Reducing the impact of operations on the environment is a lofty goal for any business, but good citizenship is, in most cases, an insufficient motivation for sweeping changes at a company that must answer to its shareholders. What makes many sustainability efforts feasible for profit-driven companies is that by pursuing them – especially those that… Keep reading →
Any newcomer to the world of clean energy might become quickly lost in the maze of various renewable sources, technologies, incentive programs, efficiency opportunities, and other complexities in what is a very large – and often fragmented – part of the energy landscape. Below are some invaluable resources that offer helicopter-view insights into clean energy… Keep reading →
With GE’s software, stored wind can increase three revenue streams. After premiering its 2.5-megawatt, 120-meter rotor Brilliant wind turbine in February, GE is now announcing the commercial installation of the first three models that will integrate energy storage capability. GE’s (NYSE:GE) engineering advances have long been moving toward two broad objectives: achieving a more rapid… Keep reading →
The US wind power industry had a banner year in 2012, as developers raced to bring on projects before the federal production tax credit was set to expire at the end of the year. The frantic rush to take advantage of the tax incentive resulted in some impressive statistics highlighted in the American Wind Energy Association’s U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report for 2012, released Thursday.
Breaking Energy recently sat down with AWEA’s vice president of public affairs Peter Kelley ahead of the launch to gain some insight into what made 2012 so important and what to expect from the industry going forward. Keep reading →
They took it right to the edge, but the US wind energy business managed to rescue the production tax credit around which many of their projects and manufacturing investments are structured. In the process Capitol Hill supporters of the sector rescued a claimed 37,000 jobs and the supply chain for a rapidly expanding form of power generation.
The effort to rescue the wind energy PTC and the also-extended investment tax credit (ITC) was not directly linked to the fiscal cliff debate, but became intertwined with the calendar-driven effort to prevent earlier tax cuts and credits from expiring without any replacement policy in place. The inclusion of the wind energy PTC, which was thought to be sufficiently likely to expire that companies spent significant sums as they rushed to turn on wind farms before the end of 2012, speaks to the expanded power of the wind industry groups in Washington, DC and the increased centrality of the wind energy business to major infrastructure and engineering firms with substantial US manufacturing operations including GE Energy, Siemens and Vestas. Keep reading →
A Vietnamese employee of GE’s newly built turbine generator factory walks in front of wind turbine components inside an assembly line in the northern coastal city of Hai Phong on October 15, 2010.
GE last month celebrated its 20,000th wind turbine installation, a gargantuan achievement given the US power generation giant only stepped into the sector in 2002 when it purchased the wind power assets from recently bankrupted Enron. Keep reading →
Australia has punched above its weight in the global energy sector for years, with its huge natural resources providing a platform for the country’s economy that allowed it to outperform much of the world throughout the lingering post-crisis recessions in the developed world.
The country’s consumers and companies are energy investors and energy leaders, and issues surrounding energy usage and regulation have been political and cultural flashpoints in Australia in recent years. That means that the focus on Australian customers by pollsters and analysts pulling together the Corporate Renewable Energy Index and the Global Consumer Wind Study on behalf of wind company Vestas, TNS Gallup and Bloomberg New Energy Finance formed some of the key figures and results for a sector eyeing a transition to a “clean” economy. Keep reading →
Why would major corporations – absent a political requirement – get involved in renewable energy investments? Representatives for a group of major North American companies gathered in New York recently to discuss the results of a release of a pair of studies on renewable energy use and its perception among global consumers.
While each speaker at the Energy Transparency 2012 launch at the Bloomberg building in New York said that their companies were in part pursuing energy because it was “the right thing to do,” each also stressed a business reason behind their expansion of investments in renewables. Brand differentiation was cited by TD Bank’s Head of Environmental Affairs Diana Glassman, but so was the appeal to employees. Employees want to work for companies that are responsible about their environmental footprint, even when – as financial or insurance companies – their emissions output is relatively small. Keep reading →
The German wind industry sits at the heart of a European energy market preparing for a disruptive transformation intended to promote integration and allow the rich wind resource of the North to fuel continent-wide growth, without the risks of nuclear power and reliance on foreign energy producers.
It is a comprehensive, ambitious vision that in Germany alone the environment minister Peter Altmaier has compared in scale to the country’s painful post-Communist reunification. Keep reading →
Some of the most influential voices in the clean energy sector gathered recently in New York for the US launch of the Corporate Renewable Energy Index and the Global Consumer Wind Study.
Companies manage what is measured, and increasingly understand their customers and their competitors by leveraging the data sets provided by measurements that in previous business cycles would have been difficult to gather, much less compare. Keep reading →
