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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Here’s the latest wrinkle in the battery boom: National Grid Plc is paying consumers to tap electricity from their power-storage systems.

Last week in San Antonio, Texas, about 150 DISTRIBUTECH stakeholders convened to discuss industry trends, best practices for marketing and sales in the utility industry and set the educational agenda for the 2020 event.

Commercial property owners with existing energy storage systems, or owners considering implementing an energy storage system, may be able to benefit from a recent order by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) allowing utility companies to pay customers who agree to rely upon their energy storage systems and dispatch the energy during peak events.

This week artificial intelligence (AI)-driven energy storage services provider Stem said that it had formed a partnership with New York-based private equity company Syncarpha Capital to build 28.2 megawatt-hours (MWh) of large-scale storage projects co-sited with solar in Massachusetts.

Clarion Energy & iTEN Media announce the launch of POWERGEN India 2020 co-located with Indian Utility Week & DISTRIBUTECH India