Vastly higher clean energy targets are essential to empower the international community to make the leap to a sustainable future, according to Richard Heinberg, coauthor of “Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy.” In this interview, he delves into the practical challenges involved in the global transition to renewable power sources.

Commercial buildings should be prime customers for companies selling energy efficiency services. But the commercial energy efficiency market has failed to grow close to its full potential.

Why hasn’t saving water as a way of saving energy had its day in the sun yet in the United States? At Horizon18 in Boston on Oct. 11, speakers at the session “Smart Water Solutions and the Energy-Water Nexus” reflected on the sparkle of hope that they believed these solutions provide.

The market for renewable energy projects paired with storage is gaining momentum. It is poised for large growth in the coming years. That was the consensus of the “Storage and Renewables: Policy and Market Trends” panel discussion during the Renewable Energy Markets conference in Houston on Oct. 9 – 11.

At Storage East 2018, policymakers, businesses and utilities – the entire storage value chain – convened in Washington, D.C. to discuss the next steps for the Eastern Interconnection in the United States. On Oct. 16, utility companies, power services, and energy developers engaged in a panel discussion on how to best incentivize the rollout of energy storage under current regulatory conditions.

Because energy storage can help the power industry with many problems ranging from intermittency issues hamstringing renewables to energy crises threatening entire population centers, it is being acclaimed by many as the linchpin of tomorrow’s clean energy future.

At the GTM Blockchain in Energy Forum hosted at Pacific Gas and Electric Company in San Francisco on Sept. 11, technology and energy experts focused their attention on emerging blockchain applications aimed at enhancing grid resilience: smart asset management and demand response programs. Blockchain has exploded over the past two years in the power sector.

Climate change, sustainability practices, and investment and asset management were a few of the central topics of the 2018 Sustainable Investment Forum, which met in New York City on Sept. 26. The event brought together banking experts, asset managers, and global institutions – including World Bank Group and United Nations.

While solar and wind resources are abundant in the western United States, the region faces technical, operational and management challenges in transitioning to cleaner energy portfolios. Integrating renewable energy into existing electric grids continues to be a difficult hurdle for many electricity markets. When utilities face intermittent renewable energy generation, energy imbalance markets (EIMs) have been developed to mitigate the gaps between production and demand.