Electric cars could reach cost parity with conventional cars by next year

Are you eager to get your hands on a new electric vehicle, but the price is too steep? You’re in luck – electric cars will likely reach cost parity with vehicles that have internal combustion engines by next year, and electric vehicles could be cheaper that gas by as soon as 2025, according to a new report by USB.

The report makes it clear that while electric vehicles will still cost more than ICE cars, owning a new EV will be comparable to owning a gas or diesel car in the long-term. Analysts took into consideration the fuel costs, maintenance costs and other related expenditures related to owning all vehicles and used the information to determine that over time, the cost of owning a green vehicle is comparable to owning a conventional one. As Green Car Reports reports, it is becoming more affordable to own an EV due to breakthroughs in battery capacity, charge times and a growing demand for environmentally-friendly technology.

Part of the analysis required UBS to break down a $37,000 Chevrolet Bolt in order to estimate how much the vehicle cost to build. It was discovered that “the EV powertrain is $4,600 cheaper to produce than we thought and there is more cost reduction potential left.” Analysts continued that the 238-mile range Bolt costs around $28,700 to build and that GM is only expected to produce 30,000 Bolts in 2018. Therefore, there won’t be a huge incentive for it to be profitable.

Related: UK solar smashes record, supplying 25% of electricity demand

On the other hand, the Tesla Model 3 is expected to be produced in numbers as high as 500,000 by 2018. When extras are added on to the base price of the Model 3 at $35,000, the company is expected to break even.

UBS declared that electric vehicles are the “most disruptive car category since the Model T Ford” and that though total sales for electric cars is still relatively small, global EV sales will reach 14% by 2025 (4.2 million vehicles). Europe is expected to take the lead in this department, selling 30% of the world’s electric cars within eight years. Now that EVs will soon cost the same to own as a car or truck with an ICE, a massive shift is expected to take place within the auto industry.

+ UBS

Via Green Car Reports

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Do Green Spaces Have to Gobble Up a Ton of Energy?

The U.S. Green Building Council reports that green LEED-certified buildings consume 25% less energy. While this is a vast improvement over traditional structures, it is still excessive, considering the initial construction cost and maintenance. For LEED-certified buildings to be a worthwhile investment, they need to be more energy efficient.

Fortunately, new advances are making LEED-certified buildings more efficient every year. Wout Broere, a civil engineering professor and researcher from The Netherlands, has written on urban planning solutions and green infrastructural solutions that help minimize energy waste. Other researchers have introduced similar findings over the past year.

Even older green spaces pay off over the long-run. The U.S. Green Building Council states that the ROI for a standard green building is about 19.2%. However, it still takes slightly over three years to break-even on the initial construction costs. By making the necessary improvements to make the unit more energy efficient, future LEED-certified buildings may break-even in two years or less.

Every day, new techniques are developed and discoveries are made that allow developers to decrease the amount of energy green spaces require to stay healthy. In this post, we’re going to highlight some of the changes that have recently been made to green space energy consumption.

First, however, let’s talk about what a green space is. The EPA defines a green or “open” space as:

“Open space is any open piece of land that is undeveloped (has no buildings or other built structures) and is accessible to the public. Open space can include:

• Green space (land that is partly or completely covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation). Green space includes parks, community gardens, and cemeteries.
• Schoolyards
• Playgrounds
• Public seating areas
• Public plazas
• Vacant lots”

For a long time, green spaces were limited to ground-level areas. Over the last decade or so, however, engineers and developers have found that installing green and open spaces on the tops of buildings and parking lots is a fantastic way to reduce the amount of energy required to maintain these spaces and reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprints of the structures on which they are installed.

Grass Choice

Grass seems like such a simple part of a green space but if you don’t make the right choice you could wind up planting a type of grass that is incredibly high-maintenance. This is why landscaping experts recommend opting for grass seed choices like sheep fescue instead of the usual Kentucky bluegrass that is usually planted. Fescues, say the experts, are hardy and low-maintenance grasses. They can handle a variety of environments and climates and don’t require a lot of watering. In fact, it only needs watering a few times a month (as opposed to a few times a week for other types of grass). This cuts way down on your carbon footprint (which translates to energy savings) and cost of maintenance.

Water Usage

We’ve talked before about how the water industry needs to catch up to the energy industry. Strides have been made with the installation of smart water meters and sensors in some parts of the country but more could be done.

