Tag: 📃 POLICY & FINANCE

Bhutan Is Carbon Negative – What The US Can Learn From Them

The world is moving towards clean energy sources. (Image: Nat Geo)

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

Pricing In The Green EU Deal – Facing Opposition

An aggressive carbon tax is in the Green EU Deal. (Image: Unsplash)

The new Green EU Deal, announced in July, has as one of its aims, setting a high new price for carbon emissions. If it succeeds in raising the price, not even as far as it aims, it’ll make it a lot easier for clean technologies to prosper.

The Green EU Deal: It’s A Big Deal

Europe continues to charge forward on climate friendly policy. (Image: Unsplash)

the announcement of a European Green Deal. The coverage mentioned pronouncements of accelerated targets for reduced carbon output, and so on. The news cycle moved on.

How To Accomplish Net Zero By 2050

We need a different approach to hit net zero by 2050. (Image: Unsplash)

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently published Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector. The IEA makes the case that in order to reach net zero by 2050, we need to accelerate the development and deployment of clean technologies by 2030 – essentially, we should be focusing our efforts today on technologies already in the market, as well as technologies that are market-ready.

Banking On Climate Solutions

Financing the infrastructure of the future. (Image: Unsplash)

There are many new ways for people to take part in fighting climate change. Ravi Mikkelsen discusses how Atmos Financial is building banking solutions that anyone can contribute to and help the world transition to a clean economy while earning money on their deposits.

Small Cuts In Subsidies For Fossil Fuels

Continued support for the rise of renewables through more fossil fuel cuts. (Image: Unsplash)

Recent news shows some governments cutting back on subsidies for oil and gas companies. But these are small moves, given the vast scale of the subsidies showered on fossil fuel companies, and they’re not yet cemented in place.

A (key) week in the death of oil

The endgame for oil companies has become far more evident. (Image: Jonathan)

Change happens gradually, and then suddenly. This week, the endgame for oil companies became a lot closer and a lot more evident, suddenly, discontinuously, a jump.

How Startups & Climate Tech Companies Fit in with Doughnut Economics

How do climate tech companies fit into the doughnut economics model. (Image: Unsplash)

The Doughnut Economics model–a framework represented by an area between two rings (hence the name “doughnut”) in which an economy is considered prosperous if all 12 of its designated social foundations are met without overshooting its nine major ecological capital ceilings.

Oil execs are talking about life after oil. Should we believe them?

As the fossil fuel industry sunsets how are oil companies thinking about the transition? (Image: Zbynek)

The fossil fuel executives’ answers mostly spoke to keeping their businesses vibrant in the context of an energy transition away from oil and gas. They described capital spending peaks on oil and gas production. They didn’t push back on the need to transition beyond fossil fuels.

The Underutilization of Early Stage Clean Tech Grants

The world is moving towards clean energy sources. (Image: Perigo Welding)

Not nearly enough entrepreneurs are aware grant funding opportunities exist for anyone willing to put in the work and to take on the risk, regardless of their university or educational background. Thankfully, funding from the California Energy Commission (CEC) through programs such as CalSEED and CalTestBed allows entrepreneurs significantly more access to grant funds where a welder in a rural community, as noted here, can develop cleantech solutions that help us meet our energy goals.

The Marriage Between Smart Homes & Solar Begins

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 architecture available for them to load balance and deliver a higher level of resilience to their customers than ever before. Southern Company’s subsidiary Mississippi Power is currently piloting “smart neighborhoods” where Tesla […]

Make Way For The Short Sellers

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 Chaos

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.

The Year Of Taking Net Zero Pledges

Net Zero commitments are the new fad this year for companies. According to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), more than 1,500 companies have committed to net-zero emissions.

The California Rolling Blackouts

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.

California Prepares For Rolling Blackouts…Again

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.

Using leftovers to tackle climate change??

Jeff Bezos in energy

In Your Inbox: Startup automating trash sorting; Small acquisitions with big impact; Big moves for big tech in the energy industry; and an awesome interview with Renewal Mills!

What Is The Cost Of Innovation In Energy?

DOE loan goes bust

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

Wait. You Throw Your Leftovers In The Trash?

Kitchen and Garden Waste

Vermont is the first state to enact an organic waste ban. The goal is to prevent food waste being sent to landfills. In 2012, the state of Vermont passed the Universal Recycling Law

An RFP for 4,000 MW of Renewable Energy…

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.

$200M for non-dairy milk 🥛

July 20, 2020 The Impact Newsletter

In Your Inbox: Plants that pull CO2 out of the air finally make financial sense; Hydrogen super cars and new pipeline development; Oatly raises $200M for non dairy milk; and public sector support for energy storage.

Deconstructing Sunrun’s Acquisition of Vivint Solar

giorgio-trovato

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.

How Batteries Reduce The Cost Of Microgrids

Relay Substation

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.

Enel Backs Hydrogen As A Future Fuel

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.

California Needs Natural Gas To Keep The Lights On

California Needs Natural Gas

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.

Net Metering Might Get A Face Lift

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.

Tech Companies Lead The Way For Climate Action

tech companies are leading climate action

Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, pledged $10 billion to fight climate change and created the Bezos Earth Fund. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, announced a $1 billion climate innovation fund. And many other companies followed. The money is there, all that is left are the actions.

Shell Didn’t Really Just Make That Investment…

shell

Fascinating week in oil! As you may have seen in the headlines, oil prices went negative. Specifically West Texas Intermediate (the benchmark for US crude oil) oil price went negative for two days because they’re traded as futures contracts. Production has barely changed but usage has sunk so we have way more supply than we can even […]

🛢️ 800k tonnes of Hydrogen a year

the impact newsletter archives

The Impact To: The Impact Readers Greetings! 🧐 Spring seems to be finally here, even though we saw some snow earlier this week in NY. The environment is getting more attention and people have now – hopefully – canceled all of their unnecessary subscriptions and are learning more about the value of saving and resource management. In your inbox: […]

New California Battery Project Could Edge Out Gas Peakers

Grid Scale Storage Replaces Gas Peakers

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, but that’s right where the new battery project is aiming. Clean Power Alliance Executive Director Ted Bardacke told Greentech Media, that the goal is to show California that battery plants can […]

Europe is Making Commitments and Bets on a Carbon-Free Hydrogen Future

Hydrogen Replaces Natural Gas

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 process of phasing out coal plants. What’s going to replace them? Many companies and countries are betting on carbon-free hydrogen. The Netherlands calculates that gases will still make up 30-50% of […]

Strike 3!! Coal is OUT–

Economically, Coal is Out Right now, in every major market, it’s cheaper to make new investments in renewables than in coal. According to Carbon Tracker, if governments and investors don’t cancel coal projects they stand to lose more than $600 billion. AND by 2030 it will be cheaper to build new renewable energy than to […]

EPA Suspends Environmental Rules Enforcement In Response To Covid19

City Smog

Last week we talked about how lower economic activity can mean lower emissions (until they come roaring back on the up-turn). It’s – at the very least – a slim silver lining to economic disruption. But the white house has different plans. EPA Suspends Environmental Rules Enforcement In Response To Covid19 Last week we talked […]

The Good & Bad In Solar

capitol hill

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!