GreenBiz

PG&E is first utility client for Mainspring’s novel ‘linear generator’ | GreenBiz

Mainspring technicians workl the assembly line to build linear generators.

Mainspring Energy was founded in 2010 by a trio of Stanford Ph.D.s, born not out of the university’s legendary coding schools but rather from its thermodynamics lab. Back at a time when the startup world was growing wary of cleantech, the team targeted a tough task: to drive down emissions by reinventing one of the grid’s most fundamental technologies. 

Their target? The nearly 200-year-old design of the electric generator. Where practically all mechanical generators spin in a circle, relying on rotating magnets to generate current, Mainspring engineered a design that moves back and forth in a line. 

It’s a simple physical reorientation with potentially dramatic impact. The resulting “linear generator” delivers efficiencies that co-founder and chief executive Shannon Miller says produce electricity more cleanly, at a lower cost and more flexibly than can a multi-billion-dollar market of incumbents, including turbines, reciprocating engines and fuel cells.

And after a decade of development, the Menlo Park (Calif.) firm’s linear generator is scaling into commercial production at a time of sharply growing demand for flexible options that can support the grid sustainably. “Extreme weather events and the rise of electrification are driving increasing demands on the electric grid for affordable resiliency,” Miller said. “At the same time, we need to be moving rapidly toward a net-zero-carbon grid.” 

A utility milestone

Following a handful of corporate and institutional deployments beginning in 2020, Mainspring’s first utility project was announced this week in Angwin, California. 

The town is a crucial node on Pacific Gas & Electric’s network in Napa County, a microgrid distribution point where a generator is positioned to stabilize the daily ebbs and flows of power, as well as to supply downstream customers if transmission into the area goes down. And during California’s epic drought and record wildfire season, that’s been happening more often, as PG&E resorts to public safety power shutoff (PSPS) events to avoid sparking new fires.  

Occupying a footprint about the size of a parking space, the 240-kilowatt linear generator will initially run in tandem with a conventional diesel reciprocating engine, while PG&E commissions the unit. Multiple Mainspring units can be paired to increase output. In time, Miller expects the linear generator to take over fully, as it does things the diesel cannot.

For example, thanks to precise power electronics, the Mainspring unit can ramp up and down almost instantaneously, to better match microsecond grid fluctuations. And as renewables multiply, power supplies are growing more variable and less stable overall, so increased responsiveness is good for the grid. 

And its low emissions should be good for nearby communities. As utilities have increased their reliance on portable diesel generators to stabilize the grid, rising air pollution is hitting nearby populations, often in disadvantaged communities. 

Compared with the nearby diesel engine, Mainspring’s generator cuts nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by more than 90 percent and lowers particulate pollutants proportionately. Fueled by biogas, it emits virtually no carbon. And in the future, the unit can run on practically any gaseous fuel, Miller said, including emerging zero-carbon fuels such as renewable propane or green hydrogen.  

The Mainspring linear generator’s core assembly.

How it works

Mainspring’s performance edge arises from the architecture of its design, combined with the benefits of its state-of-the-art power electronics, an area of technology that, thanks to the scaling of renewables, has advanced rapidly during Mainspring’s decade of development. “Those systems allow us to do all the control, to achieve fuel flexibility, dispatchability and efficiency,” Miller said.

Physically, the design reorients familiar elements of an electric generator — magnets moving through loops of copper wire. Rather than spinning in circular motion like most generators, in Mainspring’s design, the magnets slide to and fro along a horizontal axis with precision that varies by less than the width of a piece of paper.

When a mix of fuel and air enters the central reaction zone, it is not combusted. Rather, via a low-temperature reaction, pressure directly converts thermochemical energy into motion which pushes two pistons — Mainspring calls them oscillators — outward from the center. 

Power is produced as magnets mounted on the oscillators pass through copper coils embedded in the shell.

When the oscillators reach the limit of their travel, they compress air at the far end of the cylinder, creating a spring-like pressure that rebounds them back toward the center, generating more power on the return journey.

With only two moving parts, Mainspring’s design can generate more power per unit of fuel than other mechanical generators. Miller said. At the same time, its simplicity incurs lower maintenance and material costs. Unlike turbines or engines, its innovative air bearing system needs no oil or routine parts replacement. And unlike fuel cells, no costly catalysts need be replaced. 

By operating at relatively low heat, the design virtually eliminates NOx emissions and other harmful byproducts of combustion. Taken together, the design advances “can deliver the high efficiency and low emissions of fuel cells with the low cost and dispatchability of engines and microturbines,” Miller said. 

Mainspring linear generator at a test site (not the PG&E implementation).

Financing growth

This bundle of advantages has attracted a wave of blue chip investors. In May, Mainspring capped a Series D round of $95 million, led by Fine Structure Ventures (previously Devonshire Investors), the private equity firm affiliated with Fidelity Investments’ parent company FMR, along with support from 40 North Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures and Princeville Capital. 

The D round brings to $228 million the total raised by the startup to date, building on earlier commitments from Khosla Ventures in Round A and Bill Gates in Round B. The Series C included a mix of strategic energy industry partners: AEP, Centrica, ClearSky Power & Technology and Equinor. 