In this respect, many city planners and engineers have started looking at green spaces as a way to reduce municipal water consumption and even to use water as a method of producing energy for the building on which it sits or those that stand nearby.

Another way that municipalities are reducing their water usage in green spaces is through the use of cisterns and rainwater collection. This “gray water” is then used for watering the plants, toilet flushing, and other tasks (not consumption-based). These collection practices are entirely green and carbon-neutral so they don’t require much energy to run.

In California, the Burbank Water and Power EcoCampus captures rainwater and storm runoff from solar panels and uses it in their hydro-power plant, making it the first power plant in the world to run using 100% recycled water.

Turning Urban Spaces Green

It is important to understand that the use of green spaces isn’t just about making parks and green roofs more energy efficient and sustainable. It is also about looking for ways to turn otherwise “ordinary” spaces and structures green.

For example, scientists at Cambridge University have created “green bus shelters” that use solar power and harvest the electrons produced via photosynthesis done by plants that are planted in pockets that are built into the shelter’s walls and use the harvested energy to light up the bus shelter.

Another popular initiative that is being put in place all over the world is the installation of “green buildings” that take what would have been ordinary office buildings and turn them into carbon-neutral structures and, in the case of some, green spaces with indoor courtyards, rooftop gardens and lawns, etc.

The bottom line is this: green spaces–from lawns to city parks–don’t have to be the energy vampires that they’ve been in the past. In fact, they can even be energy producers!

Photo Credit: Ian Dick via Flickr

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COP-21, World Renewable Energy, and World Trade

This article describes five major items regarding the adequacy of COP-21 requirements: a survey of historic temperatures of the past 420,000 years; the status of the world renewable energy; the impact of COP-21 CO2 emission reduction measures on the US economy; and the US leaving COP-21.

• MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and Bjorn Lomberg, a professor in Denmark, independently performed their analyses of COP-21, and reached almost identical conclusions regarding the impact of COP-21 on global warming by 2100, based on IPCC computer programs.
• Historic Temperatures of the past 420,000 years indicate 4 major cycles of temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere.
• The world is moving very slowly towards renewable energy during the past 10 years. A cost estimate of the investments required for the world to have 90% of all of its primary energy from renewables by 2050 or 2100.
• The future impact of reducing CO2 emissions on US international competitiveness.
• The US leaving COP-21

Paris COP-21 Conference in 2015

COP-21 is a non-binding, CO2 emission reduction agreement, which aims to limit the world temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level during the 1861 – 1880 period. By 2015, the increase was about 1.1 C. That leaves just 0.9 C to go. This may appear minor, but is not, as any CO2 emitted today would not have a GW impact until many years later.

Based on present CO2 emission, population growth, and economic growth trends, the 2 C increase likely would be reached by about 2045, and a 4.3 C increase likely would be reached by 2100, based on the MIT and Lomberg analyses.

Future Impact of COP-21 on World Temperature: MIT claims, with FULL implementation of the voluntary, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) agreed to during the COP-21 conference, and kept in place till 2100, COP-21 would prevent about 0.2 C of any warming that would occur by 2100, i.e., instead of 4.3 C from pre-industrial baseline, it would be 4.1 C by 2100. See Page 2 of MIT URL. BjornLomberg estimates COP-21 would prevent about 0.17 C, in close agreement with the MIT estimate.

That means the COP-21 emission reduction during the 2015 – 2100 period would be grossly insufficient. In fact, the COP-21 emission reduction would have to be increased by about a factor of 100 to achieve the 2 C target, according to Bjorn Lomberg. Based on outcomes of about a dozen prior COPs, the RE investments required for such a huge CO2 emission reduction likely will not take place. See Lomberg URL.

US INDC: As part of COP-21, the US offered* an INDC to reduce US CO2 emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The INDC CO2 emission reduction would be at a 14% more rapid rate during the 2015 – 2025 period, than during the 2005 – 2015 period, which greatly benefitted from the reduced burning of coal and increased burning of natural gas. See below table with 2025 targets based on data from Page ES-10 of URL.

* Obama did not submit the COP-21 agreement to the US Congress for ratification. Thus, COP-21 is not a US treaty obligation. Many other nations also have not ratified COP-21, including Russia.

