The world must invest $2.4 trillion in clean energy every year through 2035 and cut the use of coal-fired power to almost nothing by 2050 to avoid catastrophic damage from climate change, according to scientists convened by the United Nations.

The Gentleman coal plant was once the linchpin of Nebraska’s electricity grid, its twin smokestacks visible for miles across the prairie. Now, the state’s biggest power source is routinely pushed aside to make room for more wind and solar energy.

An effort to put a tax on carbon dioxide emissions just won an unlikely underwriter: a top producer of oil and gas.

After wallowing in limbo for the first part of 2018 awaiting re-authorization, the Loan Program Office (LPO) at the Department of Energy is back in business with about $40 billion burning a hole in its proverbial pocket. Mike Reed, Director and Chief Engineer of the Technical and Project Management Division of the LPO and his team are planning to hit POWER-GEN 2018 in Orlando, Florida in December to identify people and projects that might need financing.

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.

The UK could meet a significant slice of carbon emissions’ target if it more widely deployed distributed energy technologies.

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.

A European cybersecurity pact has been agreed that is intended to make “the tools of the energy transition safe for citizens and secure for providers”.

According to the Microgrid Market Growth Potential - Industry Size Outlook Report 2024, the microgrid market is expected to reach $19 billion by 2024, nearly five times the original valuation of this business space in 2016.

California recently joined other leading states, provinces, cities, and corporations around the world by setting an ambitious 100 percent carbon-free electricity target. It’s a landmark, not because California was the first, but because it is the biggest. The state ranks as the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Last week, Siemens and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) announced a new new academic partnership that they say will provide students with the skills needed to operate and advance the nation’s energy grid.

Integrated energy company E.ON and BNP Paribas Personal Finance are piloting a new energy efficiency financing scheme for UK consumers.

Excitement over storing electricity, and expectations for new market rules in the U.S. promise great changes in energy. Instead of hype and speculation, this blog offers a preview of those market changes. For those who are waiting for FERC Order 841 to sort things out, ISO-New England has published something you might want to see.

An untimely resignation has given one Kentucky Republican a second shot at saving coal.

New state energy goals and innovative utility program offerings have been making headlines in recent months. These types of regional policies and incentives are important, especially as we face challenges ranging from grid constraints and fluctuating electricity prices to environmental concerns, but significant portions of the country are outside of the direct influence of energy use mandates and incentives.

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

Utilities across the country are increasingly taking a proactive role on initiatives to advance clean energy and grid modernization. But to hear a utility CEO like Kipp focus unequivocally on one of the most critical drivers for the growth of solar and storage was striking — and yet another sign of the sector’s ongoing transformation.

For most of their history, in North America, electrical utilities have been centralized distribution networks. Utility operated generation resources are the hub of the network and electricity flows one-way via distribution networks largely controlled by the same utilities. In this model, there has been little reason for utilities to share anything but a small slice of data about their operations with anyone else other than themselves.

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

A 40-year-old law that’s been key to the growth of renewable energy in the U.S. may be due for an overhaul.

Experts from Rocky Mountain Institute, the Advanced Energy Economy Institute and America’s Power Plan have released a new report that shows why new utility business models are key to the energy transition.

According to the International Energy Agency, “2018 is the year of electricity” and global electricity supply “is being transformed by the rise of renewables”.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) is funding a study that it hopes will result in lower utility bills for customers and more control over electricity load for utilities. The project will involve 100 homeowners in Southern California who will install various types of distributed energy resources (DER) such as thermostats, load control switches, batteries, water heaters and eventually electric vehicle chargers.

As utility customers invest more in advanced energy technologies, buildings are becoming dynamic energy hubs. Anywhere, anytime, a building could be a consumer, storage point, or generator of energy. And a building’s energy profile could change instantaneously as it responds to signals from internal controls, the grid operator, or third parties to deploy assets like controllable water heaters, smart equipment, solar, and storage.

It’s been a whirlwind year for Packetized Energy, the Vermont-based clean energy sector start-up spun off from a U.S. Department of Energy project in 2016 by three University of Vermont electrical engineering faculty, Paul Hines, Mads Almassalkhi and Jeff Frolik.

