THE HILL — Let's say you're thinking about switching to solar at home, but you're concerned about the start-up costs.
What if you received generous federal and state tax credits? That could help! Better still, what if you discover that during those hot, sunny afternoons — when you're at work and hardly using any energy at home — you can sell the excess energy your solar panels generate back to the grid at the full residential retail rate? This practice, called “net metering,” helps cut utility bills and shortens the payback period for solar installation costs. That sweetens the deal even more. But what if you don’t own a home, or can't afford solar panels? In some states, you still have options, such as shared solar programs. These allow renters and low-income people to get power from collectively owned solar panels — located, say, on the roof of a public school or other neighborhood building — as I documented in a recent Institute for Policy Studies report. With shared solar, you'd even still benefit from net metering. And when you contract with a company to install solar panels, you do your part to create jobs. Lots of them. According to Department of Energy data, solar jobs already outnumber coal-related jobs by a factor of more than 2 to 1, despite solar making up a much smaller share of the overall grid. All in all, I'd say these incentives make a strong pitch for solar: You can help address climate change, grow the renewable energy economy, create jobs, and save money. Win-win-win, right? Well, not if you're in the fossil fuel industry — or one of the politicians who owe them favors. And that's where things get messy. In statehouses all over the country, there's a growing movement by industry front groups to undermine net metering and other renewable energy incentives. These front groups include the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry’s trade association, and outfits such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans for Prosperity, both of which are funded by the Koch brothers. These groups scored recent victories against net metering in Indiana and Maine, and have turned the renewable energy mandate for utilities in wind-rich Kansas — known in the industry as a Renewable Portfolio Standard — into a toothless voluntary goal. Industry groups and the politicians they effectively buy claim that distributed solar energy imposes costs on customers who don’t install solar panels, because solar users don't pay their fair share of the costs of maintaining the grid. Most cynically, they feign concern for poor people. Typical of this is Maine Governor Paul LePage’s claim, in his letter vetoing a bill that would've preserved net metering in his state, that the practice “subsidizes the cost of solar panels at the expense of the elderly and poor who can least afford it.” However, independent energy experts — even those who don't support net metering in all circumstances — argue that the practice can be a “reasonable proxy for the value of solar.” The case against the utility and Koch-led attack on renewables is strong on logic, but evidently weak on campaign cash, which is why the onslaught of anti-net metering and anti-renewables bills continues. Energy Secretary Rick Perry joined the fray recently by ordering a study seemingly designed to show that renewables are undermining grid security. Evidently, he also wants to do Edison Electric Institute and ALEC’s dirty work by using the study to attack Renewable Portfolio Standards and wind and solar incentives in the states. Amusingly, a leaked draft of the study apparently shows that the electric grid is becoming more reliable as wind and solar penetration increase. Apparently career energy experts at the Department of Energy aren't concerned with the ideological preferences of their political appointee overlords. The truth is the best antidote to this flood of anti-renewables policies based on fossil fuel-funded misinformation. When people learn the benefits of renewables, they push back against these policies, defying partisan political stereotypes. In Florida last year, voters rejected a ballot initiative to ban third-party sales and leases of solar panels, even after utilities spent $21 million to promote it — and even as Trump carried the state. Another purple state, Nevada, got rid of net metering — but then reversed course and reinstated it under pressure. And it’s not just defensive fights either. Strong movements are pushing good energy policy in states all over, such as Hawaii’s mandate for 100 percent of its electricity to come from renewables by 2045, and Oregon’s requirement that 10 percent of shared solar capacity be set aside for low-income people. By telling the truth — and by organizing like crazy — we can win policies that grow the green economy for everyone, in red states and blue.
