Clean Energy Finance Forum

Where oil has flowed for decades, plunges in oil price can't make fossil fuels outshine solar in terms of cost.

Shocks can spark interest in secure sources of energy. For that reason, some insiders argue that distributed power can gain a surge of customers- even amid harsh financial conditions for solar and wind projects.

BP has become the biggest oil and gas company to promise to cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Bernard Looney, BP’s new chief executive, said that it was “no longer enough” to provide reliable and affordable energy, it had to be cleaner too.

The Virginia Clean Economy Act, narrowly passed by both chambers of the state legislature, sets one of the largest energy storage targets in the country at 2.4 GW by 2035 and pushes state regulators to devise a carbon dioxide cap and trade program that complies with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

"In the latest attempt by the Trump administration to obstruct the clean energy transition and artificially revive a dying coal industry, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — or FERC — has issued an order creating new rules that unfairly favor electricity from coal plants over cleaner and less costly alternatives."

Though 45% of utility employees surveyed in Utility Dive's 2020 State of the Electric Utility Survey see the transition's cost — including stranded assets — as a top risk for the sector, only 18% see generation retirements and stranded assets as a top concern and just 14% said stranded assets present a major challenge to a changing fuel mix.

So-called transition bonds are designed to help issuers in dirty industries, such as oil production and coal mining, finance their shift to cleaner ways of doing business.

The country’s foremost utility geeks descended on San Antonio to let their inner wonks run wild. The conference, DistribuTech International, featured the nation’s largest utilities mingling with service providers demonstrating their latest technologies and offerings on impressively large screens and surprisingly intricate displays.