In March, Mainspring announced a partnership with U.S. utility and renewables giant NextEra Energy — the world’s largest private-sector generator of renewable energy. 

Via its business services arm NextEra Energy Resources, the deal commits $150 million to help Mainspring’s customers buy, finance and deploy the new generators, principally via arrangements like power purchase agreements (PPAs), where customers need not buy the asset outright and can instead pay recurring fees. 

NextEra also offers the startup a strong partner with which to scale up green hydrogen. In July 2020, NextEra announced a pilot green hydrogen project with Florida Power & Light. For Mainspring, NextEra’s expertise in deploying emerging renewables into the grid offers a leg up and a fast track to partner with new clients. “Our strategy is find partners that understand where the grid is going and can really help us scale,” said Miller.  

Mainspring’s two publicly disclosed customers, PG&E and Kroger, both opted for PPA-style financing via NextEra. For Kroger, the deal offered a way to improve the reliability of energy supply at one of its Los Angeles-area stores, while cutting costs and lowering emissions — all with minimal upfront commitment.  ​​

“We’re not spending capital on this. That’s for other companies to do. We’re not maintaining it. That’s for other companies to do,” said Denis George, energy manager at The Kroger Co. “That puts us on a very equivalent basis to buying power from the utility.” 

The grocer is facing an increasingly common bind: the squeeze of rising costs for grid-supplied electricity along with pressure to cut emissions from onsite power sources. 

“We’ve already done practically everything we can on efficiency,” George said. The linear generator helps Kroger improve sustainability by moving towards its enterprise-wide goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent.

Reliability vs. climate 

Kroger’s priorities mirror those of a growing number of big energy users for whom decarbonization goals are running up against the challenges of climate change and grid instability. 

Along with California, much of the west is in a similar predicament, as rising temperatures are driving electricity demand, just as drought is diminishing hydropower output and fire is threatening major transmission lines. 

The pressure is pushing governments, utilities and companies alike to boost spending on backup power, even when it may not meet green goals. In July, despite supporting some of the nation’s most ambitious decarbonization targets, California’s governor declared an emergency, a move that permitted rapid deployment of fossil-fueled backup solutions and sped the rollout of new clean energy projects. 

The following month, the state energy commission OK’d five temporary gas-fired generators to reduce blackout risks. As GreenBiz’s Sarah Golden noted in her weekly newsletter, “[California] officials are faced with the difficult choice of alleviating suffering today or curbing catastrophe tomorrow.” 

Mainspring offers a way to meet both priorities. Near term, it can responsively generate low-emissions, affordable energy. And into the future, its fuel flexibility enables it to handle tomorrow’s clean fuels, Miller said. Compared with a decade ago, “The tailwinds for us keep getting stronger.”

Originally published at Greenbiz.com: https://www.greenbiz.com/article/pge-first-utility-client-mainsprings-novel-linear-generator

GreenBiz

Jigar Shah Is Making the DOE’s loans office mighty again. Here’s how | GreenBiz

By Adam Aston

Maybe you first knew him as chief executive of the Carbon War Room or as the co-founder of Generate Capital. Or maybe you came across him as a LinkedIn mega-influencer, GreenBiz contributor or even as a former co-host of The Energy Gang podcast — he’s the one with the ready laugh and the sharp takes.

Chances are, you already know Jigar Shah. He’s spent the past two decades making a compelling case for the climate-fixing, profit-generating potential of clean energy, all the while batting down ill-informed skeptics and bad business models.

Now, as part of the Biden administration’s effort to jump-start economy-wide decarbonization, Shah has been granted more capital — and a bigger platform — than he might ever have thought possible. 

The total: $46 billion, according to Shah. That’s the lending capacity he can mobilize at the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO), which he was appointed to oversee in March. 

To make the “once-mighty” office — as his boss, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, put it — mighty again, Shah faces big challenges. The office has been all but dormant for much of the past decade, due in part to Trump-era deprioritization but also hampered by a lingering reputation for bureaucratic dysfunction. 

Barely three months into his new role, Shah joined this week’s VERGE Electrify virtual event to kick off the conference and share his plans to get the loans flowing once again, in a keynote conversation with GreenBiz Group’s Senior Transportation Analyst Katie Fehrenbacher, who co-chaired the event. 

Re-booting the LPO. Following a decade of dormancy, the office has moved into a fast-forward mode, fueled by Biden’s climate agenda and Shah’s contacts — he’s reached out to over 100 CEOs since he joined. “People are starting to realize that we’re open for business,” he said. “If we got maybe three applications all of last year, we’ve gotten three a week recently. That comes from people trusting the program will be there for them.” 

A catalytic role. Deep as LPO’s loan pool may be, Shah sees his office’s role as narrowly targeted — providing catalytic funding at a key stage, before companies are able to access commercial debt. Consider the example of nuclear energy innovators such as Oklo, NuScale or Holtect. “Small modular reactors are going to be built across the country,” said Shah. But they’re not likely to be able to raise commercial debt until the technology is de-risked. Shah sees LPO’s role as building a bridge to bankability: “Then, we’re done.”

Streamlining the process. By pushing an easier, more user-friendly approach, Shah is tackling head-on the office’s lingering reputation for being too costly, too complex and too long-odds. “We’ve dropped all the application fees,” he said. “And we don’t charge any of the other fees that we used to until you’ve received the loan and started to draw it down.”