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SOLAR BRIGHTFIELDS: GIGAWATTS OF CLEAN ENERGY POTENTIAL ON AMERICA'S LANDFILLS AND BROWNFIELDS8/22/2017 It’s understandable if the 16-megawatt solar project that broke ground last month outside Annapolis didn’t garner national attention. After all, 12,600 gigawatts of new solar will go online across the United States in 2017. But the solar project worth millions of dollars spreading across 80 acres of a closed landfill is the biggest-yet example of one of renewable energy’s most exciting applications – solar brightfields. FORBES — While landfills and brownfields (defined by the U.S. EPA as any property complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant) may not be considered a growth market for America’s solar industry, the growing trend of brightfields – solar projects built on otherwise unusable land – creates win-win-win options for local governments and property owners, utilities and solar developers, and residents of blighted communities. Local governments and property owners win by returning unusable land to productive use while generating new income and property tax revenue. Utilities and solar developers win by building profitable solar generation close to areas of high electricity demand while avoiding siting conflicts in land-constrained areas. Residents win through reduced local power plant emissions and expanded access to local high-tech jobs. Solar Brightfields Can Capitalize On America’s Hazardous History of Growth Solar brightfields can be located almost anywhere across the U.S. where development has led to contamination and rendered land unusable, often in urban areas. EPA has pre-screened more than 80,000 brownfields for renewable energy siting potential, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates landfills and other contaminated sites cover 15 million acres across the country. That’s enough land to generate around 3 million MW of solar according to NREL land-use estimates – meaning solar brightfields are capable of generating roughly as much electricity as the U.S. consumes in a year . Capped landfills have very few complementary uses, and brownfields can require millions of dollars in remediation costs before they can be safely occupied, but fortunately both types of locations offer advantages for siting solar projects. Landfills are typically elevated high above surrounding trees and buildings, offering unshaded sites capable of boosting potential solar output throughout the day, and are often already connected to the grid through methane generation operations. Brownfields are typically located at former industrial sites that have been cleared of above-ground structures, providing flat unshaded expanses, often in proximity to existing power lines or large potential industrial customers like warehouses or factories. In both instances, projects can capitalize on higher generation potential and existing grid infrastructure. Landfills and brownfields are typically located within or close to major cities, which means they can add new clean electricity generation in population centers without adding pollution, and can tap the rising popularity of community solar projects. Since these locations are often considered environmental concerns, nearby residents will likely consider renewable energy a positive way to use the land, reducing public concerns compared to solar development in forested or undeveloped open spaces. Brightfields can also expand economic opportunities in disadvantaged communities by creating new jobs in construction or operations and maintenance – solar installation jobs can’t be outsourced and offer competitive wages. Utilities and solar developers can also benefit from favorable project economics through specific incentives from federal and state governments eager to return landfills and brownfields to productive use. At the federal level, EPA’s Brownfields Program provides grants and technical assistance to sustainably reuse contaminated property, and multiple local governments provide similar incentives, including: Massachusetts’ SRECII solar carve-out assigns higher value to energy generated at contaminated sites than projects built on undeveloped sites or on commercial rooftops. New Jersey’s SREC program similarly rewards brightfield development over other renewables, further supporting contaminated site development via its Solar Loan Act. New York State offers financial incentives for solar brightfields and is considering streamlining environmental review of proposed projects. New York City’s Brownfield Partnership provides free technical consulting on brownfield liability and remediation to project developers. A Solution for Land-Constrained States With Ambitious Renewable Energy Goals? Solar brightfields could also solve tricky siting challenges facing state governments with high renewable energy targets but without large tracts of undeveloped lands. Recent Energy Innovation analysis highlighted solar brightfields as one of the most promising ways to solve this quandary in the Northeast U.S., which simultaneously has some of America’s most ambitious renewable energy goals and some of the country’s most land-constrained areas. For instance, New York’s ambitious 50% by 2030 renewable generation goal would necessitate 3,500 MW of onshore wind and 6,800 MW of utility-scale solar, requiring approximately 700 square kilometers (km) for wind turbines and 136 square km for solar arrays, using NREL land-use estimates. However, most of the state's undeveloped land suitable for new solar projects is on private or preserved land, and more than half of New York State is occupied by forest and woodlands. And unlike wind turbines, large-scale solar is incompatible with most agricultural uses, wildlife habitat, or wilderness.
