Energy aggregation becomes a business option

Energy aggregation becomes a business option

Energy aggregator Good Energy says that the concept is growing and will roll out across more states during 2016 and beyond. Aggregation is an approach to energy procurement in which customers in a given community band together to get better deals than they would individually.

Energy Manager Today

Energy price risk and the ‘hockey stick PPA’

In November 2015, more than 140 participants in the corporate renewable energy market gathered in New York City.

They came together under the banner of RMI’s Business Renewables Center (BRC), a member-based platform that accelerates corporate renewable energy procurement. Last year, BRC-affiliated companies accounted for 88 percent of transactions.

Green Biz

Measuring success in energy-efficiency financing

Growing momentum for energy-efficiency financing in the United States has motivated State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network to conduct around 20 interviews with stakeholders in five states to explore what it takes to make utility-sponsored programs succeed.  The research team produced a report, Making It Count: Understanding the Value of Energy Efficiency Programs Funded by Utility Customers (PDF).

GreenBiz

Big job gains in the energy efficiency sectors

A report from the U.S. Department of Energy says that 1.9 million people were employed last year in energy efficiency-related businesses. This year, that number is expected to grow by 257,000. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on a study in which researchers found that 1.6 million people work at wind, solar or other types of alternative energy plants.

Energy Manager Today

G20 prioritizes energy efficiency plan

Adopted in November 2014, the G20 Energy Efficiency Action Plan has been successfully implemented for its first year in 2015.  It is a voluntary collaboration among G20 countries with six individual work streams that will share best practices and technical resources one of which is buildings.

Clean Energy Finance Forum

Is Energy Efficiency the path to a lower carbon economy?

Energy efficiency − the drive to get more bang from each buck spent on power. If the European Union member states adopt a 40% energy efficiency target, the sum of energy savings and power from renewable sources such as wind and photovoltaics together would overtake the sum of all imported coal, oil and gas by 2030.

Globe-net.com

The growing commercial, industrial energy storage market

The commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage market in the United States, led by California, is growing, according to Navigant Research.  The firm predicts that the sector will grow from $968.4 million this year to $10.8 billion in 2025. Capacity will expand from 499.4 MW this year to 9.1 GW by the end of the study period.

Energy Manager

Ontario soliciting more bids for renewable power projects

The Ontario government, which less than a month ago chose the companies that will build the next set of wind and solar farms in the province, has now started the competitive process for another round of renewable energy projects. The province plans to sign more contracts for up to 930 megawatts of renewable power.

Globe and Mail

The power of microgrids gets unleashed

A few solar panels connected to an inverter, plus a battery no bigger than those found inside an electric vehicle. That’s all it takes for a village in Kenya that never before had electricity to not only light up homes but also enable some businesses to power refrigerators and computers.

Green Biz

DC-linked microgrid planned in Ontario

Canadian company ARDA Power and Austria-based Gildemeister energy storage GmbH are collaborating on a DC-linked microgrid in Burlington, Ontario. The DC-linked microgrid will include multiple energy sources (among them solar and gas generation), energy storage, and direct current and alternating current loads.

Microgrid Knowledge

Texas wind-power company loses trade challenge against Ontario

A company owned by Texas tycoon T. Boone Pickens has lost a NAFTA claim against Canada over Ontario’s wind-energy procurement process. Pickens’ Mesa Power Group LLC filed a claim in 2011 alleging the Ontario government discriminated against the privately owned wind-energy firm, which had planned to build wind farms in the province.

Globe and Mail

Renewable energy is at a tipping point — let’s push it

The world is approaching a tipping point, with renewable energy taking over from the fossil fuel industry. We now need to come together to give it a last push to help deliver the zero-carbon economy that world leaders agreed to at the recent UN climate talks in Paris (COP21).  This is what We Mean Business are discussing at the Climate Action 2016 Summit in Washington, D.C. this week.

Green Biz – Green Biz

Doubling global share of renewable energy by 2030

Doubling the share of renewables in the global energy mix by 2030 can save up to USD 4.2 trillion annually by 2030 – 15 times more than the costs – according to a new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). 

Globe-net.com

The new clean energy powers: Europe slides, developing nations surge

Europe was once the world’s leading light in the clean energy revolution. In 2010 clean energy investment in Europe peaked at $131.7 billion — far and away the highest of any other region in the world. But fast forward five years and there’s a few new kids on the block who unceremoniously have grabbed Europe’s title as the world’s dominant clean energy market.

Green Biz

China expands solar capacity

China will expand its solar power capacity by a factor of three by 2020, according to Bloomberg. In four years, the site says, China will generate 15 GW to 20 GW of solar power, according to Nur Bekri, who leads the National Energy Administration. T

Energy Manager Today

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Companies in the news

SkyPower seeks partners for India solar projects

Canadian solar company SkyPower is looking for partners for its India projects and will start building them in the fall of this year, chief executive Kerry Adler said Tuesday, adding it was rapidly expanding its team and activities in seven states. Adler denied a report the company could exit India, one of its core markets.

Reuters

Market reports and research

Renewables output beats coal and nuclear, again

Opponents of renewables like to argue that wind and solar are too intermittent to ever make a significant contribution to our electrical grids. But these arguments are beginning to look decidedly questionable, at least in the UK. New figures from analyst firm EnAppSys suggest that output from renewables once again beat out both coal and nuclear in the UK’s power mix for Q1 of this year.

TreeHugger

Government programs and policy

Solar energy

Samsung breaks ground on major solar facility

A shovel in the ground Thursday officially launched a massive local green-energy project but rays from the sun will power it. Dignitaries gathered for a sod-turning on almost 400 acres at Windsor Airport where Samsung will build a solar farm with 193,000 solar panels that can power the equivalent of 8,500 homes.

Windsor Star

Wind power

Animation: How Wind Turbines Work

The windmill, which converts wind into rotational energy to mill grain or pump water, has been around since antiquity. It’s even been claimed that Ancient Babylonians planned to harness wind as early as almost 4,000 years ago, as part of a scheme for one of Hammurabi’s ambitious irrigation projects. By the end of the 19th century, wind energy took on a whole new meaning as engineers in Scotland, Denmark, and the United States invented the first wind turbines that generated electricity.

Globe-net.com