When California voted to get 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045, it sent a signal to the market about which types of power generation technologies will remain competitive into the future. And according to Mike Ferguson, Director, North America Energy Infrastructure and Sustainable Finance with S&P Global Ratings, what California does, other states may soon follow.

The European Union unveiled its long-term vision on combating climate change in a push for more ambitious action on the environment just days after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected his government’s warning on the economic costs of global warming.

This week Constellation, an Exelon company, said it signed a long-term PPA with Starbucks to power more than 340 Illinois stores with 100 percent renewable energy produced by Enel Green Power (EGP) North America, Inc.’s HillTopper wind project in Logan, County, Ill.

This week, Electric Vehicle (EV) charging network provider, ChargePoint, announced that it has raised $240 Million in Series H funding, which is more capital than any other EV infrastructure company in the world, surmising in its press release that the move to electrify transportation is accelerating.

Italian multinational utility Enel has been recognized as one of the world’s most active companies in the open innovation field.

In October of this year, the European Parliament voted in favor of a ban of the ten most notorious single-use plastics that harm our planet and marine life, including straws, plastic cutlery and cotton buds. The vote also committed to a move towards a circular economy – recognizing the inherent value of the 2.12 billion tonnes of waste that is dumped globally each year. Yet questions remain about how we deal with the items not on the list, the ones where there are no obvious alternatives; the fruit trays, the ice cream tubs, the burger boxes. With waste generation expected to double by 2025 we must continue to act on this growing crisis and be more innovative with waste.

Ontario plans to cut carbon gas emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, setting reduction targets for industries and encouraging private investments in clean technologies.

Exxon Mobil Corp. will use renewable energy to produce oil in West Texas.

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.

Fantasy sports and the energy industry might not have much in common on the surface, but I’ve always personally approached these two passions of mine in similar ways: obsessively reading the breaking news, following my favorite experts in the community on social media, and diving deep into the available statistics to create graphs and try to come up with hot takes. I think the fantasy sports model can be used to encourage an academic and educational exercise in the energy industry, so it struck me—I should establish the first fantasy league for the energy sector!

The Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) inaugurated the Mercury Solar Project late last month and moved it further down the path of sustainability, giving NNSA its first net-zero-energy building.

Two big trends are converging in the world of power generation -- Combined Heat & Power (CHP) and biomass. CHP is gaining ground in many areas of the world due to the fact that its superior efficiency often results in major economic gains (CHP takes the waste heat from a turbine and uses it to generate steam which is often uses in district heating, or in industrial processes).

A decade ago, Maine regulators faced dueling proposals to meet projected load growth north of Portland: upgrade a long-distance transmission line to carry more power, or strategically install batteries and distributed generation.

Bloated by debt, bled by corruption and battered by structurally declining sales, South African power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. is facing what’s known in the industry as a “death spiral.”

Italy’s Five Star Movement used to rave about towns like Montieri, a village in the verdant Tuscan foothills that burns little coal or natural gas. Instead, the local power plant harnesses steam rising naturally from hot springs deep underground to generate electricity.

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”.

Last week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the New York State Public Service Commission approved two initiatives to increase New York's energy efficiency and energy storage targets.

The fact that approximately 74 percent of Europe’s population are city-dwellers is a testament to how people have been drawn to cities throughout history. Whether for a lack of job opportunities in rural areas or possibilities for a better lifestyle, unfortunately the unprecedented speed and scale of urbanization does put tremendous pressure on a city’s resources, often resulting in detrimental environmental impacts.

Biogas is a resource that has enormous potential in Spain and beyond. Biogas technologies convert organic wastes into renewable energy, clean transport fuel, and nutrient-rich natural fertiliser, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving energy and food security and air quality. A recent study commissioned by Naturgy, Spain’s largest natural gas distributor, showed a potential for 26,684 gigawatt hours (GWh) of biogas in the country, enough to cover the energy demand of 40% of Spain’s households.

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.

The Public Utility Commission of Nevada has approved NV’s long-term IRP to double its renewable energy capacity by 2023. The utility will bring 1,001 MW of solar capacity online via six new power purchase agreements (PPAs).

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.