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.

In late February, Hawaiian Electric Companies announced that they have achieved a consolidated 27 percent renewable portfolio standard in 2018, even with the loss of Hawaii Island’s geothermal resource for most of the year following the Kilauea volcanic eruption. Hawaii has a goal of reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2045.

Mayors from cities across the U.S. are stepping up and committing to broad and inspirational action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize local energy systems. This leadership is especially critical given lack of federal climate action, but translating a mayoral commitment to reality can be a challenge.

Today SunPower is launching its next generation solar panel called A-series, which boasts 400 or 415 watts, in the United States. A new 400-watt product, Maxeon 3, is available in Europe and Australia.

A new paper is being launched today at the House of Lords in London that challenges government, regulators and companies working on clean energy to make gender diversity a key priority. The paper has been produced by the EWiRE network, set up by Regen to provide a vibrant network for women working in clean energy.

As of the end of 2018, China’s renewable energy installation capacity had reached 728 GW, an increase of 12 percent from a year earlier, according to statistics released by China’s National Energy Administration. This breaks down into 352 GW (up 2.5 percent) for hydro, 184 GW (up 12.4 percent) for wind, 174 GW (up 34 percent) for photovoltaic (PV) and 17.8 GW (up 20.7 percent) for biomass. Renewable energy accounted for 38.3 percent of the country’s total installed power capacity, a rise of 1.7 percentage points.

New Hampshire is preparing to follow the lead of other New England states and create a system for procuring renewable energy on behalf of residents.

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.

On March 4, Hanwha Q CELLS filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against JinkoSolar, LONGi Solar, and REC Group. The company also filed related patent infringement complaints with the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against the same companies. In Germany, Hanwha Q CELLS filed patent infringement complaints with the Regional Court of Düsseldorf against JinkoSolar and REC Group.

The Trump administration is again seeking severe cuts to the U.S. Energy Department division charged with renewable energy and energy efficiency research, according to a department official familiar with the plan.

A trailblazing wind-solar hybrid project in western Minnesota could be a preview of what’s to come as renewable developers look for new ways to bolster projects.

What happens when a famously left-leaning city dives into the buttoned-down business of electric utilities? San Francisco may soon find out.

RenewableUK highlighted last week that Great Britain’s onshore and offshore wind farms generated more electricity than any other source of power last week.

America’s national parks are one of the nation’s greatest assets. They preserve and protect vital ecosystems and offer people from all over the world the chance to experience the beauty and majesty of these great spaces.

Distributed Energy Resources (DER), such as residential solar panels, are not only changing the way energy systems operate, they also present an opportunity to change the way local communities operate by giving consumers the ability to sell excess energy, generated by microgrids or renewable set-ups, to their neighbors – it’s the new energy paradigm.

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.

Southeast Asia is poised for a long-overdue and much-needed boom in solar.

Two of America’s biggest solar-farm owners are warning that a patent dispute between panel makers could roil a sector already shaken by President Donald Trump’s import tariffs.

On Friday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the state’s groundbreaking Energy Transition Act (ETA) into law, meaning that by 2045, the state should be fully powered by clean, carbon-free electricity.

Denmark in many ways is the poster child for the generation mix of the future. It led the way for decades in wind generation. It has continued to set ever-more ambitious targets for renewable penetration. And it has shown in the real world how to make a grid work that includes a heavy presence of renewable assets. Along the way, though, it has faced many challenges.

Idaho Power unveiled a goal Tuesday to provide 100-percent clean energy by 2045 on the heels of an announcement that it will purchase 120-MW of solar energy through a PPA with Jackpot Holdings at a price of less than US $0.022 cents per kWh.

It was a milestone deal, not for its size but for the number of parties. In January, five big companies, each with differing energy requirements and renewable strategies, agreed to pool their investment and collectively purchase 42.5 megawatts from a North Carolina solar project.

In a first for the country, Germany generated 54.5 percent of electricity from renewable energy in March 2019. This is according to data collected by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest money manager, is boosting its bet on clean energy.

Solar energy companies could fill the void created by the lack of secure energy transfer between UK and EU, the group says.

Over the past week, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced multiple funding opportunities to renewable energy research including $130M for early-stage solar and $28M for wind. Further, the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium announced up to $7M in funding for offshore wind.

Recently there has been a great deal of interest in a ‘Green New Deal’ for the United States. It is seen as a way to solve pressing environmental, employment and economic problems with a single comprehensive plan. Modeled on Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created jobs, invested in large infrastructure projects, and pulled the US out of the Great Depression, the Green New Deal is a modern version of that program, but with green energy investments, 21st century job training, and deficit reduction as the key components.

Clean industry leaders celebrated the passage of the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA) by state lawmakers yesterday. The bill now goes to the governor’s desk for signature.

