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New York Enacts 100% Clean Energy Law, Secures 1.7 GW of Offshore Wind

July 19, 2019

New York on July 18 enacted the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), law that requires the state to produce 100% of its power from renewables and nuclear by 2040. The legislation includes agreements to build two offshore wind projects worth a combined 1.7 GW by 2025, the single largest renewable energy procurement in the nation.

The CLCPA signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Thursday codifies ambitions proposed under his “Green New Deal,” a climate change program that he claims is “the most aggressive” in the nation. Specifically, it mandates that New York slash its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40% by 2030 and 85% by 2050, relative to 1990s levels, effectively setting the state on a definitive course to achieve an energy transition to renewables.

The law will seek to achieve the stringent GHG emission cuts through the installation of 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035, 6 GW of distributed solar by 2025, and 3 GW of energy storage by 2030.…

The POWER Interview: CleanCapital Drives Investments in Clean Energy

July 17, 2019

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Investments in clean energy projects have hummed along in the past few years, with the growth of renewables worldwide continuing to increase levels of solar, wind, and other resources in the global energy mix.

Thomas Byrne has been in the middle of this energy transformation. Byrne, co-founder and CEO of CleanCapital and a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley and the UCLA School of Law, leads the company’s strategy and operations. Before CleanCapital, he served as partner and general counsel at True Green Capital, a private equity firm focused on distributed solar investments. He led the financing of landmark clean energy projects including NRG’s California Valley Solar Ranch, Caithness’ Shephards Flat Wind Project, and Terra Gen’s Alta Wind Energy Center.

Thom Byrne of CleanCapital

In his role as an attorney specializing in clean energy financing, Byrne saw first-hand how inefficiency was hampering the growth of clean energy investment. He envisioned a technology-based solution, and founded CleanCapital, which looks to connect investors with opportunities in the clean energy space, with an eye toward “reducing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and generating attractive returns to boot.”…

POWER Notebook: Investment in Renewables Down in 1H2019

July 15, 2019

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Investments in renewable energy projects slowed in the first half of 2019, primarily due to a 39% year-over-year drop in China, the world’s largest renewables market, according to data published July 10 by BloombergNEF (BNEF).

BNEF said investments in China dropped to $ 28.8 billion, the lowest figure for any six-month period since 2013. China is moving away from government-set tariffs for solar and wind capacity and instead moving to auctions for renewable power. BNEF said global investment in renewables was $ 117.6 billion in the first half of this year, off 14% compared to the January-June 2018 period.

Justin Wu, head of Asia-Pacific for BNEF, in a news release said: “The slowdown in investment in China is real, but the figures for first-half 2019 probably overstate its severity. We expect a nationwide solar auction happening now to lead to a rush of new PV project financings. We could also see several big deals in offshore wind in the second half.”…

How to Position Your Power Company for the Future

July 1, 2019

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Faced with the challenge of making the right moves to accommodate a swiftly changing energy ecosystem, one question draws into sharp focus for generators and the entire power and utilities industry: What will their role become in the years ahead, considering evolving portfolio mixes and changing industry dynamics?

Leaders know there’s a very real possibility that if they don’t fortify that answer quickly, they’ll continue to lose ground to new entrants eager to step in and take their place. It doesn’t have to be that way. We believe that power and utilities can avoid this fate by shifting toward a new role—what we’re calling a Utility Platform Player.

Evolving Frontier for Generation

The days of highly centralized generation, with business decisions largely focused on pursuing economies of scale, continue to transform into a world that is becoming far more decentralized. This is happening as more and more customers invest in their own sources of generation—from rooftop or commercial-scale solar facilities to microturbines or other technologies that produce power on a non-centralized basis.…

Wheeler: Keeping U.S. Coal Sector Alive Will Benefit ‘International Environmental Protection’

June 29, 2019

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Coal power, which has seen a marked decline in the U.S., is necessary for reliability and energy affordability, and sustaining it could boost pollution technology exports and “improve lives while driving down emissions worldwide,” said Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler in a speech last week.

Wheeler made the remarks at a 90-minute event that the EPA held on June 19 to rationalize why the final Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule is a better option than the Obama administration’s landmark Clean Power Plan. The event, which was streamed live, also featured a long list of speakers from the coal industry and pro-coal states, with coal miners and other stakeholders in the audience.

Like the Clean Power Plan,the ACE rule will regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), and it will be founded firmly on the agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding. However, the ACE rule focuses on the nation’s 600 coal-fired units and gives states leeway on deciding how they will meet “emission guidelines” stipulated in the rule.…

How to Monitor and Predict Operational Performance with Digital Analytics [PODCAST]

June 27, 2019

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Power plants are capturing operational data in ever-increasing amounts. However, analyzing all the data can be challenging. A number of tools are available that can help.

In this episode of The POWER Podcast, two experts from one technology provider explain how big data can be analyzed to identify trends and create actionable information to solve production issues. Their company’s solution allows users to troubleshoot problems, and monitor processes and assets, in real-time, so operators can make better decisions, faster.

“We want the user to have a really good springboard to be able to jump into analytics,” said Nick Petrosyan, data analytics engineer with TrendMiner. “If you’re going to be doing some type of analytics or you’re troubleshooting something in your process, it’s usually because one of your KPIs [key performance indicators] are off. So, we would like to have those KPIs somewhere very easy for them to access and see, so that they start doing more analytics in their day-to-day job, and troubleshooting and solving more problems.”…