Growing food in the forest for financeable flourishing

Explainer: How Carbon Capture Contributes to Climate Strategies

Max Flignor
There's too much operating need for carbon-heavy energy, and climate change is too far along, for society to do all its sustainability work through a switch to renewable fuels. Removing carbon from the atmosphere becomes necessary - and financing the removal involves a range of risks.
Looking for long-term investment flows

Policy Pinpoint: Legislation and the Long Road Before Us

Alec Appelbaum
Many have boiled down the seminal Inflation Reduction Act, and many are burrowing into it. To set boundaries and context beyond the timing of tax credits, consider an analogy to how another blockbuster set of policies altered one of the world's more emissions-intensive cities.
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This photo of Arkabutla Lake, Mississippi evokes a hydropower project this fund has staked.

This photo of Arkabutla Lake, Mississippi evokes a hydropower project this fund has staked. (Photo by Sean Davis via Flickr Creative Commons.)

Policy Pinpoint: Bring a Flashlight on a Camping Trip

Alec Appelbaum
The Inflation Reduction Act blazes miles upon miles of trail with clear markers in what had been overgrown backcountry. And the inconclusive recent climate negotiations that the United Nations sponsored in Egypt work as charcoal-gray clouds overhead. Where are attentive capitalists placing investment now that scale is possible and challenges...
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra Blazquez

AVANGRID's CEO Sees American Ingenuity Rising With the Inflation Reduction Act

Alec Appelbaum
In this video, AVANGRID CEO Pedro Azagra Blazquez frames his perspective on investment opportunities after the United States Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act. He also weighs in on Europe's investment climate, the outlook for hydrogen as a fossil-free energy source, and other topics where this European-based corporation sees the...
Wind power in desert

Prosperity arises not only from putting power sources in new places. It also flows from helping people currently powerless to tap energy for more active lives. 

Policy Pinpoint: Lessons of (Recent) History

Alec Appelbaum
Lawyers and VCs have sized up the Inflation Reduction Act by now, and American energy systems will likely never stagnate again. For thinking about investment over the decades that decarbonization will take, take a trip back to another crossroads in the nation's energy history.
Financing and Deploying Clean Energy: Program Insights
Targets for job creation lift at the local level in Ithaca, NY

(Courtesy of Jo Zimny Photos via Flickr Creative Commons.) Ithaca took its buildings off fossil fuel. It aims to take its job base in the same direction. 

Policy Memo: Making Buildings Carbon-Free to Make Real a Green New Deal

Luis Aguirre-Torres
At the local level, a Green New Deal can crowd in private capital. In this update of a Financing and Deploying Clean Energy policy memo, the sustainability director for Ithaca, NY explains the holistic economic and energy-justice strategy driving the city's project to decarbonize all its buildings.
Don't let the sun go down on price reliability, our author urges

(Photo by Don and Suzan Weller, via Flickr Creative Commons.) As the sun sets over Waterford, CT, an expert proposes a price floor in wholesale electricity markets. 

Policy Memo: How We Pay For Free Electricity

Mike Novello
As New England states progress towards decarbonization goals, the electricity spot market will see offers from solar and wind generators that incur no marginal cost. That can harm reliability and put some operators hastily out of business. To retain existing resources and the stability they bring, we need to set...
Patrick Kovarik.Getty Images took this photo for Fashionista.

(Photo by Patrick Kovarik for Getty Images in Fashionista, September 25, 2020.) Chanel once staged a fashion show with wind turbines. The author argues that assertive tax policy can make renewable wardrobes a fashion-forward investment. 

Policy Memo: A Good Look for Apparel's Industrial Decarbonization Path

Elizabeth Rich
The US, as the largest consumer and highest emitter of carbon per capita, bears a critical share of the responsibility to facilitate a transition to sustainable practices. ​​​​​This article lays out the rationale and a pathway for the US to incentivize the apparel industry’s decarbonization. I propose a preferential tariff...
YPCCC-Maine

Policy Memo: Bring Batteries for a Virtual Power Plant and a Virtuous Cycle

Brian Ambrette
Battery storage systems and virtual power plants offer an opportunity for individual ratepayers to improve energy reliability and contribute to Maine’s clean energy goals. Maine has several options for protecting and incentivizing ratepayers, especially low-income ratepayers, to own battery storage systems and join virtual power plant programs.
Climate attitudes in Colorado, courtesy the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

With the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications showing this range of climate concern, should Colorado operate under one electricity provider? 

Decarbonizing the Rockies: A Policy Memo on Colorado's Electricity Market

Aurora Sepp-Peterson
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...
Let's get this turning

The EU needs to open financing channels to more providers to support the intent of the Green Deal.(Photo from Qvinnovindar.)

Walking the Walk: A Memo Outlining Incentives for Women-Powered Energy Storage in the European Union

Esmeralda Colombo
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...
Techniques for turbines

(Photo from Energy News.) Wanja Wallemyr contributes millions of kilowatt-hours to a grid that doesn't properly value it. 

Qvinnovindar: Feeding Three Million Kilowatt Hours Into the Grid Each Year

Esmeralda Colombo
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.