Clean Energy Finance Forum

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?

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.

North Carolina has emerged as the epicenter of the region’s fight over wood pellets, a popular substitute for coal in European power plants that critics say is making climate catastrophe worse, not better. Pressure from activists has garnered rhetorical gestures from Governor Roy Cooper against the international biomass trade, but state officials have continued to grant requests from Enviva, the world’s largest pellet maker, to expand production.

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.

Some residents are concerned about environmental impacts from proposed transmission lines.