I met Devon Hartman a few years ago in Claremont, California, where I have been living since 2008. He is tall and lean, wearing glasses and a pointed small beard. He grew up in Kansas. And for thirty-five years, he presided over a successful architectural firm, building and renovating expensive houses with little awareness of the carbon footprint of those houses. The reasons I came to know this energetic member of my community had nothing to do with architecture or constructi

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has released its 2019 Standard Scenario tools and analysis. The report looks at a combination of broad combination of variables to create models of potential outcomes in the US electricity system through 2050. Across the full set of scenarios, the models show wind and solar providing between 21-62% of total installed capacity and 17%–72% of total generation. While coal and nuclear show decline in all scenarios

Despite its big potential, concentrated solar power remains one of the most expensive mainstream options for generating renewable power. Rather than trying to catch up through technological breakthroughs, however, the CSP industry should turn to lower-hanging fruit. That’s the view of Luis Crespo, president of Protermosolar, Spain’s solar thermal electricity association. Spain was a pioneer market for CSP, though it has since stalled. CSP plants with thermal storage have grea

California will be the first state in the U.S. to require solar panels on all new homes starting 2020, but the legislation’s passage did not end the debate over a key question: Does the cost of installing solar pay off for homeowners? Some developers are not even waiting for 2020 and are pressing ahead with solar-powered homes for what they say is the best reason: it is simply what best serves the homebuyer market matching energy demands to efficiency and cost. The state esti

MADISON — Alliant Energy announced plans Thursday to build up to 1,000 megawatts of solar power by the end of 2023 as part of a transition to clean energy sources. That’s nearly 10 times the state’s current solar-generation capacity and would more than double the amount expected to come online within the next couple of years in large-scale solar farms now undergoing the permitting process or under construction. If built, it would generate enough electricity to meet the annual

Target’s famous bull’s-eye is so cosmically linked with the brand that it’s hard to imagine the retail behemoth ever messing with the logo’s red color. But over the past decade — under pressure from customers, shareholders and employees — Target’s retail future is morphing into a very different hue: eco-green. The Minneapolis retailer best-known for its trendy, private-label brands and its millennial-friendly prices, has very publicly embraced the renewable energy passions of

As advances with data ramp up power usage in the server room, and companies face increasing pressure from their customers to prove themselves ‘green’, progressive thinking organizations across all industries are increasingly exploring ways to cut their carbon footprint, and drive cost-saving operational efficiencies at the same time— one of those lies in solar power. Allowing individuals and companies to deduct 30 percent of the cost of installing a solar energy system from t

Solar power developers are running into opposition in many parts of the US from people who claim cutting down trees to put up solar panels is counterproductive. It’s hard to see how it is any more counterproductive than cutting down trees to put up shopping malls, create farms, build tract houses, or expand cities but let’s at least acknowledge that trees play an important role in absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In every community, there are acres upon ac

The University of Michigan has committed to purchase 200,000 megawatts renewable energy — estimated at half its total purchased energy for the university’s Ann Arbor campus — from DTE Energy Co. starting in 2021, the energy company and university announced Tuesday. DTE will provide the renewable energy through the company’s MIGreenPower program and from Michigan-sourced renewable-power resources, the company said. “Reducing the greenhouse gas footprint of electricity that U-

Michigan leads the Midwest in clean energy sector jobs, adding 4,800 jobs in 2018 — a 4 percent jump from the previous year — for a total of 126,081, with experts projecting 9 percent growth in 2019, according to a new report. Ramped-up electric vehicle production by automakers in metro Detroit fueled a 16 percent increase in clean energy transportation work, per the report, produced by Chicago-based Clean Energy Trust and Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Entrepreneurs (E

In 2014, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association studied what some of its members saw as a touchy subject: local electricity powered by the sun. NRECA, based in Arlington, Va., is the trade association for 900 local rural electric co-ops that came to life in 1942, when its members were dependent on coal. Many derived 70 percent or more of their power from coal, while just 1 percent of co-ops had gone beyond experimenting with solar as late as 2013, according to a

With more electricity disruptions likely to occur in the next few years as state utility Eskom struggles to meet demand, South Africa should look at concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies as an alternative when coal power stations fail, Stellenbosch University has said. The university cited Dr Toyosi Craig, a project manager with AEE Power in Johannesburg who recently received his doctorate in industrial engineering at Stellenbosch, as saying mass deployments of CSP woul

No one enjoys paying a utility bill. The feeling can be even worse if you don’t feel good about where your energy is coming from. If you want to create a more robust, distributed energy grid to power our future, solar energy might be for you. But with so many variables at play (location, weather, local regulations, etc.), is solar worth it in your specific area, and for your specific home? Why Solar? Why Now? It’s no secret that solar panels are a cost-effective way to battl

Solar energy isn’t just the way of the future, I truly believe it’s what we as homeowners should all be striving for today. Not only is harnessing renewable resources to power our homes a smart way to combat rising energy costs, but it also removes our reliance on non-renewable resources. My daughter, Sherry, is due to have her first child this year, and I want this planet to be around for my new granddaughter for a long time. Paired with a well-sealed, energy-efficient home,

Developers will build and finance a 4.2-MW solar power system for a Rhode Island community. Standard Solar Inc. announced an agreement with the town of Burrillville, Rhode Island for the ground-mount solar system. It is planned to contain more than 11,000 solar modules and produce 5.3 GWh of electricity. The project is expected to be completed by March 2020. Standard Solar acquired the project from Boston-based Energy Management Inc. The Burrillville deal will be part of the

Over seven decades ago in 1941, Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, “Reason” (PDF), in which energy captured from the sun was transmitted via microwave beams to nearby planets from a space station. Flash forward to today, scientists are looking to make that very science fiction dream a reality for Earth. There has been tremendous research on space-based solar power (SBSP) or space solar power (SSP) since the mid 20th century. Here is a great timeline of the various internationa

California became the first state in the nation to require homes built in 2020 and later be solar powered, following a vote by the Building Standards Commission. The unanimous action on Wednesday finalizes a previous vote by the Energy Commission and fulfills a decade-old goal to make the state reliant on cleaner energy. “These provisions really are historic and will be a beacon of light for the rest of the country,” said Kent Sasaki, a structural engineer and one of six buil

While the government has rejuvenated its focus on the sector, power minister has said that states are not purchasing solar power even at the lowest rates. Union Power Minister RK Singh has warned that the country’s installed renewable energy capacity might get stranded as states are not very keen on purchasing solar power even at the lowest rate of Rs 2.44 per unit. Singh wrote a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley voicing his concerns. He wrote, “If any discom purchases

We’ve known for a few years now that solar power is surging in the U.S. and the rest of the world: costs have been falling for a while and countries like the United States, China, and India have been building so many solar panels that solar was the world’s fastest growing energy source in 2016. But thanks to a recently-published report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, we now know the full extent of that trend. The EIA report looks at the costs and spread of en

The Solar Energy Industries Association, the national trade association for the U.S. solar industry, reports that solar power has grown in the U.S. at a compounded annual rate of 59% since the solar investment tax credit was implemented in 2006. However, tariffs on certain products, including solar panels, could throw a wrench into solar power’s future prospects. Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land in the East River next to Manhattan, is the home of Cornell Tech, an engineerin