Solar brightfields could help meet this demand for solar generation in land-constrained states by focusing projects on former industrial sites and contaminated land without causing new environmental concerns. For instance, design innovations like ballasted racking systems mean panels can be secured atop landfill caps or remediated ground without disturbing hazardous materials beneath the array. From Brown To Green The Annapolis project may be the biggest solar brightfield in America to date, but it’s far from the only installation underway. Solar developers and local governments across the country are actively pursuing new projects at landfills and brownfields –a 20-MW, $30 million solar array proposed for a capped landfill in Maine would become the country’s largest such project. And, utilities are starting to bring their considerable weight to bear – New Jersey’s PSEG received regulatory approval late in 2016 to add 33 MW of solar brightfields to its 158 MW Solar 4 All program through 2020. Add it all up, and the considerable benefits of solar brightfields – investment potential, urban and blighted revitalization, increased tax revenue, and adding new renewables – mean they’re a shining example of how clean energy can improve our communities and economy. A new complex on Roosevelt Island aims to produce as much energy as it uses. Here’s how the designers are making it happen. THE NEW YORK TIMES — When Cornell University competed in 2011 to develop an applied science and engineering campus in New York City, part of its pitch was that it would construct an academic building that would at least approach making as much energy as it used in a year, a concept known as net zero. It won. Then came the hard work of making that vision happen at the campus, known as Cornell Tech. The first step: Architects from Morphosis designed the building, on Roosevelt Island in the East River, to use as little energy as possible. The second was making enough electricity to cover that reduced load without natural gas, part of its effort to stem climate change. So the four-story building, the Bloomberg Center, is squat, with a roof larger than the body, to maximize space for solar panels. When it is complete in September, 1,464 solar panels will span the roof. Designers created an image of the Manhattan skyline on the west side, visible from the tram connecting the island with Manhattan, and an image of a gorge in Ithaca, N.Y., where Cornell is based, on the east side. In the basement of the center, a geothermal heating and cooling system will connect to 80 wells drilled 400 feet beneath the dirt field, reducing the need for electricity. The field will eventually become a grassy public open space. A 40,000-gallon underground tank will collect rainwater for use in plumbing, cooling and irrigation systems. Wrapped around the thick-walled sides of the center, a perforated aluminum skin will act as both shade and insulation. The facade of the Bloomberg Center, perforated with small holes containing discs, lends both shade and insulation.
Small discs, positioned by a robot fashioned from an old welding machine, sit at different angles and degrees of rotation to form an overall image like pixels in black and white. The building appears to change color — depending on the weather, time of day or angle of view — from green to brown to gold. Planners extended the solar panel design to the roof of a neighboring structure, the Bridge building. Towers, like an apartment building and a planned hotel, were restricted to the north end of campus so they would not shade the roofs. Built for graduate students, professors and staff members, a passive-house apartment building — which means it can maintain a comfortable living environment largely without active heating or cooling systems — currently looms above a support structure, edged in a ribbon of perforated aluminum, that awaits solar panels on the roof of the Bloomberg Center. At any given moment, you can see the passive house and the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridgereflected in the glass cladding of the Bridge building, which will serve as a business incubator for companies and Cornell Tech graduates and research teams. The glass itself helps save energy, as will a planted area on the roof nestled amid 761 solar panels arranged in two arrays. Inside the center, in what is informally known as the Submarine Room, lie the guts of the geothermal system. Pipes carry 57-degree water from the 80 wells into the building. It is then pumped through heat exchangers and combined heater-chiller units that can adjust the indoor temperature depending on the building’s needs. At the end of the cycle, the water flows back out to the wells. Aiming for zero at the new campus took unusual cooperation among the separate architects and developers involved. It was an opportunity to think about sustainability, said Andrew C. Winters, senior director of capital projects for Cornell, “not to just think about it at the level of the building, but to think about it on the level of the entire campus. The Orlando City Commission unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday establishing a goal to move Orlando to 100 percent clean and renewable energy by 2050.
