“We have got a big appetite for wind or solar. If someone walks in with a solar project tomorrow and it takes a billion dollars or three billion dollars, we’re ready to do it. The more there is the better.”
|Tags: Financing & Economics, North America, Solar, Wind – Warren Buffett, speaking to investors at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting.
Innovative rebate helps utility solve ‘duck curve’
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, Innovation, North America, Solar, Utilities In an effort to better align solar-energy production with peak demand, the utility in Columbia, Missouri has begun to pay higher rebates for new west-facing arrays than it does for those facing south, where the sun’s most steady rays come from. The city-owned...
RR exec says CSX won’t buy more coal trains
|Tags: Coal Production, North America During a conference call with industry analysts last week, rail carrier CSX’s new president said he thinks “fossil fuels are dead” and announced that the company will not buy any more locomotives for coal trains. Hunter Harrison stressed that he doesn’t...
On Navajo Nation, coal is out and solar is in
|Tags: Coal-fired Power, North America, Solar As the owners of the largest coal-burning power plant in the West map out the details of closing in the next two years, the Navajo Nation has taken its next step in its energy development by starting operations at a new 27-megawatt solar farm not far from the source...
Financials lead utilities to buy wind capacity
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, Financing & Economics, Innovation, North America, Wind Increasingly, utilities are shunning the power-purchase agreement model of acquiring new renewable energy capacity and instead making the leap to outright ownership, which allows the companies to build purchase costs directly into their rate base and earn guaranteed...
Data show that clean energy = reliable energy
|Tags: Clean Energy, Europe, Global In the wake of Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s study examining the impact of wind and solar on fossil baseload power plants, two prominent energy experts have looked at data worldwide and concluded that Germany and Denmark, two countries with some of the highest...
Solar takes a hail of a punch, keeps on working
|Tags: Innovation, North America, Solar Innovations in the durability of solar panels designed by researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver passed with flying colors in real-world testing in the spring of 2017. Denver was pelted with an unusually severe hailstorm on May 8, leaving a...
Renewable energy is thriving in Trump country
|Tags: North America, Politics & Legislation, Solar, Wind From Georgia to the Dakotas, some of the fastest progress on clean energy development in the United States is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald Trump in the presidential election. The five states that get the...
Renewables to dominate global power by 2040
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, Global, Solar, Wind Renewable energy cost declines continue to outpace what analysts predicted even just one year ago. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s latest installment of the annual New Energy Outlook report, which models the global energy mix out to 2040, renewables...
Renewables meet 10% of U.S. demand for 1st time
|Tags: North America, Solar, Wind The United States reached a new energy milestone in March as 10 percent of all of the electricity generated in the country came from wind and solar power. according to a new U.S. Energy Information Administration data. The EIA’s findings represent a...
LEGO builds a 100% renewable company
|Tags: Europe, Wind One of the world’s most beloved toymakers, the LEGO Group, has reached its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy for its operations three years ahead of schedule. The milestone was achieved with completion of the 258-megawatt Burbo Bank Windfarm Extension of the...
“The future for coal in the United States? There is no future.”
|Tags: Coal Production, Coal-fired Power, Financing & Economics, North America – Former Duke Energy CEO and Chairman Jim Rogers, speaking at the release of a new report calling coal’s decline one of the most “spectacular market collapses in equity history.” The combined market value of the four largest U.S. coal companies fell from $33 billion...
Britain achieves its first coal-free day since 1882
|Tags: Coal-fired Power, Europe For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Britain’s went a day without receiving any of its power from coal, according to the National Grid, which oversees the nation’s electricity transmission system. On April 21, Britain enjoyed its first continuous...
2016 was stellar year for wind capacity, jobs
|Tags: Financing & Economics, Jobs, North America, Wind Wind power added jobs over nine times faster than the overall U.S. economy in 2016, according to the American Wind Energy Association. According to its “2016 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report,” more than 8 gigawatts of new wind power were installed for a second...
Renewables soar as low costs drive expansion
|Tags: Clean Energy, Financing & Economics, Global Renewables were the biggest new source of electricity in 2016 as the cost of building new wind and solar farms fell, according to a report published jointly by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Clean energy provided 55 percent of...
Calif.’s solar surge leads to negative pricing
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, Financing & Economics, North America, Solar California passed a milestone in March as part of its bid to power the whole state sustainably. On March 11, for the first time ever, more than half the power needs of the entire state came from solar power for a few hours, according to data from the U.S. Energy...
