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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.