Zachary Pierce

An Interview With Zachary Pierce of the AES Corporation

Daniel Lee
Although the gestures of the bill were certainly made clear, there is still much discussion and clarification to be had, let’s say, concerning the manufactured in America part. The provisions currently seem to demand that 40% of the manufactured components in the facility to be manufactured within America to be...
The exterior of "Timber House," courtesy of Mesh Architectures

Timber House: Can Mass Timber Help Decarbonize Real Estate?

Bryson Wiese
Real estate is the source of around 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, including 11% that come just from making building materials. Mass timber panels, which consist of small pieces of softwood glued together, offer a lower-emissions alternative to steel and cement, as well storing carbon sequestered by trees. Driven...
In the nation's Covid epicenter, a well-funded park stokes wellness

Policy Memo: The USA's Housing Department Should Inventory - and Slash - Emissions

Jennifer Gottlieb Elazhari
In its $62.7-billion budget, HUD subsidizes 4.5 million units of housing in a portfolio directly owned or controlled through HUD partners. Furthermore, HUD resources are used by private developers through project-based vouchers and HOME funds. HUD has a great deal of power to drive the adoption of higher energy standards...
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This warehouse is not the only there there-house

This site in Lynchburg, VA evokes tobacco production - but the whole region can embrace clean energy generation. (Photo by Kipp Teague, via Flickr Creative Commons.) 

​​​​​​​Policy Memo: Using Experience to Transition the Tobacco Region's Energy Mix

Michael Brown
The Tobacco Region of Virginia, as its name shows, knows economic transitions. It can use its expertise in workforce development and industrial support to train workers and incentivize investors to speed the clean energy transition through this historic section of a rapidly changing state.
Pensacola, Florida

The Gulf of Mexico on the Pensacola, Florida coast / Capt_tain Tom / CC BY 2.0

Policy Memo: Promoting Wind Deployment With Gulf Gusto in Texas and Louisiana

Victoria Hallas
In the American Southeast, oil and gas developers have shown interest in learning the economics of offshore wind. States and the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management have wanted to encourage this interest. This memo sets out steps for state-federal cooperation to encourage offshore wind deployment around and across the...
This photo of a Buffalo, MN wastewater treatment site comes from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency's Flickr page.

Dirty Business: How Municipal Governments Can Lead in Reducing Emissions and Promoting Renewables

One proposed solution is to incentivize municipal wastewater treatment facilities to implement anaerobic digestion of biosolids and biogas capturing methods to produce Renewable Natural Gas (RNG), a renewable fuel used in the generation of heat and electricity, onsite or at a nearby centralized facility shared by multiple treatment facilities. This...
Goods that cross the ocean get crossed up in the supply crunch (photo courtesy Ana Ulin)

A container ship on its way to a commercial port...or is it? (Photo by Ana Ulin, courtesy Creative Commons.)

Policy Memo: Establishing a Pacific Coast Framework For Sustainable Maritime Fuels

David Fujimoto
The Pacific Coast of North America is home to five of the 10 largest continental ports, more than 55 million people and an economic output of $3 trillion (Pacific Coast Collaborative, 2022). Collaboration on the scale of the Pacific Coast can provide a cohesive approach to maritime industry decarbonization to...
Beauty isn't cheap: community solar land can cost more than rates can support

Policy Memo: Promoting Agrivoltaics Through New York State's Model Solar Energy Local Law

Audrey Friedrichsen
Summary: NYSERDA should update its Model Solar Energy Local Law to include sample provisions that incentivize agrivoltaics. This will align agricultural preservation and renewable energy goals and promote community support for solar projects. NYSERDA should also provide training and technical assistance to local governments to help them adopt local law...
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.