North America has the equivalent of a new lease on life with regard to energy, as decades of declining oil & gas production drastically reversed course in the past 5 years, and petroleum liquids consumption is dropping after a long growth spurt. This has led the US to import fewer barrels of oil from overseas… Keep reading →
New York City – the world’s energy finance capital and one of the world’s largest commodity trading marketplaces – is a fitting location for the Center on Global Energy Policy. As part of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, the center will seek to “provide independent, balanced, data-driven analysis to help policymakers navigate the complex world of energy.”
At Wednesday’s launch event, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was joined by energy experts and US government officials, who helped officially inaugurate the new energy policy initiative. Keep reading →
In his FY 2014 budget proposal, President Obama increases spending on clean energy development, seeking to expedite R&D and boost cost-competitiveness and deployment of clean energy technologies.
President Barack Obama’s FY2014 budget plan released on April 10, 2013, proposes increases in spending for clean energy production and deployment. The budget aims to support cost-competitiveness and deployment of renewable power, electric vehicles, advanced biofuels, innovative manufacturing processes, and energy efficiency in residential and commercial buildings. Keep reading →
The key to broader penetration of solar energy depends on access to capital markets and innovative financial structures that can reduce the cost of capital for project finance as well as increase the investor base beyond the traditional tax-equity driven investors. There is a strong case for the DOE to establish the Advancd Research Project Agency-Capital (ARPA-C) that will function to support the broader adoption and commercialization of renewable energy through mechanisms, including credit enhancment and direct equity investments for capital market project aggregation warehouse facilities and securitization transactions.
While ARPA-E has been successful for the deveopment of new renewable technologies, the renewable sector can benefit from the expansion of ARPA-E to include capital to catalyze the breakthroughs for financial innovations. ARPA-C innovations can help bridge the funding gap that challenges renewable energy growth by providing structural support for renewable energy projects to develop capital markets solutions. Capital Markets structures can help reduce the total installed cost of solar electricity significantly – and combined with other DOE initiatives could help make solar power cost-competitive without additional subsidies. The Obama adminstration outlined in the March 20, 2011 publication “Blueprint for a secure energy future”, three major goals : Keep reading →
James Hansen was a NASA scientist for 46 years and a prominent climate change critic credited with being one of the first to speak out about the issue. He recently left his position at the government space agency so he could freely address climate change on a full-time basis.
In this brand new video, he discusses his decision to leave NASA and suggests increasing the price of fossil fuels at the policy level can help accelerate a transition to cleaner energy solutions. Keep reading →
The energy sector has heated up in recent years as natural gas drilling technology has resulted in increased supply and the power sector has revolutionized in the face of monitoring and mobile technology that boosts the promises of smart grids. Firms are hiring, investments are going ahead at both the national and international level, and the industry is attracting attention as consumer technology advances filter into the “industrial internet.”
Recognizing its role in promoting the future of the industrial internet, the Department of Energy launched a manufacturing initiative it claims will help boost the prospects of the clean economy. The Clean Energy Manufacturing Initiative is small by comparison to the controversial payouts under the stimulus in the first Obama administration, but it signals a sustained commitment by the White House to the concept of a revitalized manufacturing sector driven by cleantech. Keep reading →
Sometimes getting bigger isn’t the same as growing up. California’s cleantech economy has slowed its intense growth cycle in recent months, but the emergence of new credit-worthy investors and intensifying technology innovation in the state has helped consolidate the gains of the last few years.
That’s the message of the latest California Green Innovation Index, released today by the organization Next 10 and compiled by Collaborative Economics. Keep reading →
Americans are accustomed to being told that they are running behind other countries, that other places are doing a better job of educating their young or building high-speed railroads or ensuring access to healthcare. Energy efficiency would seem to be the last area in which the US, with its famously well-lit and climate-controlled lifestyle, would be leading.
But in fact, demand response markets that allow customers and power providers to reap the benefits of “negawatts” (essentially un-used power they would traditionally demand or need to supply) are highly developed in the US, if admittedly still imperfectly understood and applied. The market for demand response, which is the activity that creates “negawatts,” has grown from essentially nothing a decade ago to a $3 billion market today, Joule Assets CEO Mike Gordon told Breaking Energy on the sidelines of the AGRION Energy & Sustainability Summit in New York City this month. Keep reading →
Plants and trees have been making clean energy for billions of years using water and sunlight, so why can’t humans do the same? People have been asking this question for over 100 years and Giacomo Ciamician, an Italian scientist, has been dubbed the father of artificial photosynthesis for his research into what he called “the guarded secret of plants.”
Today, chemist and Harvard professor Daniel G. Nocera has taken up the mantle along with fellow scientists, graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. His work and grand vision has been captured in this brief video by filmmaking team Jared Scott and Kelly Nyks (PF Pictures), which recently won a $50,000 FOCUS FORWARD prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Keep reading →
In the popular imagination, New York City is dominated by finance, media and other professional jobs of the kind likely to feature in glossy television shows. But the steady departure of manufacturing jobs that once employed many of the city’s residents has been embraced by city leaders as a challenge they can meet by leveraging access to the centers of commerce, education and technology for which the city is famous.
New York has traditionally ceded energy and cleantech leadership to other places, notably Houston and San Francisco, but is increasingly building public support for clean energy companies and projects that can replace its traditional manufacturing base and diversify the city’s economy. Hard on the heels of Governor Cuomo’s announcement of a billion-dollar Green Bank to underpin infrastructure development, the New York City Economic Development Corporation says it will open a new NYC Clean Technology Entrepreneur Center. Keep reading →
Jared Anderson
Conway Irwin
Peter Gardett