Year	2005, base year	2015	2025
CO2 eq	MMt	MMt	MMt
Sources – Sinks	6582.3	5827.7	4805.1
Decrease, % from 2005		11.5	27.0
Decrease, % from 2015			17.5
Decrease, %/y		1.45	1.65
More rapid CO2 decrease, %			14.0

More Near-CO2-Free Renewable Systems: In the US, the more rapid CO2 emission decrease would be accomplished by more rapidly displacing low-cost coal, and natural gas, and nuclear with much more costly, mostly wind and solar renewables, which, because of their weather and sun dependent variability and intermittency, need massive TWh-scale storage systems, and a nationwide HVDC overlay grid (a $500 billion item), and other grid investments, to ensure reliable electricity service remains available throughout the US, Alaska, Hawaii, on a 24/7/365 basis. See URL regarding storage in Germany

Historic Temperatures of the Past 420,000 Years

During the past 420,000 years, there were 4 major glaciation and thawing cycles. The world temperature was about 2 – 3 C above and about 8 – 9 C below, the reference value of the past 10,000 years. The past four cycles indicate, the world, surrounded by outer space at near absolute zero, has a hard time warming up above reference, but a much easier time cooling down below reference, i.e., computer model global warming predictions of 4.3 C above pre-industrial likely are on the high side. During each cycle, CO2 in the atmosphere increased from a low of about 180 ppm to a high of about 280 ppm as temperature increased, because of subsequent biomass growth.

Cycle	High Temp	Low Temp
	BP	BP
1	420,000	355,000 – 330,000
2	325,000	265,000 – 260,000
3	240,000	180,000 – 140,000
4	125,000	26,500 – 19,000
5	11,200	?

However, during the last 150 years, CO2 in the atmosphere has increased to 400+ ppm, due to various factors, such as totally unsustainable population explosion (1.0 billion in 1800 to 7.3 billion in 2015, heading towards 10 billion by 2050), which required deforestation, urbanization, industrial agriculture, and the production and transport of goods and services, all requiring the burning of huge quantities of fossil and bio fuels, which release CO2 and methane, CH4, well beyond the 280 ppm of prior cycles.

The Most Recent Cycle: The peak temperature of the most recent cycle (the fourth) was about 125,000 years BP, and its maximum glaciation was from 26,500 – 19,000 BP. The low temperature was about 9 C BELOW reference. Sea levels were about 120 meter (470 feet) below present levels. The world’s desert areas, including the Sahara, were much larger than at present. The world population (likely about 1 – 2 million) during that low temperature period (lasting about 7,500 years), likely had a tough time dealing with the cold. A rapid warming trend, similar to the prior cycles, to about 1 C to 2 C above reference occurred from 19,000 – 11,200 BP.

Based on a recent study, the temperature gradually increased from the low point until about 7000 BP and then gradually decreased until about 1870, after which it increased by about 1 C, concurrent with the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, as mentioned above. According to the graph in the URL, the 7000-year downward trend in temperature is being interrupted by manmade activities of the past 100 years. See URL.

Unlike the prior cycles, this time the temperature did NOT rapidly decrease, but has been lingering for about 11,200 years. The present temperature is influenced by 1) the long-term downward trend, 2) coming out of the Little Ice Age, and 3) warming due to various factors, including burning fossil fuels. See upper left corner of URL.

About 15000 – 12000 BP, most of northern Asia, northern Europe, northern America, etc., were still covered with about one MILE of ice. Almost all of the world’s population, likely about 1 to 3 million, lived in small groups, mostly in hunter-gathering mode, with some agriculture, in areas of southern France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the Caucasus, the Middle East, northern Africa, Iraq, Iran, southern India and Asia. North of those areas, with few trees, much frozen tundra and ice, there lived very few people.

By about 5000 BP, much of the ice had melted, and the world population had increased to about 10 to 15 million people. The big question remains: Why is the temperature lingering for 11,000 years, unlike the prior cycles? Why are we not yet into another ice age?

The World Making Almost No Progress Towards RE 

Here is a table of global primary energy consumption percentages (fuels, electricity, etc.) during the 2011 – 2014 period, which, indicates hardly any progress towards RE, despite worldwide investments in renewables of $250 – $300 billion in each of these four years. The fossil fuel percentage likely remained about the same in 2015 and 2016. Google: “REN 21 Renewables 2016” report. See page 28 of report.

