Several members of our team spent last month at the Solar Power International (“SPI”) conference. Putting aside the usual excitement about falling panel prices and overall capacity increases, the two phrases heard most – and usually together – were: “North Carolina” and “Tax Equity.”
Solar in North Carolina Keep reading →
The Bakken Shale has already had a transformational impact on its region, with the lightly populated part of North Dakota experiencing an employment boom alongside serious strains on its infrastructure.
This infographic, pulled together by energy publishers Hart Energy, focuses more on what is next for the Bakken region and for the US as the possible further expansion of drilling for its oil and gas resources becomes a central component of the national conversation about energy independence, jobs in the oil and gas sector, and environmental tradeoffs. Keep reading →
A year after the US government raced to meet a deadline to finish loan agreements with dozens of clean energy companies, less than half the total money promised has been handed over.
Technical questions and companies’ own failures in hitting contractual milestones are behind some of the holdups. But government officials fearful of taking a risk on firms that could collapse may have also caused some of the delays. The political firestorm after the failure of Solyndra, a solar panel maker that went bankrupt last year after receiving more than $527 million in a government loan, may have made the authorities wary, industry experts and investors say.
Warren Buffett bought himself two more wind farms on Sunday.
OK, it’s a little more roundabout than that. MidAmerica Wind bought two Southern California wind farm projects, part of the sprawling Alta Wind Energy Center – and by “projects” we mean they aren’t operating yet, but are expected to be by the end of the year. (They better be, in order to qualify for expiring federal tax breaks.) Keep reading →
Recent evidence suggests companies that score highly on sustainability metrics tend to be well run and have solid business models – 655 institutional investors representing $78 trillion in assets appear to agree.
The 655 investors are signatories to the Carbon Disclosure Project, which is a global greenhouse gas emission reporting initiative that incentives companies, governments and cities to voluntarily disclose data pertaining to key sustainability metrics. Keep reading →
A Power Purchase Agreement (“PPA”) can typically last fifteen to twenty years, but solar PV systems have an operating life of twenty-five years or more. So what happens when the PPA term expires and the system is still operating? The party that purchases the electricity – the “host” or “offtaker” – usually has three options at the end of the PPA term: (i) renew the PPA, (ii) purchase the system at fair market value, or (iii) have the equipment removed.
Renew the PPA Keep reading →
During the month of August, the Australian uranium mining company Paladin Energy released some news that sent a much-welcome shock wave through the industry: Not only had it entered into an agreement to supply about 14 million pounds of uranium to a major utility, but it would be receiving $200 million as a pre-payment-even though the actual delivery of uranium would not begin until the year 2019.
The confidence in the marketplace reflected by the Paladin deal represents major news for an industry whose product is thought by several analysts to be significantly undervalued. In the wake of the Paladin announcement, for example, both Credit Suisse and RBC agreed that uranium prices could potentially rise as high as $80 to $90 per pound in a healthy market-up from $48 per pound as of mid-September 2012. Keep reading →
On the surface, LNG appears to represent a new opportunity where easy profits are for the taking. In reality, producing and delivering LNG is a difficult business, and that business will only get harder as time goes on.
Unlike natural gas, where prices are established regionally, LNG is becoming a global commodity. Market prices depend on global supplies and demand. It is expected supplies will remain constrained for the next three years. Keep reading →
The centrality of the shale revolution to a resurgence in the US economy has been widely examined but rarely given such thorough analytical backing as it is in this video from Rice University’s Professor Peter Hartley.
While Hartley’s comments on North America’s conventional and unconventional natural resource endowment and upside production potential preceded the high-profile release of Boston Consulting Group’s report on the potential for an immense resurgence in the US manufacturing and export sector this week, he notes the degree to which the region enjoys economic and geopolitical competitive advantages in an increasingly globalized international landscape. Keep reading →
Energy venture capital is a challenging business in the best of times, but greater competition from large non-traditional players and lingering economic weakness in many of the world’s largest economies mean that, more than ever, finding and doing successful deals requires a disciplined, yet open minded approach.
The entrance of large companies into the energy venture capital space, the US elections’ impact on investment cycles, identifying opportunities and dominant sector trends were just a few of the topics Breaking Energy recently discussed with Dr. Wal Van Lierop, CEO of Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. Keep reading →