Energizing climate justice. Shah sees a space where the LPO has the potential to both modernize the grid and benefit historically disenfranchised communities. Virtual power plants offer an opportunity to advance grid-scale energy services while helping cities and communities upgrade energy infrastructure and cut energy costs. That could mean building solar with storage on low-income housing or affordably financing grid-responsive smart air conditioners or water heaters. Models such as these promise to “not only get essential appliances affordably into the hands of people who need them,” said Shah, “you’re also able to get higher utilization rates from the existing distribution infrastructure.” 

Swings at bat. To the vexing question of how to pick winners from among emerging technologies, Shah brings the perspective of a seasoned climate tech entrepreneur. “We have to take a lot of swings at bat,” said Shah, “and we are going to have misses.” But misses — with a nod to the failure of Solyndra, a Obama-era solar startup — can be offset by towering successes, such as Tesla, to which the DOE lent $465 million in 2010, a moment when the then-nascent EV maker was far closer to failure than world domination. Today, it’s the world’s most valuable carmaker and has sparked a competitive race to electrify the automotive industry. “That’s what the president has talked about,” said Shah. “We want to make sure from a technology standpoint, we’re leading the pack worldwide.”

Tips for loan candidates. “Don’t be scared! Come in early,” advised Shah. To be sure: There will be many forms, but Shah’s team is working to ensure that the process is easier to navigate than before. Over the past month, the office has added more than 10 people to escort applicants through the loan process. “We want every person who thinks they have a good idea that deserves funding to have a shot.”

If you’re one of those people, the initial review process takes six weeks, typically. Once qualified, getting the approval stage takes four to five months of diligence.

By that timeline, Shah’s office will announce the first batch of new loans under the Biden administration by autumn, if not sooner. 

Published May 28, 2021 at https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-jigar-shah-sees-making-energy-departments-loans-office-mighty-again.

Ghost writing, NCX (SilviaTerra)

Democratizing decarbonization… | NCX (SilviaTerra)

Democratizing decarbonization in a forest near you

Ghost writing / thought leadership on behalf of NCX, formerly SilviaTerra, 2021-05-10

How an innovative mix of remote sensing, AI analytics and a new marketplace is boosting incentives for owners of even small forest tracts to cut less, and keep more carbon locked up

Could trees turn out to be our best, not-so-secret weapon to fight climate change?

Amidst rising urgency to develop high-tech climate solutions — from direct air capture to geoengineering — trees are nature’s killer app, one of the most efficient, lowest-cost ways to remove substantial volumes of carbon. Yet, until now, we haven’t found scalable ways to harness their potential.

Steady growth

Our forests hold more promise than you may realize. Letting forests regrow naturally has the potential to absorb up to 8.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year through 2050, the Nature Conservancy estimates.

This process is already underway. For generations, the US has added more trees than we have harvested, thanks to shifts in farming patterns. Decades of steady surplus mean that today we have more forest than a century ago. And locked up in those millions of trees are billions of tons of carbon.

Perhaps more remarkable yet: This growing sink of carbon has flourished with few, if any, special incentives. Landowners tend to steward their forests. Some do so primarily to enjoy all the intangible benefits woodlands give us — from watershed management to biodiversity and visual beauty. And others do so for financial returns, to cultivate timber.

Today, select landowners can already do both: conserve their forests and harvest financial value from the carbon their trees hold. A small number already participate in markets that monetize the long-term value of the carbon locked up in their trees.

But the scale is limited. Conventional methods of measuring, modeling and documenting forests are costly. Typically, only large landholders can justify the huge upfront investment necessary to secure long-term deals.

This leaves most acres of forest out of play, and their carbon offset potential untapped. Roughly half of all forests in the US are owned by small landowners that, until now, have been excluded from these markets.

Democratizing decarbonization

At SilviaTerra, we’ve spent the last decade bringing to market a suite of innovations that can deliver these kinds of benefits at dramatically lower cost, more quickly, to more people. Broadening access to carbon offsets promises to help not just landowners, but buyers of offsets too and, ultimately, the environment.

At the foundation of our approach is a smarter way to inventory forests. By replacing painstaking on-the-ground surveys with satellite imagery processed by machine learning, we can characterize vast areas of forest with greater accuracy, down to the individual tree.

Yet data about forests, on its own, isn’t enough. The critical complement is a dynamic set of technologies that lets us model the probability a forest will be cut. The goal: to identify tracts more likely to be harvested and reward landowners to keep those areas growing.

Combining this forest and market data in our proprietary marketplace, the Natural Capital Exchange, lets us measure and value the carbon sequestered on a given property at costs far lower than conventional methods. We can then bundle and sell those carbon credits to a corporate buyer.

Buyers, in turn, benefit from a deeper, more reliable market. Greater transparency, together with increased certainty of offset quality, can help them plan and execute more ambitious, longer-term climate strategies.

Landowners, meanwhile, are rewarded yearly based on market rates for the value of the annual growth of carbon held by their trees. And if they do harvest some trees that year, they’re not paid for those offsets.

By year end, access to this market will be available to every landowner, across every acre in the US.