Year	2011	2012	2013	2014
Percent	%	%	%	%
Fossil fuels	78.2	78.4	78.3	78.3
Nuclear	2.8	2.6	2.6	2.5
Total renewables	19.0	19.0	19.1	19.2
Modern renewables	9.7	10.0	10.1	10.3
– Biomass, geo, solar heat	4.1	4.2	4.1	4.2
– Hydro electricity	3.7	3.8	3.9	3.9
– Wind, solar, bio, geo electricity	1.1	1.2	1.3	1.4
– Biofuels, such as corn ethanol	0.8	0.8	0.8	0.8
Traditional biomass	9.3	9.0	9.0	8.9

Capital Cost Estimate of Renewables Energy for All: Many people think we can have 90% of ALL primary energy from renewables for 10 billion people and their economies by 2050, or by 2100. Prorating the $33 billion cost of Vermont’s energy transformation* for 10 billion people would be $33 b x 10000/0.625 = $528 trillion, adjusting for per capita income would be 12,380/47,000 x 528 = $139 trillion.

*The Vermont goal is 90% of ALL primary energy from renewables by 2050, not just electrical energy.

NOTE: The gross world product was about $78 trillion, or $78 trillion/6.3 b = $12,380/capita, in 2014. Vermont’s GDP/capita was about $47,000 in 2015.

World Spending on RE is Grossly Inadequate for COP-21 Goals: World spending on renewables was about $300 billion in 2015 of which about $100 billion by China  Some RE people, during and after COP-21, called for RE spending to be increased to $1.0 trillion/y. The numbers indicate the world is under-spending by large factors.

• $139 trillion/34 y = $4.09 trillion/y would be required until 2050; under-spending factor of 13.6
• $139 trillion/84 y = $1.65 trillion/y would be required until 2100; under-spending factor of 5.5

However, significant categories of costs are not included in above estimates, such as having a transformed transportation system and other infrastructures, various transformed industries, healthcare systems, defense systems, education systems, etc., all that to be transformed with renewable energy, which is generally more expensive than traditional energy sources, if storage and grid costs are added and subsidies are taken away.

Huge Nuclear Build-Outs Are Needed: Such RE build-outs will never happen, unless massive nuclear plant capacity, MW, is built, and that capacity would have to provide about 70% of all world energy (not just electrical energy) to replace fossil fuels with syn-fuels, plus generate about 70% of the world’s electricity. Modern renewables (wind, solar, hydro, etc.) would provide the other 30% of all world energy. At present modern renewables provide about 10%. See below table.

NOTE: France generates about 80% of its electricity with nuclear plants, equivalent to about 35% of its primary energy. France has the lowest electric rates in west Europe.

Coal Particulate Air Pollution: The world’s fossil fuel consumption has been a steady 78% of all primary energy* for the past 10 years, despite several trillion dollars of investments in renewable electricity systems. 

Current coal consumption is about 8000 million metric ton per year. China and India use about half of that IN AN INEFFICIENT AND DIRTY MANNER; low efficiency plants with high CO2/kWh, and low efficiency pollution control systems with high pollution/kWh.

Modern coal plants in Europe and the US have pollution control systems with efficiencies of 0.995 (about 5 lbs per 1000 lbs of fly-ash particulates is released to the atmosphere), whereas in China and India the norm is 0.950 or less (about 50 lbs or more is released to the atmosphere).

*The fuel energy fed into power plants, cars, buildings, etc., is primary energy. The energy from mines, wells, forests, etc., is source energy.

Energy Efficiency Better For CO2 Reduction Than Wind and Solar Build-outs: It would be much more cost-effective to concentrate on:

• Increasing the energy efficiency of existing buildings.
• Requiring “zero-net-energy”, and “energy-surplus” of all NEW buildings.
• Increasing the mileage of the vehicle population.

These measures would reduce the energy bills of households and businesses, and likely would reduce CO2 emissions by at least 50%, with:

• Minimal government regulations, taxes, fees and surcharges.
• Minimal capital cost.
• Near-zero visual and other adverse impacts. 

COP-21, US Competitiveness and World Trade

The big political debate is: should the US stay with the COP-21 agreements to reduce CO2 emissions or not. The real issues are about international trade, bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US and paying for world peacekeeping. The US would be less competitive in world markets if:

• The US invested more in RE, such as expensive offshore wind, which would increase its cost structure.
• The US continues to over-invest in defense to maintain world peace, while others do not.

NOTE: The Trade Expansion Act, signed by Kennedy in 1962, significantly reduced US import tariffs, opened US markets to a flood of imports, and led to decades of increasing US trade deficits ever since 1967, the demise of trade unions, and the creation of rustbelt conditions in many parts of the US.