ECOWATCH — Orlando is now the largest city in Florida to make such a commitment and joins a growing movement of more than three dozen cities nationwide that have committed to a 100 percent clean energy future. Council chambers were filled with elated members of the First 50 Coalition, a broad-based alliance led by the League of Women Voters of Orange County that is pushing for sustainability in Central Florida. "Today, Orlando takes its place on the regional, state and national stage as a forward-thinking city committed to a healthier, sustainable future," said League of Women Voters of Orange County co-president Carol Davis. "This is a first, important step, and we plan to continue to support and encourage the City to follow with concrete measures that solidify this commitment." Orlando represents the 40th city in the U.S. to commit to move to 100 percent clean and renewable energy. Mayor Buddy Dyer has already championed multiple green energy initiatives, including signing the Mayors National Climate Action Agenda in the past few months. In June, Mayor Dyer signed onto the Sierra Club's Mayors for 100% Clean Energy campaign and endorsed a vision of powering all of Orlando with 100 percent clean energy. Other Florida cities that have committed to transition to 100 percent clean and renewable energy include St. Petersburg and Sarasota. The local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch, a key member of the First 50 Coalition, praised the City Commission's vote. "We stand in support with the Orlando City Commission, in realizing the importance of renewable energy to it residents, by taking the necessary actions to begin the transformation," said Beverlye Colson Neal, president of the NAACP's local branch. "We look forward to working with the City to educate the residents of the importance and advantages of renewable energy as we move into the future." Sara Isaac, League of Women Voters of Orange County's director of partnerships, agreed. "We applaud the City of Orlando for looking ahead to the future and seeing that a better tomorrow is possible if we take bold action today," Isaac said. "Orlando is a young city that is just now beginning to fully realize its possibilities. This action showcases Orlando as a potential powerhouse player on the national stage." In a letter sent to commissioners urging their support, First 50 acknowledged that Orlando has already taken significant steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, praising in particular Green Works Orlando and Smart ORL, which boosted Orlando down a path of clean-energy and sustainability. Orlando's vote was applauded by Phil Compton, senior organizing representative with the Sierra Club's Ready for 100 Campaign in Florida, and a member of the First 50 Coalition. "All across our state and our nation, cities are committing to a future powered by 100 percent clean and renewable energy for all," Compton said. "Today, Orlando joins this growing movement of cities that are ready for 100 percent clean, renewable energy. Over 100 companies have committed to powering their operations with 100% renewable energy — and soon.
THE MOTLEY FOOL — I've been covering renewable energy for The Motley Fool for more than seven years now. Over that time, I've written hundreds of articles about how wind and solar energy are beating fossil fuels on cost, and getting cheaper more quickly than anyone predicted. My bullishness on the sector was driven by economics, not climate change or other environmental concerns, which is the way I think investors should approach renewable energy. In 2017, the largest companies in the world are tripping over themselves to jump on the renewable energy bandwagon, and they aren't doing it because they want to cut back on fossil fuel usage. They're doing it because the dollars and cents make renewable energy a no-brainer. Green beer If there's one company that epitomizes the corporate move to renewable energy, it's Anheuser-Busch InBev. The alcoholic beverage behemoth is controlled in part by 3G Capital, a company that's known for pretty ruthless business tactics, like laying off thousands of workers as soon as it acquires a company. 3G is all about making money, and it sees many millions of dollars in potential savings from renewable energy. When the company announced earlier this year that it had committed to get 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, it did so because procurement costs for wind and solar energy have fallen to less than half of the price of electricity from the grid. Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer, Tony Milikin, said early in July that he thinks the company will beat its renewable energy timeline. Over 100 companies already on a path to 100% renewables So far, 102 large companies have signed on to the RE100 campaign, showing just how far the business world has come on this topic. JPMorgan Chase was the latest to join last week, saying it would reach 100% renewable power by 2020, and will invest $200 billion in clean energy by 2035. Ikea, Apple, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, and Nike are just a few of the companies committing to transition to solely renewable energy. They're doing so by signing long-term power purchase agreements with some of the biggest renewable energy developers in the world. What this means for renewable energy investors The fact that corporations are moving so quickly to buy electricity from wind and solar producers is a positive for renewable energy investors, but how they do so can be a bit confusing. The simplest and most direct acquisition strategy for a company is to install solar or wind assets on-site. Given space constraints, solar energy generation of this type most commonly comes from panels installed on rooftops and carports, which can feed electricity directly into a company's infrastructure. In this niche, SunPower leads the market, and possesses the advantage of superior system efficiency compared to other manufacturers. Corporate supply deals are also playing a big role; they account for a majority of the electricity that corporations count as renewable energy. These are power purchase agreements (PPA) that ensure they'll pay a set price for all electricity from a wind or solar farm, like First Solar's deal to sell $848 million of renewable energy and credits to Apple in California. The specific megawatts generated by these plants don't necessarily make their way to the purchasing company's sites; instead, they end up in the grid, indirectly supplying their end customers and pushing total demand for fossil-fuel power generation lower. A structure that's becoming more common is a utility playing the middleman role in that process. Utilities are starting to offer renewable energy pricing for customers (I get 100% of my electricity from wind); as the grid operators, they have an interest in both customers' and suppliers' needs. In Nevada, NV Energy has played a role in projects by both SunPower and First Solar that supply electricity to Apple and Switch. First Solar and SunPower are two clear leading beneficiaries from the U.S. corporate push toward renewable energy. As this movement grows, I think they'll both be huge winners as corporations look for reliable partners to get them to their fossil-fuel-free goals. THINKPROGRESS — Research and development investment for energy storage projects have brought the cost of a lithium-ion battery down from $10,000 per kilowatt-hour in the early 1990s to an expected $100 per kilowatt-hour in 2018, the researchers said. Residential solar and electric battery storage could become cost-competitive with grid electricity by 2020, they added.
