Energy Exchange

Demand Response Is the Best Cure for Texas’ Ailing Grid

By Marita Mirzatuny / Published: April 1, 2014

Source: North America Power Partners

The Texas Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has, yet again, kicked the can down the road on securing reliable energy to power the state’s growing population. The PUC, the state agency charged with managing electricity rates, meets to securely plan for the future, yet they continue to delay planning meetings. This will benefit no one in the short or long-run. To secure reliable power and safeguard against threats of blackouts, the PUC needs to keep pace with the times and leverage technologies that require little to no water, generate negligible carbon emissions, and can respond to the call for electricity.

Last week, the PUC decided to postpone indefinitely an important meeting, originally scheduled for May, to discuss Texas’ recent blackout scares. The PUC has been in a heated debate over Texas’ electricity market structure, and in the midst of backlash from stakeholders, they have decided to push the decision onto the Legislature in 2015. This is not necessarily in the best interest of the state. Texans were asked to conserve energy several times this winter after colder temperatures forced heating units to ramp up. This request to turn down thermostats for threat of rolling blackouts came at the same time the state power grid operator assured Texans that reliability is on the upswing. But it’s time Texas faces the facts. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Demand Response, Grid Modernization, Texas / Tagged Third Way | Comments are closed

Climate Action is Turning Green to Gold for Californians

By EDF Blogs / Published: March 31, 2014

By Lauren Navarro and Emily Reyna

What would you do with extra cash? Starting this April, customers of California’s biggest utilities will experience first-hand how the state’s fight against climate change is actually paying off – in the form of real money.

Wait… real money? How does that work?

Source: Flickr/Mike Schmid

Yes. Millions of household customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and other investor-owned utilities will automatically receive a “Climate Credit” twice a year through 2020 – every April and October – as a line item on their utility bill. This money comes from California’s cap-and-trade program, which holds the state’s largest emitters, including electric utilities, accountable for their climate pollution. With cap and trade, regulated companies must buy “allowances,” or permits, if they plan to emit carbon pollution –equivalent to nearly $1.7 billion to date. Now, part of this money is being returned to these utilities’ customers. For average Californians, the Credit will cover the slightly higher rates that cover California’s green transformation. But if you’re conscientious about your energy use – and are a below average energy user – your Credit will be a bonus for you. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Energy Efficiency / Comments are closed

Conference on Clean Energy Financing Signals a Shift in Funding the Low-Carbon Economy

By Brad Copithorne / Published: March 28, 2014

Source: eProGuide

In 2010, I began working on financial policy at EDF. Our objective was to implement policies that would allow private sector companies to profitably deliver financing solutions to residential and commercial property owners footing the upfront cost of money-saving energy efficiency and clean distributed generation (such as rooftop solar) projects. While the residential solar market was already gaining steam at the time, most of the other markets had very limited momentum. But after attending the clean energy finance conference that EDF co-hosted yesterday with Citi, energy efficiency solutions provider Elevate Energy, and law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, it appears that the market for financing clean energy projects is beginning to accelerate rapidly.

The agenda featured 12 private companies from the clean energy sector (Kilowatt Financial, Clean Power Finance, Renovate America, AFC First Financial Corp., Renewable Funding, Clean Fund, Joule Assets, Noesis Energy, SCIEnergy, Metrus Energy, Hannon Armstrong, and Honest Buildings), plus a few more in the audience, that are executing a wide range of transactions using Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), On-Bill Repayment, Energy Services Agreements (ESAs), and many other innovative techniques to fund the transition to a low-carbon economy. Read More »

Posted in Energy Financing, Grid Modernization, Investor Confidence Project, New York, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Read 1 Response

Women in Power: Leading the Way to a Clean Energy Economy

By Lauren Faber / Published: March 28, 2014

This is the first in a series of posts about leading women in the power, environmental science, advocacy, policy, and business sectors.

Pull back the curtain on climate leadership, and you’ll see women in power. From the author of the country’s leading clean car standards, to the top administrator of the most ambitious climate policy in the nation (California’s AB32), to the scientists and entrepreneurs developing and deploying the advanced technologies driving the nation’s low-carbon economy, women are taking charge of the clean energy sector like never before.

Women have always been on the frontlines of our country’s toughest environmental challenges — including Rachel Carson, who galvanized the country with her exposé of pesticides in Silent Spring, and Hazel Johnson, the ‘Mother of the Environmental Justice Movement,’ who fought against toxic dumping in her own Southeast Chicago community.

But women have not always dominated the energy sector. Read More »

Posted in General / Read 1 Response

Gigafactory Proves that Tesla is Ahead of the Clean Energy Curve, But Does Texas Stand to Benefit?

By Marita Mirzatuny / Published: March 28, 2014

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, speaking to Texas Legislature in 2013. Source: Texas Public Radio.

Disruptive technologies tend to follow a certain trajectory. First, they are outliers, often ignored, and typically on the cusp of never entering the market. But, for the successful ones, a tipping point is ultimately reached, after which the technology goes viral and changes the status quo it was designed to replace. In the new energy revolution, Tesla is one such company that has surpassed the tipping point and threatens to change the way we produce, distribute, and consume electricity.

It isn’t just Tesla’s sleek and beautiful electric vehicles that will be key to disrupting the status quo. At a current price point of around $80,000, most people en masse won’t be able to afford a Tesla, even though the company has plans to develop more affordable models. But what makes Tesla unique, besides the strange genius of CEO Elon Musk, is the potential diversification of its offerings, highlighted recently by the company’s announcement to build the GigaFactory, a $5-billion battery factory that will employ 6,500 workers.

Set to open in about three years, the new GigaFactory will be large enough to manufacture more lithium-ion batteries than the entire industry produces now, and due to its sheer scale, is expected to reduce the cost of batteries by almost one-third. Read More »

Posted in Electric Vehicles, Grid Modernization / Tagged Energy Storage, Tesla | Read 1 Response

Transitioning to a Clean Energy Future Will Require Lots of Private Capital, but How Do We Get There?

By Victor A. Rojas / Published: March 25, 2014

Source: 401(K) FlicThe past two decades have seen a tremendous growth in our understanding of the climate change imperative and in the enormity of the challenge that confronts us. It has become clear that meeting climate change mitigation objectives will require the aggressive deployment of clean energy technologies, substantial amounts of capital, and creative methods of engaging that capital around these activities.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy costs money (and lots of it). In fact, the International Energy Agency has estimated that $10.5 trillion will be required between 2010 and 2030 to fund this transition worldwide. Given the continuing challenges confronting global economies, the bulk of the capital needed to transition to this clean energy future will, by necessity, be private capital. As a result, creative financing solutions are essential to engaging and unleashing private, institutional capital, and accelerating the flow of those funds toward clean energy projects.

But the question of how to most effectively unlock the enormous amounts of capital necessary to pay for our transition to a low-carbon economy still remains. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Energy Efficiency, Energy Financing, Investor Confidence Project, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Tagged green bonds | Read 1 Response