net Zero for Shell by 2050 – but still doesn’t meet expectations outlined in the Paris Agreement. However a heavy dose of skepticism is required.
ClearVue PV has raised $9M and brings a new method of solar energy harvesting through windows – with a 3.3% efficiency rating,
Nelumbo – which is the leading Developer of Advanced-Surface Modifications is coming off a fresh $14M Series A round.
Tune into Off The Grid with Sue Marshall of NetZRO and Elliot Roth of Spira Inc as they discuss how what we are eating is contributing to the increased severity of climate change. Dive into some hot takes on how you can take ownership of decarbonizing our food supply chain from production to waste.
California is taking a different direction and is making more investments in battery-based grids. Using battery plants in power peaks is still mostly uncharted territory,
Europe, still on track with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C, are more committed than ever and are starting the
Times of crisis mean disrupted supply chains and resource shortages. In World War II US, that meant metal and rubber drives to collect scarce resources to
Vehicle to Grid & Vehicle to Building technology has become a new emerging technology that has come with the rise of Electric Vehicles. The concept is
Tesla doesn’t stay out of the news, and nowadays we typically want to avoid the daily digest of Musk’s tweets unless it gives us a
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and the whole stigma around hydrogen isn’t the greatest. We’ve reported something similar with Volkswagen tearing into the “Hydrogen for passenger vehicles” debate.
Freesuns – which has been designing and piloting a “tesla solar roof” equivalent product for historic buildings where they utilize their tile like design to maintain the historic building’s roof look and feel.
Musk made a claim that Tesla is going to start to explore a whole-house HEPA filter/Air Purifier HVAC solution.
Volkswagen stands tall against the hydrogen for passenger vehicles. With the big “point” they make being: wheel to wheel efficiency and existing infrastructure.
Back in March 2019 transparent solar cell manufacturer Ubiquitous Energy claimed the energy efficiency record for transparent cells clocking in at 9.8%.
We are in some interesting times especially when we look at the solar industry. Is the cost of solar going to skyrocket now that demand has dropped?
It really should be no surprise to you that people are just not buying solar right now and the industry has come to a somewhat “slow” point due to Covid-19.
Massachusetts solar had a rough year. In 2019, new installations fell 50% and the sector’s workforce shrank by 30% – and not from lack of interest!
You’ve seen the memes (even we couldn’t help ourselves at the top of this post): as industries slow, people fly less, and emissions fall. There’s
You may not have heard about Nikola Motor Company since 2016 when they announced their hydrogen Nikola One truck or 2018 when they sued Tesla over their Semi.
Jinko Solar announced their new residential line of panels that can push up to 16% more power than traditional panels, while crossing the 400W mark.
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