Clean Energy Finance Forum

A mandate from the Golden State to hook up new buildings to renewable power opens a path for ideas about financing energy upgrades in the vastly higher stock of buildings already in use.

This June 8 article, riffing off an architectural association's awards, shows how green engineering can lower a building's energy cost and improve its returns.

Residents in Springfield, Massachusetts question the "green" light for a biomass facility in an area where many live with asthma.

Debate continues to simmer in California as to what role community solar projects will play as part of the state's new building codes that require solar installations on all new homes, which went into effect at the start of this year.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc and EDP Renovaveis SA agreed to sell power from a wind farm they’re building in the Atlantic Ocean for a record-low price. The 804-megawatt Mayflower wind farm, located south of Martha’s Vineyard, will supply electricity to utilities in Massachusetts for $58 a megawatt-hour over the life of the contract.

In California, the nation’s most populous state, every newly-built home must now come with enough solar panels to satisfy its electricity needs. It’s a quiet revolution tucked into the building codes approved unanimously by the California Energy Commission in 2018.

Though Vivint sales representatives knock on “millions of doors a year,” CEO David Bywater said on the company’s Q3 earnings call that recent power outages have pushed many potential customers to reconsider renewables and storage.

California officials reacted with outrage on Monday to PG&E's power shutoff, but the utility stood by its decision and even state regulators seemed to acknowledge the difficult situation.

Soleil Lofts, an under-construction luxury apartment complex in the Utah city of Herriman, announced that it will host the largest renewable energy setup of its kind. The 600-unit complex will feature five megawatts of solar panels. Each unit will also host a Sonnen EcoLinx battery to store the energy, combining together to offer 12.6 megawatt-hours of storage.

The Department of Energy Resources released its report on "the necessity, benefits and costs" of pursuing an additional 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind power, which the Legislature last year authorized but did not mandate, and concluded that it would be a good bet for ratepayers, the environment and the economy.