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Ballot measures Tuesday in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Washington could reshape the future for fossil fuels, electricity and renewable energy in those markets. Each initiative illustrates how significant decisions on the production and consumption of energy in the U.S. are often made at the state level, especially with gridlock in Washington over federal policies. (Read more)
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As he follows the Solar Impulse 2 on its historic flight around the world, the CEO of one of the project’s partners, Ulrich Spiesshofer, draws similarities between the challenges facing the aircraft and those confronting companies navigating changes in energy consumption, like his. “We need to make sure that we demonstrate to the world with projects like this that we continue to stretch the limits,” Spiesshofer, the chief executive of ABB, a multinational maker of electricity grids and robots, said during a visit to Washington the other day. “This project is absolutely stretching the limits.” (Read more)
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The concept of sharing is a growing one in global economies, with increasing opportunities to divvy up the use of cars, homes and other goods and services. So, why not extend that same type of opportunity to energy — specifically energy generated from solar panels mounted on houses and other buildings? That was the idea behind Yeloha, a Boston-based startup that last year began organizing a network in which building owners with solar panels could make their excess energy available to people without such systems. Calling their business the “Airbnb for Solar Energy,” Yeloha CEO Amit Rosner and the company’s other founders promised the first such sharing arrangement in the U.S. (Read more)
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Democrats and Republicans agree on little when it comes to government policy, including how Washington should influence the ways that Americans produce and use energy. But one exception is a relatively small program at the U.S. Department of Energy that invests in early-stage technologies with the potential to provide new forms of low- or no-carbon energy efficiently, economically and satisfactorily. Established with bipartisan support in Congress in 2007 and first funded two years later, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy has awarded $1.3 billion to more than 475 projects formed by teams from academia, private industry and national laboratories with ideas for technologies in such fields as biofuels, energy storage, superconducting wires, and solar and wind systems.
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When Peter Davidson was hired as executive director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office two years ago, his was not an enviable position. The controversial program had been operating without a full-time director for more than a year, had made no financial commitments in some two years, and was still reeling from the fallout of a major fiasco: the bankruptcy of one of its major clients, the solar-panel maker Solyndra. Now, Davidson, who resigned in June to return home to New York, is claiming success for a controversial loan program that supports technologies with the potential to transform the ways we use and produce energy, but with risks that can scare off commercial lenders. (Read more)
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David Crane likes to compete with himself. For Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy (NRG), the biggest independent producer of electricity in the U.S., conventional coal, natural gas and nuclear plants provide the bulk of his company’s $3.8 billion in revenue. But Crane foresees a day not so far off when new technologies like rooftop solar and batteries will turn the electric power industry upside down, and NRG is moving in that direction. (Read More)
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