Cultivating carbon capture

The world needs countless more innovations to bend the arc of emissions towards net-zero and beyond. At SilviaTerra, we’re creating a combination of approaches to help forests thrive, and democratize the benefits of carbon-removing incentives.

As warming, drought, pests and wildfire take a growing toll on our forests, the urgency is greater than ever to manage the trees we have and to incent more new growth, through climate-smart strategies.

After all, nature has provided us an amazing technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Until now, what’s been missing is a better way to measure, track and trade its value.

Sources:

“Forests Can Absorb Carbon More Quickly than Previously Thought.” The Nature Conservancy, 23 Sept. 2020, nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/climate-potential-natural-regrowth-forests. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021.

Starre Vartan,  “More Trees than There Were 100 Years Ago? It’s True!” Treehugger, 2015, www.treehugger.com/more-trees-than-there-were-years-ago-its-true-4864115. Accessed 13 Apr. 2021.

Originally published here: https://blog.silviaterra.com/democratizing-decarbonization-in-a-forest-near-you/.

PDF version here:

SilviaTerra – Democratizing decarbonization 2021-05-10Download
Morgan Stanley

7 Trends That Will Reshape Work — And Life — In 2021 | Morgan Stanley

As businesses plan for the post-pandemic future, we’re finding that many changes born during this period have created lasting shifts in how companies support their employees in both the best of times and the worst. From improving work-from- home practices to enhancing how businesses attract and nurture more diverse workforces, here are seven key trends that show how 2020 has redefined our relationship with our jobs and our employers.

1. Rethinking Productivity and Remote Work

Post COVID-19, the white-collar workforce is poised to change fundamentally. McKinsey & Company estimates the remote workforce could quadruple in size.1 By many measures, productivity rose during the lockdown, yet many employees found that isolation sapped motivation and family demands interrupted work. In light of this, executives are setting a new tone by rethinking how best to capture the gains of remote work while reducing its downsides. Leaders are focusing on productivity by sharing best practices for meetings, surveying their employees, having more candid conversations with them, and exploring how to restore in-person gatherings when the time is right.

2. Hiring and Keeping Top Talent

To survive the economic downturn in 2020, layoffs were a wrenching necessity for 59% of chief executives.2 Heading into 2021, a growing share of business leaders are looking to refill those spots.3 And the wave of workers cut loose during the lockdown offers a rare opportunity to remake and upgrade roles with an infusion of new talent and unique perspectives from other industries. Leaders are diversifying by hiring people with disabilities, as well as those from military backgrounds or untapped geographies.

3. Boosting Workers’ Mental and Physical Wellness

Facing rising anxiety, many Americans devoted extra time to their mental and physical wellness during the pandemic. Sales of both meditation apps and home fitness gear surged.4 At this moment, companies are broadening the definition of wellness and extending more support at home and at work to help employees de-stress. For instance, they’re providing services like personalized coaching to address financial stressors. For mental health, some firms are offering virtual therapy and meditation benefits that can help repair the performance-robbing harms of stress and depression.

4. Updating Workplace Benefits for Millennials

Even as the U.S. workforce grows increasingly multigenerational, millennials are emerging as its biggest cohort and its most potent source of change, particularly around job flexibility. And while millennials have in the past been notoriously quick to switch firms, that’s changing as they become more committed to bigger roles and their responsibilities grow. Research from PwC suggests that companies can further boost retention with millennial-friendly policies, such as expanded equity ownership, more accommodating work-from-home rules and flexible vacation terms. What’s more, firms are pleased to find that non-millennials like these policies too.

5. Addressing Diversity to Improve Hiring and Retention

Even before the convergence of 2020’s crises, employees — particularly women, people of color and LGBTQ communities — faced tougher financial challenges, such as higher student debt levels and retirement shortfalls, compared to other groups. While these issues can be highly stressful and distracting for employees, companies can now address the unique financial realities of specific segments and help these employees be more productive and confident. For instance, leaders are advancing benefits that pay down student debt and customizing financial wellness plans that serve the specific needs of many historically marginalized groups.

6. Reframing Open Enrollment to Deepen Engagement

As remote workers encounter new challenges and needs, companies are rethinking how and when they communicate about benefits and open enrollment. After all, it is the most important opportunity they have to improve the financial and overall well-being of their workforce and their families. To do so, HR decision-makers are engaging employees early and often, and introducing new benefits and financial wellness programs. More companies are widening the availability of equity compensation and retirement planning; some are strengthening mental and health coverage; and many are adding benefits that enhance care for children and adult dependents.

7. Deepening Trust With Extra Financial Support

Now more than ever, people trust their employers as a vital part of their financial safety net. During the pandemic, 46% of companies reported an increase in requests for 401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals; 27% said they fielded increased calls for pay advances.15 Against this backdrop, it’s increasingly important for companies to stay abreast of their employees’ financial health; to target communications to those at risk; and to open up financial wellness programs to staff and their families. Companies are also examining the potential benefits of extending health coverage to gig workers and evaluating the impact of high-deductible health plans on the financial wellness of specific employee segments.

The Bottom Line

The past year has stressed workers and their families like few before. And while the challenges of adapting have come at a cost, encouraging, long-term solutions are emerging. While companies continue to reckon with the pandemic and its effects, they’re taking the opportunity to address the evolving needs of employees and build a deeper relationship with them.