“Dramatic cost declines in solar and wind technologies, and now energy storage, open the door to a reconceptualization of the roles of research and deployment of electricity production, transmission, and consumption that enable a clean energy transition,” the study says. Furthermore, meeting the carbon emissions-reduction goals, as outlined in the Paris climate agreement, will require a greater focus on research and development, the study notes. The new study, “Energy Storage Deployment and Innovation for the Clean Energy Transition,” was authored by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, TU Munich, and the Center for Digital Technology Management in Germany and was published in the Monday issue of Nature Energy. Wind turbines and solar panels generate power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. They work intermittently, unlike gas- and coal-fired power plants, which can generate steady power as needed to meet consumer demand. Various systems exist to deal with intermittency, from installing a lot more wind and solar over a large geographical area to storing surplus energy until it is needed. A wide array of technologies are used for energy storage, including solid state batteries, flow batteries, flywheels, and compressed air. Gigawatt-scale grid storage would improve the transmission and distribution system, resulting in lower future investments necessary to ensure grid stability and improve customer, according to the study. One of the barriers to lowering the cost of energy storage is that public research and development spending in energy has slowed down, even as reliable electric power delivery has become a higher priority. From 1976 to 2015, total U.S. federal research and development spending dropped from 1.2 percent to 0.8 percent of the U.S. GDP. “We note that the relative decline in public R&D spending could forestall critical cost reduction and advances toward achieving a deep decarbonization in the electricity sector and bringing new material advances from the lab to the market,” the study says. “One way to drive this research is through government spending that could achieve drastic cost reductions for energy storage systems.” The federal government provides seed money for energy technologies, including energy storage. In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) was funding 75 battery system projects that the agency said have the potential to transform renewable energy storage in the next five to 10 years. However, the House passed a so-called minibus spending bill last week that eliminates funding for ARPA-E, which would end agency’s research into battery projects. President Donald Trump also called for the elimination of ARPA-E in his proposed fiscal-year 2018 budget. The potential for drastic cuts to federal research and development of energy storage technology, as proposed by the Trump administration, “would certainly be a short-term blow” to innovation, Daniel Kammen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and director of its Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, said in an email to ThinkProgress. Kammen, who was one of the three co-authors of the energy storage study, argued that dramatic funding downturns limit the competition between different competing technologies. “We saw a great increase in positive competition under the Obama-era ARPA-E program, when many candidate technologies competed for recognition and support,” he said. “Now, if the Trump cuts do take place, this will not only cause a short-term tightening, but can also cut into this ‘diversity-competition’ which is so important over the long-run.” Tesla has been one of the leaders in energy storage innovation, with its Gigafactory in Nevada and a lithium-ion storage facility in southern Australia. Deepwater Wind, a wind energy development company, on Tuesday announced a proposed a 144-megawatt wind farm with 40-megawatt hours of battery storage provided by Tesla for its offshore Massachusetts project. California is home to the first energy storage mandate on the grid, requiring utilities to procure 1,325 megawatts of storage by 2020. In Europe, the city of Berlin, Germany, plans to install a 120-megawatt battery underground to support wind and solar efforts at prices as low at 15 cents per kilowatt-hour. “These innovative policies showcase the range of storage options that may benefit clean energy, from small Powerwall batteries in the home to city-scale storage facilities providing back-up to utility-scale wind and solar farms,” the study says. Ikea is getting into the domestic solar power generation and storage market in the UK, with new solar panel and home storage battery system products.
