Now that the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives operate as American law, it will take compromise and conciliation to make the investments that meet those incentives succeed and endure. Let's revisit our metaphors.
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.
(Photo by Kevin Oliver via Flickr Creative Commons.) It was no precipitous proclamation about traffic that reprogrammed New York City's economy.
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.
Latest Articles
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.
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.
Putting the news in context sometimes requires a beat and a pinpoint. In this column, CEFF's editor focuses on how local officials responding to local pressures govern how far and how fast renewable projects can deploy in any economic context.
The future of tax equity may well run through a channel called "direct pay." which could simplify and expand a lot of what makes the tool valuable. As always, some unknowns come into the picture.
At a deal level, tax equity never looked easy. At an institutional economy-nudging level, its harder still. This installment sets out some structural blocks and ways over them.
It's not just limited or general. Parties in a tax credit transaction weigh decisions about exposure, timing, and benefit. This story clarifies the stations along the journey.
Financing and Deploying Clean Energy: Program Insights
(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.
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.
(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.
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...
(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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
(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...