As your company navigates this new landscape, Morgan Stanley at Work is here to help guide you and your employees toward financial confidence and improved well-being, at work and at home.

—
Check out the original here, with animated data graphics and full footnotes: https://www.morganstanley.com/atwork/articles/seven-trends-work-life-2021

GreenBiz

How tenants continue to press for greener commercial buildings, despite COVID-19 | GreenBiz

Manhattan’s once incandescent skyline is still dimmed, its office buildings emptied of workers. And Silicon Valley’s corporate campuses remain islanded, surrounded by seas of empty parking lots, as a nation of commuters continues to log in from home. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered office life — and the commercial building sector — in ways few could have dreamt of just a year ago. Yet as companies begin to map out tentative plans for a post-pandemic return to cubicles, the emphasis on greening those buildings hasn’t receded.

If anything, industry leaders say, COVID-19 has intensified the urgency of making buildings more energy efficient and healthy for workers. 

For Workday, with some 12,300 employees worldwide, decisions are still being made of how and when to return to its mix of owned and leased office spaces. But this hasn’t diminished the software company’s plans to add onsite solar panels and battery storage at its headquarters in the Bay Area in California.COVID-19 has intensified the urgency of making buildings more energy efficient and healthy for workers.

“Our focus on sustainability in our office buildings has remained strong. Leadership agreed we should be making this a priority and gave us their full support to make our buildings more environmentally friendly,” said Erik Hansen, Workday’s director of sustainability at a breakout session during GreenBiz Group’s clean economy conference last week, VERGE 20.

Landlords are seeing similar trends. “My tenants are very concerned about the erosion of environmental gains because of COVID,” said Sara Neff, senior vice president of sustainability at Kilroy Realty Corp., a Los Angeles-based landlord and developer with properties in San Diego, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest. 

It’s not just renewable energy anymore

Tenant concerns go well beyond energy issues. “Tenants are worried about things like, ‘What happens to our scope 3 emissions when nobody takes public transit? What happens to building energy consumption if we are constantly running the ventilation systems? What happens when our waste diversion numbers tank because we’re throwing away so much PPE and are back to single-use plastics in our kitchens?’” Neff added, referring to recent client conversations. 

“But nobody has backed off,” she added. “We’ve had [tenant] companies make new commitments since COVID began.”

As more companies engage in this process, they’re learning that making green upgrades can be more complicated when they lease, rather than own. Historically, inflexible, standard lease terms can make it difficult for a tenant to influence green building factors such as the kind of energy their landlord taps into, or even accessing detailed data on resource consumption. Workday has found that when setting up offices in multi-tenant buildings, negotiating technical lease terms early offers the best opportunity for success.

Workday has found that when setting up offices in multi-tenant buildings, negotiating technical lease terms early offers the best opportunity for success. “It’s best to have a dialogue with the landlord early on — while the lease is being negotiated — so that key language about procuring renewable energy can make it into the contract,” said Hansen.

The more tenants push, the more landlords can begin to drive change. “When a tenant asks about [things such as renewable energy or energy performance data] that’s when landlords start hiring people to run sustainability programs. Investments start getting made,” said Neff. “I can’t emphasize enough the importance of asking these questions and getting key terms into the lease.”

Rising expectations

Sure enough, tenants are beginning to do so. Momentum for change has been building since before COVID-19. “Starting 12 or 18 months ago, we started to see tenants really push us, and to collaborate on environmental projects, which has been great,” said Neff. 

As she sees it, tenants’ expectations have increased as more companies staff up to support their sustainability commitments. “Some of our big tenants are just now starting to hire heads of sustainability, so their sophistication is rising. Tenants who have been on the sidelines are now in the game,” she explained.

With tenants such as Workday and landlords such as Kilroy getting smarter about green building upgrades, gains can compound as trust deepens. “There tends to be more transparency and collaboration with landlord-tenant green building transactions,” said Rob Federighi, vice president of sales at Edison Energy, a global energy advisor based in Newport Beach, California. 

In practice, to make green building investments succeed, landlords need the right tenant, and vice versa. Tenant commitment can help landlords finance the investment necessary for major upgrades, such as solar plus storage. Tenants, meanwhile, need landlord support to achieve the sorts of zero-carbon energy goals more and more are committing to, Federighi added. 

Resources to help you green your lease

For both tenants and landlords exploring greener leases, libraries of standard lease terms have been developed and refined to help avoid common pitfalls. “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel,” said Neff. The panelists recommended these resources: 

And as more players steer into this space, Neff emphasizes that climate urgency dictates pragmatism. For instance, green project developers should not shy away from offsite renewables. There can be a bias towards doing as much onsite efficiency investment as possible, followed by as much onsite renewable as possible, but off-site renewable energy is sometimes regarded as less impactful.

“We have nine years to solve climate change,” Neff said. “Let’s first get fossil fuels off the grid.’”

View the original story at Greenbiz.com here.

GreenBiz

Why wholesale POWER markets matter SO MUCH to big ENERGY buyers | GreenBiz

When a big brand such as Google, General Motors or Walmart unveils an eye-popping commitment to use more renewable energy, the news usually gets attention. And as these pledges have multiplied in number and scale, corporate energy buyers are having impacts beyond the headlines. They’re reshaping larger U.S. power trends by pulling investment into renewables.