TECHCRUNCH — The products include panels that integrated with existing roofing solutions provided by Solarcentury, a UK solar power company, which includes a 25 year guarantee on the panels themselves, as well as s six-year warranty on installation and every aspect of the system hardware. The installations cost more than your average self-assemble coffee table, with prices beginning at the equivalent of just under $4,000 U.S. The battery storage component can work with the solar panel offerings provided by Ikea and Solarcentury, but are also offered standalone as add-ons for existing home solar installations. Those batteries will help boost solar usage rates as a fraction of total energy consumption for UK home owners, Ikea says, allowing the average home equipped with solar power generation to achieve nearly 80 percent solar usage. Ikea entering the solar power market puts it in company with dedicated providers like Tesla, which offers home solar generation and storage solutions through its acquired subsidiary SolarCity, and via its Tesla Powerwall home battery storage product. Ikea may not be offering a DIY solar solution like it does with its furniture assembly, but it is trying to make the process uncomplicated, which is in keeping with its broader mission. The home furnishings retailer says it’ll provide potential customers with everything they need to go solar as quickly as possible including a free quotation, a home survey, quotation approval and final installation. If this takes off, it seems likely Ikea will look to expand the model elsewhere. That could mean partnering with different providers in different regions, so this could end up being an opportunity for home solar market expansion much more broadly across the ecosystem if things pan out. The definition of what’s “alternative” has changed dramatically in the last decade, writes Andrew Beebe.
GREENTECH MEDIA — Fifteen years ago, when I joined the early ranks of clean energy entrepreneurs, we were nearly dead in the water on climate. Oil was $15 per barrel, Al Gore’s groundbreaking movie An Inconvenient Truth hadn’t come out, and a solar panel was something that powered a calculator. In 2005, I went to my first "alternative energy conference” in Aspen, Colorado. I was asked to speak at the event, and hadn’t paid much attention to the agenda. Upon arrival I found the audience consisted of coal, oil and gas executives. It turns out that “alternatives” in the energy space in 2005 actually meant new methods for extracting old fossil fuels: tar sands, “clean coal” and a new thing called fracking. This, according to all of the other speakers, was the future. I didn’t walk away optimistic about our coming transition. Forecasters weren’t wearing their rose-colored glasses either. What a difference a decade makes In the first quarter of 2017, renewable energy accounted for 20 percent of all U.S. electricity, while fracking has gone mainstream. On the flip side, six publicly traded coal companies declared bankruptcy from April 2015 to 2016, while coal production had its steepest annual decline since 1958. And after much hype, the number of operational clean coal power plants in the U.S. remains firmly stuck at…zero. A coal plant built today would not be competitive with a combination of wind and solar in virtually any location in the country. And nowhere would it be competitive with natural gas. In the end, these fossil sources, particularly coal, look increasingly like the new “alternative energy sources,” since there’s simply no economic justification for them. The speed of this transformation may surprise some readers. That’s understandable. For years, traditional energy analysts have completely mis-forecast the transformation. Why were these analysts so wrong? What drove this profound shift with such speed? This did not happen because of Paris. This didn’t even happen because of Kyoto before it. It didn’t happen because of something Trump did or undid. It didn’t happen because of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. The real change agents of the energy transformation Three drivers of change set us on this course. It started first with the growing chorus of concerned citizens, scientists and activists coming together to seek out solutions -- often at a local level. This was catalyzed by inflection points like An Inconvenient Truth, but the sources of inspiration were everywhere as the evidence of change mounted. Second, local and state leaders in the U.S. started to listen. Across party lines, real leadership showed up to pass renewable portfolio standards, enhanced automotive standards, and air quality improvement plans. Third, in reaction to the first two, businesses started playing an increasingly important role. Broadly speaking, businesses have played two key roles in cementing our direction on climate. First, large companies have finally started to internalize the will of their customers. Five out of the top six most valuable public companies in the world are U.S.