A robotic arm moves a solar panel.
Another solar manufacturer has run aground on the shoals of the industry’s structural imbalance, with the Colorado thin-film company Abound Solar-recipient of a $400 million federal loan guarantee-announcing a retooling that will at least temporarily cost 180 people their jobs. Keep reading →
Former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta moderates as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and US Energy Secretary Steven Chu deliver remarks on the state of energy, February 28, 2012 during the US Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit at the Gaylord National Hotel & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, near Washington, DC.
We can dream it – so why can’t we make it? Keep reading →
GE’s energy investment arm has more than doubled its global solar power investment commitments since early 2011. The company recently reached $1.4 billion in cumulative solar investment, and has enabled nearly $5 billion in solar project value.
“We continue to seek to invest in the best solar power projects – with solid partners, power contracts and proven technology,” says Kevin Walsh, Managing Director and leader of power and renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services. Keep reading →
Millions of people in the US regularly respond to surveys asking where their energy comes from by responding “the socket” or “the plug.” The invisibility and omnipresence of electricity is, ironically, one of the challenges for the industry in trying to communicate its fundamental importance.
Making energy creation and consumption visible and relevant to people who are not engineers or experts, but are nonetheless reliant on energy for every aspect of their daily lives, is a challenge a number of firms in the sector have begun to embrace. Keep reading →
“Companies that don’t get this really risk becoming irrelevant,” says GE Ecoimagination VP Mark Vachon in this highlight video reel from the Ceres investor summit held at the UN’s headquarters in New York City last week.
The consensus among the speakers featured in the video is that investing with climate change in mind can mean investing in renewable energy projects with “bond-like” stable returns. It also means considering climate change risks like erosion and crop impacts. Keep reading →
Two recent wins for General Electric’s Grid IQ offering signal not just where GE is headed. They also suggest two important trends for 2012. First, the move to “cloud-based” hosted services is under way in earnest. Second, many of the sector’s biggest players are targeting coops and municipals for their next round of deals.
Hosted services are here (and to stay). Keep reading →
The world’s first major light bulb maker is building on its nearly century-old mission to teach industrial and commercial users of lighting how the accelerating technology advances of the past decade can save them money, make them safer and accent their appeal.
With the US customer still largely in the dark about the details of the upcoming lighting standards set to go into effect at the start of 2012, GE Lighting is teaching students at its Cleveland, Ohio GE Lighting Institute that although the savings are compelling on their own, the advantages of new LED lighting technology go far beyond mere efficiency advances. Keep reading →
(Fortune Magazine) I’m on a reporting trip in Angola, a place where the State Department advises travelers to “never touch anything that resembles a mine or unexploded ordnance.” I have brought a guidebook. It says Angola is “not a holiday destination for beginners.” I am traveling with a team of GE executives led by John Krenicki, CEO of the company’s energy unit. We’ve sat through a lecture on an especially virulent strain of malaria in the region. We’ve had two days of back-to-back meetings, visited a power station floating on a barge, and toured a liquefied natural gas plant on the banks of a tributary of the Congo River, downstream from Livingstone Falls, named for the explorer who died of dysentery. We’d had to leave behind two members of the team whose visas to Angola hadn’t come through. And now we’re in a chartered jet, homeward bound, getting ready for takeoff. A crew member comes into the cabin with an announcement. The flight will be delayed. There are wild dogs on the runway.
Indications that fierce competition in the global wind turbine industry is about to intensify came with news from the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer. Vestas abandoned its forecast of €15 billion in revenues in 2015 and said that job losses and restructuring will follow instead.
The Danish manufacturer’s third quarter results signal the challenges ahead as established players seek traction in emerging markets to compensate for oversupply, market expansion slows and the US and EU face potential double dip recessions, just as Chinese companies entice overseas customers with knock-down prices. Keep reading →
European wind companies have played a major role in the development of the US wind energy sector, even as shadows loom over the industry and the global economy.
Vestas, the world’s largest turbine manufacturer, clearly has high hopes for its US business, with a market share of 18.7% and room for growth. In recent years Vestas had invested in two blade factories, a nacelle facility and a tower facility in Colorado. It also has R&D hubs in Texas, Massachusetts and Colorado. Keep reading →
