For those coming with fresh eyes to this series, please read the previous two articles about community solar. In the first article of the series, I explored the economic and energy equity opportunity of the community solar sector. The subsequent article investigated challenges within the market from a policy and...
With the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications showing this range of climate concern, should Colorado operate under one electricity provider?
Participants in CBEY's Financing and Deploying Clean Energy certificate program learn technology, finance, policy and climate science. Policy savvy locks in when they write real memos to real players. In this example, a professional in Colorado's community-solar industry encourages a state Senator to work on fostering competition in the state's...
Indonesia's president promised to stoke economic development by relocating the capital city. Can this project spark a pattern of investment in utility-scale solar? It can, but activists and investors need to see through a tangle of loyalties among the government, the state-owned utility and the coal business. This chronicle explains...
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This map, courtesy of marketer Solstice and adapted by Kevin Cellucci, shows how far community solar can grow.
Community solar developers have a compelling idea for how to extend renewable energy to people who can't install panels on their rooftops. They also face a series of questions. These include: how to coexist with utilities, and how to tie in to utilities' grids, and how to buy land, and...
Workers, investors and policymakers peer into the Gulf Coast's future. (Courtesy the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.)
Some have tried and none have managed to sync America’s clean energy ambitions with its fossil-based heritage through federal policy. The current administration is trying in many industries, including offshore wind manufacturing. That warrants a look at the Gulf Coast. Known as a longtime oil and gas cluster, the Gulf...
United States Department of Energy Loan Program Office director Jigar Shah.
The federal Loan Program Office, within the Department of Energy, exists to help finance pioneering companies that can't yet draw hefty private capital. After a political upset sent the office into deep freeze, it revived in the past several years. Now, a new director with a reputation as an investor...
(Courtesy Fairfax County, VA.) According to the Coalition's projections, this driver will soon find company.
If electric vehicles reduce carbon pollution, shouldn’t they get credit for doing so? The Connecticut
has started working on a partnership that lets owners, suppliers and charging vendors create and market credits for the miles the vehicles travel. The Bank registered the First Validated Multi-Partner Carbon Offset Credit...
This image from a community-solar vendor documents how individuals who normally can't access the solar market can build a revenue stream.
Community solar can provide more energy to more people - especially people currently shut out of the market for residential rooftop panels. Energy developers and marketplace makers have taken note of the potential for community solar programs to drive revenue- and the White House's promise to steer energy infrastructure toward...
What's on the other side of that installation? (Courtesy National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
As more corporate leaders try to scrub carbon from their brands, more credit risk is flowing into power purchase agreements. In these deals, which involve an "offtaker" contracting to buy power from a solar developer, some developers are looking beyond traditional corporate partners. New partners can include participants in community...
Financing and Deploying Clean Energy: Program Insights
Nothing succeeds like exceeding. In this policy memo, which she wrote as part of coursework for the certificate in Financing and Deploying Clean Energy, attorney Joan Beckner makes a nonpartisan argument for delivering all of Texas' energy from clean sources by 2050. The memo Beckner wrote for her class includes...
(Photo from Energy News.) Wanja Wallemyr contributes millions of kilowatt-hours to a grid that doesn't properly value it.
What would a prosumer-friendly policy achieve? The Financing and Deploying Clean Energy participant who proposed that direction talked to an entrepreneur whose co-op feeds wind energy into Sweden's electricity system. Wanja Wallemyr's experience outlines what a grid full of prosumers can mean for power and empowerment.
The Center has worked virtually this fall with dozens of professionals earning certificates in Financing and Deploying Clean Energy. Learners in the program study the history, physics, innovation pathways and technological possibility sparking the carbon-free economy. One learning strategy involves crafting policy memos and op/ed pieces on issues where public...
CBEY introduced a certificate program in 2019 that teaches professionals the policy, science, finance tools and innovation paths that define the path to a carbon-free future. As the second year of the certificate revs up next month, certificate holders reflect on how the program taught them what to ask, what...
The EU needs to open financing channels to more providers to support the intent of the Green Deal.(Photo from Qvinnovindar.)
Why should "prosumers" - individuals who make electricity for others to purchase- encounter brakes on their output in European Union policy? In this memo, which the author wrote first in the Financing and Deploying Clean Energy program, the case emerges for releasing female prosumers' entrepreneurial energy. A linked interview with...