-based technology companies: Google (Alphabet), Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. They are also the source of the greatest amount of electricity demand growth in world. All of them have now committed to 100 percent clean energy in the near future -- Google is there today. The others behind them will follow suit. Leading companies have committed to 100 percent clean energy to save money, show leadership and meet the growing cries from their customers and employees to be part of the solution. The magnitude of this commitment cannot be overstated. These companies have a combined market capitalization of nearly $2.3 trillion -- exceeding the size of nearly every economy that signed the Paris accord. The second way business has played a key role is innovation and entrepreneurship. The impact of buying power is the domain of the large multinationals. The impact of innovation is the domain of startups. From SunPower and First Solar to Tesla and Nest, we have continually seen the unbounded creativity of startups and founders prove the impossible. And we’re just getting warmed up. Electric buses, large-scale energy storage, autonomous cars, electric planes, and the myriad software solutions to help make our energy more efficient and effective are launching daily. Trump and Paris: Both irrelevant? Last year, diplomats and world leaders gathered in France to sign the Paris climate accord. It was the culmination of over a decade’s worth of work, and it was heralded as an historic agreement. The accord was historic. Virtually all climate scientists agree the commitments were in fact necessary first steps. Most would also agree they were not sufficient, but at least they showed an alignment and a willingness to stand together in this time of global crisis. In June of this year, our new president began the work of removing the U.S. from the Paris commitments. But interestingly, it would appear the U.S. commitment, or lack thereof, has had no material impact on the movement to address climate change. Like so many of the solutions to our climate challenges, the movement is now distributed and highly effective. An unstoppable force As has been pointed out many times, all of the stakeholders addressing climate change were moving on their own before Paris, and virtually all of them already had plans in place which would result in exceeding the Paris goals. This is true of the U.S. as well. The real value of Paris was simply coming together to collectively acknowledge the challenge and show unity around a future engagement for the next steps after Paris. Today, leadership is everywhere, distributed in its origins, rationale and actions. China is investing hundreds of billions into renewables over the next three years while slowing plans for coal-fired power plants. The same is happening across India. Germany is now sourcing as much as 85 percent of all its energy from renewables at any given time, with Chile and the Nordic countries pushing ahead as well. The story of transformation here in the U.S. is, typically, much more diverse and creative than some of the top-down transformations listed above. The U.S. shift didn’t happen because of a global accord, or really with much support at the federal level at all. It happened because of local leadership, consumer demands and entrepreneurship. The road ahead has no U-turns The efforts of brave local political leaders, individual consumers and "prosumers" (those who are both using and selling back their solar or storage), and, most importantly, of businesses around the globe have coalesced into an irreversible movement. No one global leader nor one global accord is going to make or break this effort. This is a decentralized transformation, and no one in their right mind wants to go backward. The road to safer, cleaner future has not been straight, but it is one-way. No one in Delhi wants more soot in the air once they realize the connection to coal. No one in Guangzhou wants toxic rivers once they’ve seen clean water again. No one in Dallas or New York wants dirty streets and diesel buses once they’ve seen the improvement of all-electric. President Trump’s attempted reversals on climate are pathetic. There is no clearer an example of political manipulation than his rhetoric on Paris. While he’s in office, he clearly weakens our global standing, and we must stand up to show he doesn’t represent the majority of Americans -- he represents less than one-third, to be precise. Thankfully, the president is decreasingly relevant. We’re doing this with or without him, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. America’s leading corporations are exceeding the Paris targets. States representing the majority of the country are exceeding the goals of the accord. While Trump plays petty payback politics that embarrass us on the world stage, we’re getting the job done here at home. The latest idea from the X ‘moonshot factory’ is code named Malta. BLOOMBERG — Alphabet Inc.'s secretive X skunk works has another idea that could save the world. This one, code named Malta, involves vats of salt and antifreeze. The research lab, which hatched Google's driverless car almost a decade ago, is developing a system for storing renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted. It can be located almost anywhere, has the potential to last longer than lithium-ion batteries and compete on price with new hydroelectric plants and other existing clean energy storage methods, according to X executives and researchers. The previously undisclosed initiative is part of a handful of energy projects at X, which has a mixed record with audacious "moonshots" like Google Glass and drone delivery. Venture capitalists, and increasingly governments, have cut funding and support for technology and businesses built around alternatives to fossil fuels. X's clean-energy projects have yet to become hits like its driverless cars, but the lab isn't giving up. "If the moonshot factory gives up on a big, important problem like climate change, then maybe it will never get solved," said Obi Felten, a director at X. "If we do start solving it, there are trillions and trillions of dollars in market opportunity."