![“If [NGS] were to shut down tomorrow, we wouldn’t have any problem keeping our costs fairly low in this market.”](http://www.energytrendtracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Screenshot-2017-04-10-15.38.19-912x675.png)
“If [NGS] were to shut down tomorrow, we wouldn’t have any problem keeping our costs fairly low in this market.”
|Tags: Coal-fired Power, Financing & Economics, North America, Solar, Utilities – Ron Lunt, director of operations for the Central Arizona Project, on how a surplus of natural gas generation and a deluge of California solar have thrown the Southwest’s power market into flux, including the announced closure of coal-fired Navajo Generating...
Wind keeps Iowa energy prices well below U.S. avg
|Tags: Consumer Impacts, North America, Wind Iowa produces more electricity from wind per capita than any other state, but more importantly, according to new findings from a nonpartisan policy think tank, the state’s leadership in wind production has also left Iowans paying substantially less for their...
The rise of renewables: costs fall, productivity up
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, Consumer Impacts, Natural Gas, North America, Solar, Wind Consumers across the United States have seen flat or declining energy costs as renewable energy becomes a greater part of the nation’s energy mix, according to findings from Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s 2017 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook....
All 435 Congressional districts want coal limits
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, North America, Public Opinion New polling from the New York Times shows that in every congressional district nationwide, a majority of adults supports limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. Nationally, about seven in 10 Americans support regulating carbon...
Google sees vast solar potential in rooftops
|Tags: Financing & Economics, Innovation, North America, Solar Two years after it launched Project Sunroof, Google is it only has expanded to every single state, and is now is now crunching data for 60 million rooftops across the country. And the potential is sky high. According to Project Sunroof, which uses data from...
PNM: closing coal plant could benefit customers
|Tags: Clean Energy, Coal-fired Power, Consumer Impacts, Financing & Economics, North America, Utilities As a result of an early analysis saying the economics make sense, New Mexico’s largest utility said it is considering the early retirement of the remaining coal-burning units at is San Juan Generating Station. The analysis, conducted as part of Public Service of...
2016: 1 new megawatt of solar every 36 minutes
|Tags: Financing & Economics, North America, Solar The U.S. solar market had its biggest year ever in 2016, nearly doubling its previous record and adding more electric generating capacity –14,762 megawatts – than any other source of energy for the first time ever. On average, 1 new megawatt of solar PV...
Military bucks Trump in pursuit of renewables
|Tags: Clean Energy, North America, Solar Despite scoffing by President Donald Trump and his top advisors at government support for clean energy, the Department of Defense is forging ahead with a decade-long effort to convert its fuel-hungry operations to renewable power, senior military officials told...
Latin America on the verge of a solar boom
|Tags: Central & South America, Solar Latin America is making its mark on the global solar map. In 2010, the region barely had a solar market to speak of, but in 2021, it’s projected to have more than 40 gigawatts of installed solar capacity, according to the latest edition of GTM Research’s Latin...
Rural co-op solar capacity skyrockets
|Tags: North America, Rural Electric Co-ops, Solar By the end of 2017, the total solar energy capacity of America’s rural electric cooperatives will be five times what it was two years ago, according to data released by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Co-ops are on pace to add 480 megawatts of...
Offshore wind booms as costs fall
|Tags: Europe, Financing & Economics, Global, North America, Wind Driven by falling costs, offshore wind is now increasingly competitive with land-based turbines and solar and nuclear power, even without subsidies.Offshore wind projects coming online today are already delivering power at almost half the price of those finished in...
“I never thought that wind would pay more than oil. That noise they make – it’s kind of like a cash register.”
|Tags: Financing & Economics, North America, Wind – Sweetwater, Texas rancher Louis Brooks on the benefits of the 78 wind turbines installed on his family’s land in west-central Texas – via The Guardian
Report: solar job growth soars in 2016
|Tags: Jobs, North America, Solar The American solar workforce grew at a historic pace in 2016, a year when one out of every 50 new U.S. jobs was in the solar industry, according to The Solar Foundation’s seventh annual National Solar Jobs Census 2016. The census found that solar industry added...
2nd best quarter ever pushes wind past hydro
|Tags: North America, Wind The fourth quarter of 2016 was the wind energy sector’s second-strongest ever for newly installed capacity, according to data compiled by the According to the American Wind Energy Association. And on the strength of those results, wind has now surpassed...