Already, roughly half of the Fortune 500 have climate and clean energy goals; over 250 large companies have committed to using 100 percent renewable energy. Corporate buyers have collectively deployed over 23 gigawatts (GW) of new renewable energy over the past five years, according to the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA). Over the next decade, renewable energy demand from Fortune 1000 companies could add 85 GW.

To speed progress, REBA and its membership of 200-plus energy buyers and sellers have launched a set of guiding principles to standardize wholesale electricity markets across the U.S. 

By making it easier for big power buyers to synchronize terms with utilities and project developers, the principles should stimulate investment, drive down renewable energy prices and, the alliance hopes, boost market competition while growing supply. REBA’s goal is to catalyze 60 GW of new renewable energy projects over the next five years.

Wholesale power markets already serve most U.S. consumers. The largest of these — such as the middle-Atlantic’s PJM or MISO, which spans Louisiana to Minnesota — straddle multiple states and coordinate the intricate flow of power from thousands of power plants, across millions of miles of wires, to tens of millions of customers. Today, roughly 80 percent of corporate power purchase agreements take place within existing wholesale energy markets, according to REBA. 

The principles are significant because American businesses are making wholesale market design a central priority not just to meet their own clean energy goals but also to shape the market structures …

Yet large swaths of the economy remain outside these regions. So standardizing rules for all the participants and extending wholesale markets across the entire country could enable even more deals. 

In a document released during a breakout session at last week’s VERGE 20 event, REBA laid out key principles to organize extant and new wholesale markets. According to this roadmap, well-functioning wholesale energy markets are defined by three core principles which should:

  • Unlock wholesale market competition to catalyze clean energy by ensuring a level playing field, large energy buyer participation, and services that provide actual value for energy customers.
  • Safeguard market integrity through independent and responsive governance structures, transparency and broad stakeholder engagement and representation.
  • Design to scale to the future by ensuring operational scale, customer-oriented options to meet decarbonization goals, alignment with federal and state public policy and predictable investment decisions.

Improving wholesale markets

“The principles are significant because American businesses are making wholesale market design a central priority not just to meet their own clean energy goals but also to shape the market structures that are critical to help decarbonize the entire power most affordably, for everyone,” said Bryn Baker, director of policy innovation at REBA.

Operators should ensure customers have pathways to engage in decision-making, which is not always the case today, Baker explained. “Energy buyers can and want to have a seat at the table. It’s going to be really important that a broad cross-section of customer voices are present in these markets.” 

From the perspective of a big buyer such as GM, an effective wholesale market can capture supply from a larger geographical area. This can help optimize for price, by buying wind one day in one region and switching to solar in another area on another day. 

Diversity of sources reinforces grid resiliency, said Rob Threlkeld, GM’s global manager of sustainable energy, supply and reliability. In one region, solar power may be surging, while in another wind output is waning.

“A wholesale market allows you to really match that generation with the load at the lowest cost possible,” Threlkeld said.A wholesale market allows you to really match that generation with the load at the lowest cost possible.

“As we think about the wholesale markets, we want to drive toward a clean and lean grid,” Threlkeld added. “We’re moving from big, centralized plants to more decentralized operations … It allows us to optimize the grid itself, matching generation with load.”

GM has accelerated its commitment to renewable energy, aiming to power 100 percent of U.S. facilities by 2030 and global operations by 2040. Wholesale markets can help, Threlkeld said, by hastening the deployment and procurement of cost-effective clean energy. 

Energy consumers take the lead

REBA’s efforts reflect wider trends in the energy industry, where households and big businesses alike are pushing energy companies to respond to their needs. “The conversation is shifting from a production focus to one where consumers are driving the next wave. It’s about what customers want and how they’re consuming power,” said Miranda Ballantine, REBA’s chief executive. 

Localization of renewable energy is also guiding REBA’s agenda. In the past, companies had little choice but to contract renewable capacity from far-off markets. Today, more are seeking to procure renewable energy near their facilities on the same grid they operate. “More companies are saying that they want to time match those renewable electrons with their consumption,” Ballantine said. 

Google recently unveiled plans that highlight the challenges corporate energy buyers face in upgrading their renewables sourcing from such a first-generation approach, where they may still use local fossil-generated energy but net that out against purchases elsewhere. In April, the internet goliath unveiled complex software-based plans to dynamically match its actual minute-by-minute consumption with low-carbon electricity supplies by region, a technical challenge no other large company has yet solved.

For other companies, simply accessing regional grids with sufficient low-carbon energy remains a challenge. Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of corporate assets are not in the kinds of regional transmission organizations (RTOs) that can draw and balance power from a wider region, Ballentine said. 

“Those customers have very little opportunity in those markets to actually make choices to drive zero-carbon electrons to power their facilities,” Ballantine added. Absent organized wholesale markets, companies can’t really use their demand signals to drive change in the type of electricity they’re consuming. 

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Originally published at Greenbiz.com.

GreenBiz

As crises collide, can California meet its climate goals? | GreenBiz

Climate. Heatwaves. Wildfires. Blackouts. Pandemic. Recession. Unemployment. Social unrest. Climate, again. 

