In electricity as in epidemics, "freedom to choose" often leaves low-income people in unhealthy settings. Houston is a competitive electricity market, like many across Texas. Yet roughly 87% of consumers stay with providers that routinely charge lower-income families an oversize share of their income for power. What's stuck?
Bringing about clean electricity in sub-Saharan Africa means creating credit where historically lenders have held back. Two new programs, a loan and a tender, have drawn international solar developers and raised prospects for low-pollution, high-efficiency in rural Nigeria.
Transforming from dirty oil that exploits people to clean sun and wind that exploits people won't do: Shalanda Baker helps clean-energy professionals and community activists collaborate.
What would you do if the cause that lights your day turned out to be trapping fellow citizens in the dark? For Shalanda Baker, a professor of law and public policy at Northeastern University, thinking about a clean energy future means thinking about the daily, weekly and sometimes invisible ways...
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From the lofty heights, zero net carbon seems visible.
With economies around the world in need of a reset after the Covid-19 pandemic upended how we work and travel, chief executives are obliged to publicly work out strategies for growing economically while reducing carbon emissions. While corporate leaders have previously been vocal about, if not committed to, implementing emission...
(Courtesy City Forest Credits.) Beyond soothing imagery, urban trees measurably lift air quality, energy affordability and employment. City Forest Credits aims to quantify what that's worth.
City Forest Credits matches nonprofits and cities to fundi urban trees. It describes its mission as one to make “American cities greener, healthier, and more equitable.” By computing value of rainfall interception, air quality benefits and energy savings, the outfit aims to define premium price for nonprofit organizations to charge...
The story of a small property owner and a repaired boiler hints at the potential multipliers in C-PACE, a program that lets owners use energy savings to repay loans for upgrades. Keys to the program include training and coaching, which make the savings easier to achieve and quicker to see...
Investors who enter purchase power agreements, like the landlords of the Sydney Opera House, can use hedges to avoid high drama.
Corporate buyers who learn to weave power purchase agreements into their finances have drawn on research and hedges to manage electricity's risk. With the Covid-19 disaster roiling electricity markets and project schedules, we survey risk management strategies and test their resilience. Some new takes on risk- and takes on new...
Power purchase agreements can spur megawatts' worth of energy transition- once more companies learn how to find, operate and improve them.
One of the world's biggest corporations evolved a form of power purchase agreement that houses risk within a project. A startup down the road has developed ways to streamline procurement and clarify terms for smaller companies. This article, wrapping our series on power purchase agreements' heft and potential, details these...
How can electricity customers route electricity economics in a greener direction? Two forms of long-term power commitments provide promising vehicles.
Power purchase agreements come primarily in two flavors: physical and virtual. In the physical deal, a buyer takes electricity on specified green terms. In the virtual arrangement, a buyer commits capital for renewable projects that will light somebody else's territory. This piece lays out the logic, risks and potential in...
In this interview, Susan Glickman, Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, discusses the status of clean energy development in the state. Glickman lays out policy battles over renewable portfolio and energy efficiency standards, the state’s history of natural gas consumption, growth in utility solar programs, and an...
South Dakota is a national leader in the proportion of its electricity mix coming from wind energy. CEFF spoke to South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Vice Chairman Chris Nelson about the status of clean energy in the state. He contends that the rise of wind in the state is traceable...
Texas offers an instructive case study for the growth of renewable energy. Most of the state’s electricity is delivered through the deregulated Electric Reliability Council of Texas market. The state has long since surpassed its mandated renewable portfolio standard, so market dynamics dictate the ongoing pace of renewables growth. Nonetheless...
