While it’s well known that corporations were some of the earliest trailblazers of large-scale renewable energy purchasing — they’ve closed over 14 gigawatts of deals in the past six years, according to tracking by Rocky Mountain Institute’s Business Renewables Center — higher education has also made impressive strides. In fact, a report released last fall showed that the top 30 renewable energy-buying universities are using around 3 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually. That’s enough to power 276,000 homes.

Arizona State University researchers have set a new record for solar efficiency, 25.4 percent. Working with tandem photovoltaics, or stacking different materials in a solar cell, the ASU team has continued to improve solar efficiency and lower costs.

2018 was another defining year for the lithium supply chain as the global population continued to make remarkable strides towards the implementation of clean energy and transportation. Although the clean energy and transportation industries are only in their early days, it has become apparent that renewables and electrification of transportation are an irreversible trend, one that has begun to disrupt many established industries.

As part of its acquisition of Maximum Solar, Ameresco said, it will further develop in-house services to operate and maintain solar facilities. Maximum Solar currently manages about 150 MW of solar throughout the northeastern U.S.

It’s hard to find a common thread between the business models of Gap, Bloomberg, Cox, Salesforce and Workday but today they are announcing that they all have one big thing in common: their desire to clean up their organizations’ energy supply by using renewable energy.

Here we are in 2019, with more than 100 U.S. cities and 140 large corporations having established 100 percent clean, carbon-free and/or renewable energy goals. In several states, newly seated governors campaigned on goals of 100 percent renewable energy, and congressional representatives have arrived in Washington positioning for a like-minded national proposal.

Global funding for clean-energy projects sagged in 2018 after China’s decision to curb subsidies dragged down installations in the world’s biggest solar market.

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.

In early December, I put out a call to the online energy professionals community to find participants for the world’s first Fantasy Energy League. Perhaps I saw the pending end of the 2018 fantasy football season and I wanted something to fill the coming void, or maybe I was just curious to see who else wanted to approach energy projections from a gamified lens. Either way, I put out my energy-industry bat signal for the Fantasy Energy League only to see my email inbox and my Twitter feed blow up.

As scientists seek more ways to harness nature’s power to produce renewable energy, there’s one energy source burned naturally every day that isn’t being harnessed: calories.

The power industry is facing a nuclear power dilemma, according to a report published by The Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS assessed the economic viability and performance of nuclear power plants operating in the United States and concluded that the retirement of these plants will likely result in the adoption of coal and natural gas for baseload power generation, two energy sources that contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is set to hold more auctions for offshore wind power, plugging a current gap in tenders for the next three years that the industry has said would harm turbine makers and hamper green targets.

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.

Federal energy regulatory commissioner Cheryl LaFleur announced on Twitter on January 31 that she will not be seeking a third term and will be leaving the commission later in 2019. She said in the tweet that this is not the outcome she had hoped for but that she felt very lucky to have served on FERC for more than 8 years. She said she plans to serve out the rest of her term, which is up at the end of June.

On January 31, 2019, Georgia Power, the largest utility in the state submitted its newest integrated resource plan (IRP) to the state utility commission for approval.

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.

Last week, Sunrun announced that its bid to supply 20 MW of residential solar + storage capacity into the New England ISO Forward Capacity Market for 2022-2023 was approved. According to Chris Rauscher, Director of Policy and Storage Market Strategy for Sunrun, this is not a pilot project or an experiment in any way.

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.

Italy’s government is dragging its feet on incentives for geothermal power and one local politician has decided to take his protest to the extreme.

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.

In early February, during DistribuTECH, the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) hosted a workshop to discuss what requirements are necessary for successful distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) deployment.

Thailand plans to build the world’s largest floating solar farms to power Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy and to boost the country’s share of clean energy.

Instead of a wall, build a first-of-its-kind energy park that spans the 1,954 miles of the border between the United States and Mexico to bring energy, water, jobs and border security to the region.

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.

This week, ConEdison subsidiary, Orange & Rockland Utilities (O&R) and Key Capture Energy (KCE) announced that O&R has selected KCE, an Albany-based, independent developer of utility-scale battery storage projects, will plan, design, install and operate O&R’s new battery storage project in Pomona.

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.

Annual solar energy production in North Carolina jumped 36 percent in 2018, according to the latest government data – firmly placing North Carolina as the No. 2 solar-producing state in the nation.

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.

Developing carbon capture and storage technology and low-carbon hydrogen is “a necessity not an option” for the UK to achieve a net zero carbon economy by 2050.

The U.K.’s push for a low-carbon economy has some notable successes, but the hardest part of the battle has barely started.

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.

This week, diversified real estate acquisition and development firm Commercial Development Company and transmission developer Anbaric said they plan to build a renewable energy center at Brayton Point Commerce Center in Somerset, Massachusetts. The site is the former home of the Brayton Point Coal Plant, the cooling towers for which were demolished two weeks ago. (video of demolition at the end of article at this link).

Ameren is preparing to test a Canadian company’s software that could someday help usher in a radically different business model for the utility.

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

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise victory in Australia’s election was a win for the coal industry and ensures the debate about tackling climate change will continue to polarize the nation.

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.

Among my circle of friends and colleagues, everyone is aware of the impact of human activities on climate change - the melting of arctic ice, the destruction of species - and the major causes of it, namely, coal burning for electricity and fossil fuels burning for transport. What nearly everyone is unclear about is what specifically to do about it and how fast.

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.

Reykjavik Geothermal, a power developer backed by hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones II, is about to kick off a $4.4 billion project to bring geothermal energy to Ethiopia.

Yesterday, energy storage company Saft said it delivered and installed a turnkey Energy Storage System to Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO). The system provides up to 10 MW power for spinning reserves and frequency response to maintain grid stability and has a storage capacity of 5.5MWh, said the company. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on May 16.

Herbert was joined by Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) and Magnum Development at the event to detail the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project in central Utah. They called it the largest such energy storage project in the world.

LONGi Solar this week said that it has invented a new “seamless soldering” technique that could help it produce a more efficient solar module. As a reminder, the more solar cells you can pack into a module, the more efficient it is. And the more efficient your modules, the fewer you need to achieve the wattage you seek in an array. By using less modules, you reduce the overall installed cost of solar.

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