She runs The Foundry, where a Malta team of fewer than 10 researchers is testing a stripped-down prototype. This is the part of X that tries to turn experiments in science labs into full-blown projects with emerging business models, such as its Loon internet-beaming high-altitude balloons. Malta is not yet an official X project, but it has been "de-risked" enough that the team is now looking for partners to build, operate and connect a commercial-sized prototype to the grid, Felten said. That means Alphabet may team up or compete with industrial powerhouses like Siemens AG, ABB Ltd. and General Electric Co. X is stepping into a market that could see about $40 billion in investment by 2024, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Roughly 790 megawatts of energy will be stored this year and overall capacity is expected to hit 45 gigawatts in seven years, BNEF estimates. Existing electrical grids struggle with renewable energy, a vexing problem that's driving demand for new storage methods. Solar panels and wind farms churn out energy around midday and at night when demand lulls. This forces utilities to discard it in favor of more predictable oil and coal plants and more controllable natural gas "peaker" plants. In the first half of this year, California tossed out more than 300,000 megawatts produced by solar panels and wind farms because there's no good way to store it. That's enough to power tens of thousands of homes. About 4 percent of all wind energy from Germany was jettisoned in 2015, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China throws out more than 17 percent. Felten is particularly excited about working with companies in China, a voracious energy consumer -- and a country where almost all Google web services are banned. Before that happens, the Malta team has to turn what is now an early test prototype in a warehouse in Silicon Valley into a final product that can be manufactured and is big and reliable enough for utilities to plug it into electricity grids. In renderings, viewed by Bloomberg News, the system looks like a miniature power plant with four cylindrical tanks connected via pipes to a heat pump. X says it can vary in size from roughly the dimensions of a large garage to a full-scale traditional power plant, providing energy on demand to huge industrial facilities, data centers or storage for small wind farms and solar installations. The system mixes an established technique with newly designed components. "Think of this, at a very simple level, as a fridge and a jet," said Julian Green, the product manager for Malta. Two tanks are filled with salt, and two are filled with antifreeze or a hydrocarbon liquid. The system takes in energy in the form of electricity and turns it into separate streams of hot and cold air. The hot air heats up the salt, while the cold air cools the antifreeze, a bit like a refrigerator. The jet engine part: Flip a switch and the process reverses. Hot and cold air rush toward each other, creating powerful gusts that spin a turbine and spit out electricity when the grid needs it. Salt maintains its temperature well, so the system can store energy for many hours, and even days, depending on how much you insulate the tanks. Scientists have already proven this as a plausible storage technique. Malta's contribution was to design a system that operates at lower temperatures so it doesn't require specialized, expensive ceramics and steels. "The thermodynamic physics are well-known to anyone who studied it enough in college," Green said. "The trick is doing it at the right temperatures, with cheap materials. That is super compelling." X declined to share exactly how cheap its materials are. Thermal salt-based storage has the potential to be several times cheaper than lithium-ion batteries and other existing grid-scale storage technologies, said Raj Apte, Malta's head engineer. German engineering firm Siemens is also developing storage systems using salt for its solar-thermal plants. But lithium-ion battery prices are falling quickly, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And Malta must contend with low oil and natural gas prices, a market reality that's wiped out several companies working on alternatives to fossil fuels. "It could potentially compete with lithium-ion," said Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst Yayoi Sekine. "But there are a lot of challenges that an emerging technology has to face." One hurdle is convincing energy incumbents to put capital into a project with potential returns many years down the road. Alphabet has the balance sheet to inspire confidence, with $95 billion in cash and equivalents. Yet the tech giant has a recent history of retreating from or shutting experimental projects that stray from its core areas of high-power computing and software. Robert Laughlin, a Nobel prize-winning physicist whose research laid the foundation for Malta, is now a consultant on the project. He met X representatives at a conference a few years ago. They discussed the idea, and the lab ultimately decided to fund the project and build a small team to execute it. Laughin has signed off on the team's designs, and he said his theories have been working with the prototype. Laughlin believes X is more committed than previous potential backers. He first pitched the idea as his own startup, taking it to luminary tech investors including Khosla Ventures and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. They passed, according to the scientist, because they didn't want to deal with the tougher demands of a conservative energy industry that will have to buy and use the system in the end. "What we're talking about here is engines and oil companies -- big dinosaurs with very long teeth," said Laughlin. That's "above the pay grade of people out here." A representative from Founders Fund declined to comment. Khosla didn't respond to requests for comment. X won't say how much it has invested so far, but it's enough for Laughlin. "A blessing came out of the sky," he said. "X came in and took a giant bite out of this problem." |
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