Mercom Capital Group released its report on funding and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity for the global solar sector in the first quarter of 2019 and found that total corporate funding (including venture capital funding, public market, and debt financing) into the solar sector in Q1 2019 came to $2.8 billion. Year-over-Year (YoY) funding in Q1 2019 was about 10 percent higher compared to the $2.5 billion raised in Q1 2018.

Just after the midnight hour of New Year’s Eve 2020, more than confetti will be abandoned on America’s sidewalks and parlors. Somewhere around $130 million dollars of Investment Tax Credit (ITC) from that year’s anticipated Commercial & Industrial solar projects will fall out from any hope of reaching the proverbial pocket books of the nation’s infrastructure investors (assuming 2000MW of C&I and Community solar, and a $2/w installation cost). On 1/1/20, the ITC drops to 26 percent, a first step to further decrease the following year.

Climate change is picking up pace in Europe, thrusting farmers and power generators onto the front lines of a battle with nature that threatens to upend the lives of the half billion people who occupy the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Enel Foundation has signed a landmark agreement to become the exclusive Global Knowledge Partner of the 2019 Clarion Power and Energy series of events.

Cities and renewable electricity have, respectively, become the habitat and energy of choice globally. The two are increasingly inseparable. Urbanization and electrification trends have turned cities and the grid into leading platforms for human activity, presenting unique opportunities for today’s utilities to partner with municipalities to achieve their smart city goals.

Global manufacturer Apple today announced it has nearly doubled the number of suppliers that have committed to run their Apple production on 100 percent clean energy, bringing the total number to 44. Because of this partnership between Apple and its suppliers, Apple will exceed its goal of bringing 4 gigawatts of renewable energy into its supply chain by 2020, with over an additional gigawatt projected within that timeframe.

The Redford Center, a California-based non-profit co-founded in 2005 by Robert Redford and his son, James, announced that every morning, from April 15-22, 2019, the organization will post an episode a day of "Renewable Therapy for Climate Anxiety," a conversational mini-series featuring Filmmaker, James Redford, and Matthew Nordan, clean energy investor and managing partner at MNL Partners. In each two-minute installment, the pair explores questions that nag environmentalists when it comes to renewable energy. Watch the first episode below.

On Thursday, Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló signed into law the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act which lays the groundwork for the island’s transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.

In the years since its passage, Section 210 of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) has provided one of the few options for small producers of renewable energy to access electric generation markets controlled by monopoly utilities. The law requires a monopoly utility to purchase the output of certain small power producers known as “qualifying facilities” (QFs) at the utility’s “avoided cost”—that is, the cost the utility would incur to generate or purchase power in the absence of the purchase from the QF.

Starbucks Corp. is boosting its investments in clean power.

This weekend at its “Earth Day Every Day Fair,” Green Mountain Power announced an energy vision to have a 100 percent carbon free energy supply by 2025 and 100 percent renewable energy by 2030. The utility said the move is among the most aggressive carbon targets for a utility of GMP’s size in the country.

A new career map, Careers in Climate Control Technology, provides a first-of-its-kind interactive, visual tool to showcase the employment opportunities that exist in the swiftly growing HVAC/R industry – Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration. The sector is on track for projected growth of 15 percent from 2016 to 2026.

Building solar and wind energy projects on potentially contaminated lands can be a golden opportunity, both effective and cost-effective, for developers. The 120-acre Reilly Tar & Chemical Corporation Superfund site was recently redeveloped with a utility-scale solar farm and is a prime example of the reuse potential inherent in thousands of Superfund sites, brownfields, retired power plants, and landfills.

Yuba College, a community college part of the Yuba Community College District, this week completed a 1-MW solar carport installation that it says could result in $10 million of avoided utility costs over the life of the system. The District purchased the solar outright, which resulted in optimal savings.

Duke Energy Corp. will develop six utility-scale solar power projects in North Carolina that may cost up to $404 million as part of the state’s bid to boost renewable energy.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed wants to use PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy to take over some of the company’s assets for the city’s power needs, a move that would shake up California’s largest utility and remake the state’s energy landscape.

Nevada is joining the growing list of U.S. places that aim to ban fossil fuels from its electricity supply.

Utilities and other energy experts convene each year at DISTRIBUTECH International (DTECH) to discuss the future of energy and this week Clarion Energy, organizer of the event, announced that the call for abstracts for the 2020 event is open.

In their push to upend the economics of rooftop solar, Iowa’s major electric utilities are up against an opponent as politically potent as they are: the state’s pork producers.

Bank asset management is known to be an opaque subject. Thankfully, Diana Weis and Sarah Disch, each co-heads of the Solar Asset Management groups at their organizations, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo Bank respectively, shared their expertise with me at SAMNA 2019. They each have over a decade of experience in solar finance. Here are three key takeaways bank asset management experts Weis and Disch shared: