The current administration seems strongly in favor of doing something to stem the tide of climate change. Why is nothing happening?

Actually, something is happening, but many of the government’s actions so far have merely righted reversals from the brief Republican administration.

For example, the administration has resurrected a requirement of the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act that had been axed by the former guy, requiring that climate impacts be analyzed and local communities have input before federal agencies approve mines, road expansions and other major projects.

Early in this presidential term, the United States rejoined the Paris Accord. The participation of the world’s superpower and beacon of capitalism is crucial to the cooperation of smaller nations.

But government sometimes works against its own interests. President Joseph Biden pledged to eliminate carbon emissions from the electric industry by 2035. Meanwhile, the largest federal utility, TVA, is betting on natural gas to replace retiring coal-fired power plants, locking in greenhouse gas emissions for generations to come.

Legislation is the long-term way to mitigate damaging climate change in the U.S. On this Earth Day, President Biden is on our region talking up solar energy and offshore wind farms authorized last year as part of a trillion-dollar-plus infrastructure package. But meaningful climate legislation is nearly impossible in Congress, where Republicans blockade any effort to protect Americans from the devastating and unequal effects of global warming.

Legislation won’t get any easier if Democrats don’t hold onto Congress in 2022, as President Barack Obama learned.

That leaves rulemaking as the expeditious path. Regulations have been restored on the release of mercury, a neurotoxin linked to developmental damage in children, from coal-burning power plants.

On the regulatory front, President Biden is rolling back recent damage to tailpipe emissions rulemaking by restoring California’s authority to set its own rules on vehicle emissions. This is important for the nation, not just California, which is a leader in fighting climate change. Seventeen other states and D.C. have adopted California’s cleaner standards.

And then there’s the economy. The president who promised to stop drilling on public lands is in favor of more drilling on public lands, now that a major war and related sanctions are disrupting supply and driving up the cost of oil, which in turn drive high inflation. Extracting more petroleum won’t make any difference in oil prices for years, as new wells are developed.

The only consolation is that the world’s most profitable industry will pay more for the right to return fossilized carbon to the atmosphere.

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In this selected episode, host and CNN climate change analyst John Sutter interviews Daniel Schrag, the director of Harvard University’s Center for the Environment, about the role of technology in combatting climate change. 

Solar and wind are now cheaper than natural gas for electricity in many parts of the world, but not as flexible, Dr. Schrag says. 30% renewables is attainable and should be done fast. 

The Climate Investment Fund backs projects that others won’t, and one of those is a concentrating solar power project in Morocco. CSP is a technology I covered back in 2004 when it was little more than a science project, but it advanced quickly because it made then-inefficient photovoltaics more cost effective. 

In the second half of this epi, Reporter Sebastian Bouknight takes listeners to Morocco and the Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex for the story.

The other 11 episodes cover topics ranging from activism to investments and food to urban design. 

Please share your thoughts with us and your friends by posting this on your favorite social media network. We’ve provided sharing buttons to make it easy. Mention  @Cleantech. You can also send comments to me by email.

https://art19.com/shows/the-energy-gang/episodes/5193958f-63ec-4f0e-85d8-f8e7ab0807ad/embed?theme=dark-blue
This installment of “The Energy Gang” podcast dives into the pros and cons of new solar import barriers that took effect February 7, 2018. Sudden 30 percent tariffs are indeed spurring talk of new onshore solar module assembly plants, says guest Julia Pyper.

There’s a hitch: The plans that solar manufacturers are discussing would not represent enough capacity to meet the volume needs of a growing solar industry in the United States. Installers and developers are at risk of losing jobs because of capacity constraints. Some manufacturers had signed multiyear deals before the quota was imposed — so U.S. jobs could already be on the chopping block.

New manufacturing would make up for the job losses, right? Not even close. Module manufacturing is highly automated. Any plausible number of new U.S. plants are not likely to employ thousands. And when the economics change, those plants can close as easily as they opened. Tariffs intended to encumber solar exporters for the next four years are likely to harm America first.

“The Energy Gang” is an informal industry-insider podcast for green energy business listeners. Co-hosts Katherine Hamilton (Partner at 38 North Solutions) and Jigar Shah (founder of SunEdison), led by Greentech Media Editor in Chief Stephen Lacey, jump on a conference call every week to spar about the headlines. They share their deep industry knowledge and engage in lively discussions about the technologies, policies and market forces shaping a global energy transformation.

This anthology of energy podcasts would not be complete without this show. Stephen Lacey and I started podcasting about energy wa-a-ay before most people knew what a podcast was. We became friends while he was a reporter-producer at Renewable Energy World and I had just started Energy Priorities. We’ve supported each other’s podcast work, appeared on each other’s shows and collaborated on web pieces together.

Please share your thoughts with us and your colleagues by posting this on your favorite social media network. We’ve provided sharing buttons to make it easy. Mention @TheEnergyGang and @Cleantech. You can also send comments to me by email.

Each Earth Day, which is the anniversary of the founding of Energy Priorities, I hope it will be the year when sustainable energy policy will live up to the unbridled optimism I felt in 2004. I have been scrounging in recent months for ways to restock that optimism, and I found plenty.

Sustainable energy has survived retropolicy administrations before. Everyday environmentalists don’t remember the incoming George W. Bush administration as being so threatening because we didn’t have Facebook and Twitter back then. As expected, that administration was in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries. It was damaging, but not the end of the world.

Sustainable energy has survived an obstructionist Congress before. It was in exactly that political climate that the United States joined the rest of the world in the Paris climate accord, which large businesses including some in utilities, oil, autos and coal still defend.

“Why the US should stay in the Paris climate agreement”
Ban Ki-Moon and Robert Stavins in The Boston Globe

Granted, the outlook has taken a turn for the worst. If that wasn’t evident on inauguration day when the Republican administration’s “America First” philosophy put sustainable energy last, then it is evident today as that embryonic government tries to back out of the Paris Agreement and dismantle renewable energy subsidies, the EPA, and Energy Star.

Gloomy headlines notwithstanding, here are five reasons I feel optimistic for sustainable energy this year:

Businesses and consumers are global.

Not only is the rest of the world way ahead of the United States on sustainability, it is not slowing down. U.S. businesses are working to minimize that gap because being behind will limit growth. Outside this country there is no uncertainty or doubt about global warming; corporate silence on greenhouse gas emissions is complicity in the status quo.

Today it is hard to find a business of any size that confines its businesses within our borders. (My college advisors found it curious, decades ago, that I wanted to study small business and international business. Because, I said: soon all business would be global.) Globalism is real, it benefits Americans, and it’s here to stay.

Many major U.S. companies have embraced sustainable energy as part of broader efforts to bolster their triple bottom line. They see that their global marketplace is made up of consumers who prefer and, in the long run, will demand responsible products made by sustainability-minded businesses.

“Is American Enterprise More Powerful Than The President Of The United States?”
Ken Silverstein in FORBES

Investors hold the purse strings.

Even if environmental policies are rolled back, investors have shown that they won’t stand for giving businesses carte blanche to disregard environmental governance. Pension fund investors and university stakeholders have demanded divestiture from polluting businesses. Some of the largest funds have championed responsible investing for a decade or longer. Activist investors, even conservative institutional investors, can do the same in any public company including utilities.

“Investors Sharpen Focus on Social and Environmental Risks to Stocks”
Randall Smith in The New York Times

States are stepping up climate policy.

States have financial influence on the national stage. Some states will meet climate action commitments without the Paris agreement, which is good PR for Governors.

The states, not feds, make utility regulatory decisions about how much to support renewables and efficiency. And utilities always think far beyond the current administration, often planning 40 to 60 years out.

Governors can insist that “investing in American infrastructure” includes sustainable energy and a smarter grid. Or at least refuse to participate in building dead-end fossil fuel infrastructure like oil pipelines and coal terminals.

States also have legislative options including taxation. State-level carbon tax policies are an option for financially strapped states. A well crafted price on carbon applied to energy production and transportation fuels should be possible in several states.

To “backstop” is to pass state regulations replicating hard-earned federal regs that the GOP administration may let backslide by reversing or simply not enforcing them. And as new fed standards stall, states can set their own efficiency standards, for example forcing old energy-hog versions of appliances and machinery off the market.

Why did I prioritize businesses before the states? For one simple reason: states court businesses to locate and stay in their states. When big business talks, governors listen.

“With Trump in White House, states must take the lead on climate change”
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Boulder in The Denver Post

Cities are where we live.

People find it easier to support hometown initiatives that affect them and people they know directly. And it’s easier to communicate about those initiatives to a city-scale audience with a shared experience.

In Seattle, my home city, we identify with our city and feel proud of it, even when life isn’t peachy. Residents of most cities can say the same. There’s a sense of bonding together against a harsh world – or, at least, against competing sports teams.

If you’re a behavioral psychology nerd this is the in-group, or if you read a lot of Cialdini you know it as a unity principle.

Taken to the city council level, low-income communities can have outsize influence on clean energy, air and water. Watch what is happening with environmental justice communities, e.g., WE ACT in New York.

City policies can champion ideas that spread around the globe. Copenhagen taught the world how to do bicycle lanes, and Paris launched bike sharing, both of which have sprouted in other cities around the world. City ideas can champion policies that spread, too. Mayors should stand up for a good idea, even if they think it’s impossible in their city, because other cities will be inspired.

“Under Trump, look to cities and metros to power America forward”
Bruce Katz on Brookings.edu

Positioning is flexible.

The Republican administration will work to position renewable energy and efficiency as parts of a liberal climate conspiracy. That position can be counteracted.

Repositioning allows you to change the message without changing the end goal. How should sustainable energy be repositioned? Two important marketing lessons apply today more than before.

Solve the right problem.

First, we learned people buy what they want, not what companies wish they wanted. Case in point: Prospects for home energy efficiency respond better to messages of comfort than energy savings.

That’s an example of a principle that says businesses and consumers ultimately strive to make progress toward their ideal world. Their buying decisions are tightly coupled with the next step in that direction. For some it’s simple — saving money, or keeping up with the Joneses — but for many it is more complex.

Marketing messages can be constructed to appeal to multiple drivers. Businesses justify decisions based on factors such as revenue protection, building brand loyalty, or reducing compliance risk, as well as industry-specific financial metrics. Energy efficiency can be positioned to align with all of those.

Speak the right language.

Second, we mustn’t ignore that portion of the market that says they don’t care about the environment. George Lakoff explains very well why conservatives who disavow any belief or complicity in climate change will justify buying solar panels because they want to be energy independent.

That independence aligns with their inherent need to feel personally responsible. They might never believe that global warming is anthropomorphic, but they will believe that their utility is under attack by liberal policies and cannot be relied on to supply energy.

I am not suggesting that you launch any conspiracy theories. What I recommend is to look at the language you use in marketing sustainable energy and consider how to match benefits with conservative value drivers like responsibility, self-reliance and fatherhood.

Happy Earth Day. Keep up the good work. Look away from the daily drumbeat of negative headlines and focus on preparing for the retropolicy of the next four to eight years. Luck hasn’t created a national permanent shift to cleaner energy, but your perseverance will.

Comments? Please include your colleagues in your comments on social media by sharing this. Our social links are on this page including our LinkedIn Group and Facebook Page. On the other hand, if launching social media draws you down a rabbit hole of pessimistic headlines, you’re welcome to e-mail me instead.

Floating solar refers to solutions installed on water to produce solar energy in the same manner as ground mounted or rooftop systems. Nevertheless, it is important to differentiate between floating PV and floating PV offshore.

The former concerns installations on inland compounded and unused bodies of water, e.g. water ponds, lakes, reservoirs owned by industries, water utility companies or agriculture companies. While the latter indicates installations on seas and oceans that vary enormously in characteristics, e.g. salt water, strong currents, complicated anchoring system, etc. The topic focused here is only on floating PV solutions.

With floating solar, we have additional benefits in comparison to ground and roof mounted systems:

• Preserve valuable lands for other uses such as agricultural industries can convert dead spaces into profitable areas while generating electricity.
• Reduce water evaporation by covering a significant surface area of the body of water, and limit algae growth to avoid risk of eutrophication.
• Generate more energy due to the natural cooling effect that PV panels need in order to produce efficiently.
• Respect to environment with recyclable drinking water compliant materials with no harm to wildlife that inhabit nearby.
• Ensure long-term performance and positive investment for the future as current demand for solar continues to rise in popularity throughout the world.

On land as on water, assembly of the floating solar systems is simple. The different solutions have their own operating method, but each are composed of floats, an attachment system to fix the panels on the floats and wrenches for assembling the floats together. Thus ensures a safe way for operation and maintenance activity.

The Future of Floating Solar

For solar installations, all we need is sun. But to implement floating solar installations, we need sun and water. Many US states are rich in sunny environments with lots of water intensive industries. This combination can generate solar energy and turn a facility into a more profitable area, while improving water quality and saving land for other uses.

In fact, floating solar is best fit for market applications in energy and water intensive industries, such as water treatment plants and reclamation facilities, wineries and dairy farms, that cannot afford to waste water and land resources. In some cases, industries that use large quantities of water as part of their plant cooling process, like old quarries and mining pits, leaves large bodies of water surfaces after material extraction. Other notable market applications that fit for floating solar PV include agricultural companies, hydro dams and hybrid systems.

Solar theoretically is implantable anywhere the sun shines. So places like Asia, Africa and South America are the best fit solely due to their geographic advantage and longer duration of sunlight. Although ideal, financial conditions and political agendas must also be considered. For instance, floating PV is already implemented in the UK due to favorable political context with an attractive purchase rate for electricity.

Today, floating solar has been accepted in many countries including: Japan, China, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, USA, Brazil, UK, Italy, Israel and Netherlands. In the US, California is the targeted state for floating arrays as the state is already engaged in the energy transition, with a law aimed to gain a standard of 33 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2020.

Projections of Solar in the Future

The solar market still has a lot of room for growth and development to continue to increase electricity produced by solar as it is not yet competitive to fossil fuels. However, the solar industry has consistently been able to lower the cost of solar panels, since the PV capacity is important, dropping also the cost of the electricity generated by solar energy. This could be directly explained by federal tax incentives.

The market is dependent on two important qualifiers: a favorable location with sufficient sunlight, and federal tax subsidies. Thus, solar PV technologies need to maintain high standards to prove their efficiency and continue the progression to compete with other renewables. As the world moves to change its energy infrastructure, the solar industry is useful everywhere it can be applied to contribute to a real energy mix.

Currently, 227 GW of solar PV power plants has been installed throughout the world, with 50 GW produced during 2015. Floating solar as a niche market represents only a thin percentage, but the potential is growing and current forecasts include 1 GW produced per year. This will continue to increase due to its benefits making it a true alternative to traditional PV systems.

The future of solar PV remains bright, with subsidies enabled to develop a large installed capacity with cheap panel prices and electricity costs, and soon to be competitive without a subsidy. The proof comes in the numbers, with 160 billion dollars already spent dedicated to solar installations, a convincing figure of the promise for new emerging solar alternatives!

Contributor Bernard Prouvost is Founder & Chairman of Ciel et Terre International in Lille, France.