The tangle of troubles California is struggling with has no precedent. Against a backdrop of rising environmental anxiety, with wildfires lasting longer, spreading further and damaging more acreage and communities than ever before, the pandemic triggered a sharp recession and spike in unemployment. With COVID-19 and joblessness hitting low-income and minority communities especially hard, police killings sparked months of protests against systemic racism and economic inequity. And just as the need for public safety-net programs couldn’t be higher, California faces a crippling collapse in tax revenue. 

For Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board — the state’s key architect of climate and environmental policy — these near-term problems may be worse than we’ve seen, but they are not new, and the fix will come from commitment:

We’ve been shouting it from the rooftops for a long time that we were headed in this direction, although we hoped we wouldn’t get here quite so quickly, or quite so drastically. I have seen that people can think their way out of amazingly difficult traps if they decide to. We have the human capital and intelligence, if we have the will… You can’t fix one thing without the other. If we don’t come up with solutions that are multi-factored, we won’t get very far. 

To explore how California can solve these interlinked problems, Nichols was joined by Southern California Edison’s Carla Peterman in a dialogue moderated by Sarah Golden, GreenBiz’s senior energy analyst, during a breakout session at last week’s VERGE 20 conference. 

Nichols, a veteran of state and federal environmental and energy policy since the 1970s, is retiring from CARB soon and is a contender for a top environmental role in a Biden administration, as GreenBiz Senior Writer Katie Fehrenbacher recently reported.

As senior vice president of strategies and regulatory affairs at Southern California Edison (SCE), Peterman manages a business that serves more than 15 million Californians and more than 280,000 businesses across 15 counties, including much of Los Angeles and a swath of the state that stretches to the Nevada border. 

Double duty

For Peterman, who also served as a commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the state’s electricity, water and natural gas services, the economic crisis has exacerbated troubles stemming from the wildfires. Utilities have been pushed not just to stabilize a damaged grid but also to maintain energy services to some customers who are suddenly less able to pay. As Peterman said:

To give you an example of how these things all collide, we’re seeing the impact of climate change from severe heat on grid reliability. Dealing with these issues is complicated by the pandemic. It’s more difficult to help people in emergency situations. We’ve seen an increase in electricity usage during COVID of 8 percent because people are at home. We also saw an increase in use during the heatwave a couple of months ago. And we’ve seen an increase in need for our customer assistance programs of 18 percent. Utilities have stopped disconnecting anyone who’s not able to pay. It’s so important to be in a state that has those safety nets for individuals. 

Funding the recovery will be a challenge. “The pandemic has had an impact on our ability to roll out any kind of new programs until we can get the state budget back in shape,” Nichols said. Yet much of the investment necessary to transition California away from fossil fuels can do double duty, helping hard-hit communities restore jobs while also improving energy services. 

SCE is seeing wildfire mitigation and grid investment as opportunities to invest in local businesses, and to cultivate more diverse partners, including a scholarship program to bring more Blacks into the skilled energy workforce, Peterman said. 

The shift to electric vehicles (EVs), accelerated by a recent state order curtailing sales of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2035, creates a need for investment that can rebuild and upgrade the grid in underserved communities, Peterman explained: 

We believe that a significant amount of electrification ultimately is the lowest-cost way to reach California’s climate targets. But it’s important to make sure that everyone can access all of those EVs, having access to renewable energy and building electrification. It can oftentimes be those in disadvantaged communities who don’t make that transition as quickly and then end up paying more. Ultimately, we want to make sure electricity stays affordable because we want people to use it more. 

Towards this goal, SCE recently got the OK to launch a $436 million buildout of EV charging infrastructure, the most ambitious of any U.S. utility, Peterman said. The plan calls for half of chargers to be installed in disadvantaged communities. It’s our job to set the bar high and to show the fortitude.

If all goes to plan, SCE will be able to both improve electrical service to those communities while also improving its business. This kind of synergy — with private companies innovating pragmatic strategies that help advance climate policy and benefit the public — are crucial to recovering and moving towards net-zero emissions. And the scale of the crisis demands more collaboration, faster. But not all businesses are there yet, Nichols said: 

What I see as a major impediment is the lack of willingness on the part of at least some of our business ecosystem to come to the table with their most constructive contribution. I am going to call out — because I think I have to — the debate over what we mean by zero, whether we’re going to zero or “near zero.” It boils down to: Are we going to continue to subsidize somewhat cleaner technologies versus setting our sights out on the ultimate goal and doing everything we can to get there? 

Promising precedents

By this measure, California’s track record of pioneering climate technologies offers promising precedents. From solar panel materials to EVs and grid management software, homegrown technologies are rapidly remaking California’s energy, transportation and economic systems. Yet in the next phase of recovery and decarbonization, affordability and accessibility will be a higher priority. Peterman is hopeful that innovation can help drive down costs. She said: 

I’m starting to geek out thinking about things like sensors and technologies that help to reduce latency. How do we allow devices to communicate with each other? And how do we really bring customers’ distributed resources forward to support grid resiliency? … With technology advancements and the need for affordability, it’s important to keep pushing the envelope. That’s my shout-out to all the techie people out there: We still need your ingenuity! 

