Clean Energy Finance Forum

Could the United States decarbonize most economically by steering trillions in little increments to help homeowners solarize single sites? One model says so.

Now, in states from New York to California, the focus of the conversation has moved from: How can utilities weather the shift toward distributed energy without suffering big losses? to: How can utilities, their customers and the electric grid as a whole best harness the benefits of distributed energy resources?

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.

Early this month, three community-choice aggregators and one municipal utility serving much of California’s San Francisco Bay Area launched a 30-megawatt distributed energy storage-plus-solar solicitation. It breaks ground on multiple fronts.

Cities in California and Massachusetts are advancing what has become the newest trend in the local fight against climate change: bans on natural gas hookups in new buildings.

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.

Los Angeles has been sitting on a contract for record-cheap solar power for more than a month — and city officials declined to approve it because of concerns raised by the city-run utility’s labor union, which is still fuming over Mayor Eric Garcetti’s decision to shut down three gas-fired power plants.

Los Angeles Power and Water officials have struck a deal on the largest and cheapest solar + battery-storage project in the world, at prices that leave fossil fuels in the dust and may relegate nuclear power to the dustbin.