From a policy perspective, Nichols is adamant the state will continue to lead. “It’s our job to set the bar high and to show the fortitude that says we’re going to stick with these goals even if somebody gets a little bent out of shape along the way, and we have to figure out how to accommodate them,” Nichols said. “Maybe we need to be flexible about the means for getting there. But we got to be willing to say, ‘We know we can get there.’ We’ve got to set that goal.”

After all, the Golden State is already home to the largest cap-and-trade program in the United States. More recently, Sacramento has unveiled ambitious goals to be carbon-neutral by 2045, to shift the grid and its nation’s largest fleet of cars to be zero-emission by 2035. Along the way, the state has emerged as a hothouse of climate-focused businesses, from innovative manufacturers such as Tesla to renewable energy giants such as Sunrun to efficiency standard-setters such as Google.  

No state can match California’s challenges, or the scale of its possibilities, in untangling this knot of problems. “But if anyone can do it, it’s California,” GreenBiz’s Golden said. 

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Originally published at Greenbiz.com.

GreenBiz

How to value solar plus storage | GREENBIZ

In the wake of California’s summer of wildfires, blackouts and planned outages, many consumers and businesses are clamoring for more resilient options. The crisis has turbocharged interest in systems that deliver power even when the grid is down. Solar plus storage is fast emerging as a top choice, both at scale on the grid and also “behind the meter,” installed in a home, apartment or commercial building. 

“Solar plus battery storage can provide value in two ways: first, energy reliability for customers during emergency power outages, and second, during non-emergencies, to help the grid balance demand and generation,” said Dawn Weisz, chief executive of California utility MCE, during a breakout session at last week’s virtual VERGE 20 event. 

Founded in 2008 as California’s first not-for-profit, community choice aggregation program, MCE today serves over 1 million residents and businesses in four San Francisco Bay area counties: Contra Costa; Marin; Napa; and Solano.

When it comes to reliability, solar-with-storage systems offer the ability to charge a battery that can keep the power on during an outage. “It’s worth a lot to know you can keep your power on, especially for customers that have medical needs that rely on electricity,” Weisz said. “And those that need electricity for heating, cooling, and to keep food fresh.” 

Solar plus storage also helps the wider grid and environment by letting consumers shift the time when they consume solar power: by storing solar energy when it’s abundant during the day, and using it at night, in place of power generated from fossil fuels.

“Behind-the-meter storage lets you optimize solar consumption, taking up excess output during the day, and discharging it in the evening, when demand spikes,” explained Michael Norbeck, director of grid services business development at Sunrun, a San Francisco-based provider of residential solar systems and services. 

Indeed, absent storage, too much solar can become a challenge, when supply exceeds demand. In California, “We started to see so much solar going onto the grid that our ability to use it was diminishing,” Weisz said. 

In extreme cases, that can mean curtailing output: switching off the excess power flowing from solar farms. Storage can put that excess output to good use, flowing it back onto the grid when needed. “It’s in California’s best interest to be sure we’re using as much of those electrons as we can,” she said. “More batteries will help eliminate curtailment.” 

It’s no secret that the cost of solar energy has plummeted. In an October analysis of the levelized cost of energy — a measure that blends the full cost to finance, build and fuel an energy system over time — investment bank Lazard calculated that large-scale grid solar beats all fossil fuel options on cost, even absent any subsidies. Even rooftop solar, installed on homes or commercial buildings, is close to par with power from conventional sources such as natural gas peaker plants, coal and nuclear. 

Meanwhile, battery costs have followed a similar downward path. Average market prices for battery packs plunged by 87 percent in real terms in the decade to 2019, reports Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

MCE commercial battery storage project in partnership with Tesla and the College of Marin. The installation is estimated to save the college $10,000 per month on electricity bills. Courtesy of MCE.

Yet even as prices continue to fall, making these systems accessible to more consumers and businesses, concerns persist about equal access. Weisz noted that even as prices for combined systems fall, the market is following in the footsteps of early solar, when panels were installed first by wealthy customers but lower-income customers couldn’t afford the systems. 

As a not-for-profit dedicated to community energy services, MCE has tapped state subsidy programs, grants and other funding sources to extend the benefit of solar plus storage. “We don’t want to replicate the same patterns of disenfranchising our lower-income customers,” Weisz said. 

For its part, Sunrun has pioneered a pricing strategy that often results in power prices below the grid average, thereby reducing customers’ long-term costs. For instance, to minimize both installation costs and monthly fees, Sunrun’s most popular plan, BrightSave Monthly, leases panels to homeowners for $0 down, paid for via a long-term, stable price. 

With wildfires emerging as a nearly year-round threat to western states, the resilience that solar plus storage offers is growing in importance. Sunrun’s systems have grown increasingly responsive to remote management. When grid conditions grow unstable, Sunrun’s systems can island themselves and call on a reserve portion of the battery to support critical needs. 

Panels recharge batteries during the day, which can then discharge at night, even when blackouts can stretch from hours to days or even weeks. “During the wildfires last year, we had a customer on uninterrupted power for over 142 consecutive hours,” or nearly six days, Norbeck said. 

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Originally published in Greenbiz.com.

Writer, editor, content advisor, creative leader – energy, climate | Chief storyteller at RMI | Co-founder of T Brand at The New York Times