NOTE: Massachusetts has a new energy law requiring utilities to procure electricity generated by 1,600 MW of offshore wind turbines (name plate capacity) by June 30, 2027. The turnkey capital cost of such wind turbine plants, plus wiring to shore, plus onshore grid modifications would be at least $9 billion (not counting financing costs, return on investment, O&M, etc.), and the electricity cost would be at least 25 c/kWh (NE wholesale prices have been a steady 5 c/kWh for the past 5 years). Construction would require huge sea-going tugs, cranes and other specialized vessels to assemble those 600-ft tall wind turbines. Europe has perfected that equipment, but the US does not even have it. European companies, such as Vestas, Siemens and others will be making big profits. Wall Street financiers will collect fees for managing the tax shelters for the multi-millionaire investors. New Englanders get to pay for the outrageously high cost of electricity. Just another way for Europe, Japan and others to hamstring the New England and US economy into a higher cost structures and make them less competitive, all under the false flag of fighting GW and saving the world. Read thisarticle about the Rhode Island wind turbine folly.

The Trump administration aims to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, increase goods exports and reduce trade deficits, primarily with bi-lateral trade agreements, but Europe, Japan and others prefer to apply WTO rules (more to their advantage) and presented uniform opposition during the G-7 meeting of May 2017.

Europe, Japan and others have invested for decades to built up the skills of their technical personnel, the technologies and production facilities to support the most profitable part of the value chain of goods supply (paying good wages, benefits and profit taxes in home countries).

They ship sub-assembles all over the world, including the US and Mexico, for assembly into end products, such as cars, which is the much less profitable part of the value chain of goods supply (assembly labor jobs, mediocre benefits and paying almost no profit taxes in host countries). Europe, Japan and others have dug their way to the vault and do not want Trump to move the vault.

The US Leaving COP-21

If the world is making so little progress towards RE, then the US, “doing its RE part” by staying with COP-21, would be engaging in an expensive exercise in futility.

The RE movement is primarily driven by Europe, Japan and others, because they have insufficient domestic energy resources. Europe, Japan and others want the US to stay with COP-21, because they would become less competitive versus the US, if they increased investments in RE and the US did not.

The US, with chronic budget deficits of about $500 billion/y, already has a huge trade handicap, largely due to overinvesting in defense spending to maintain its world leadership peacekeeping role, and underinvesting in the goods and service sectors. For decades, Europe, Japan and others have underinvested in defense, because of the US protection guarantee; only 5 of 28 NATO nations spend at least 2% of GDP on their own defense.

Europe, Japan and others have been shirking the world peacekeeping burden, as it would divert investments from their goods and services sectors. Instead, they invested in producing and exporting superior goods and services, which the US did not. This causes the US, hamstrung by having to adhere to World Trade Organization rules, to have chronic trade and budget deficits, each about $500 billion/y.

Europe, Japan and others want to keep the good times rolling, i.e., have the US protect them for free, if possible, in hamstrung mode with chronic trade and budget deficits, WTO rules and COP-21 requirements.

Photo Credit: Kevin Talec via Flickr

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China unveils train that travels on ‘virtual tracks’

City public transportation systems typically rely on a mix of trains and buses. But what if the two could be combined? Chinese company CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive recently debuted a trackless train that could ease traffic and emissions in urban centers. The Autonomous Rail Transit (ART) uses sensors to run along invisible tracks on city streets.

Train tracks on city streets could be a thing of the past if all goes well with the ART, recently unveiled in the city of Zhuzhou in the Hunan province in China, where it recently went on a trial run. Firstpost described the ART as the world’s first trackless train. Sensor technology enables the ART to glide over roads, helping it track a guiding system in place. The sensors send the information back to the train’s central control unit – what Firstpost described as a brain – to help it travel smoothly.

Related: You won’t believe the interior of Japan’s jaw-dropping new train

More than 300 people can ride on the ART, which is comprised of three carriages in its basic state but can expand to include five. It has rubber wheels with plastic cores. A twin-head system means the train never has to make a U-turn, according to Firstpost. The trackless train is over 103 feet long.

The ART is powered by electricity, so it won’t give off carbon emissions as traditional trains do. It can travel at a speed of around 43 miles per hour.

CRRC Zhuzhou Locomotive has reportedly been testing the ART technology for around four years, but the trackless train could finally be ready to roll out on the road in 2018. The company boasts a wide array of electric locomotives. Their Blue Locomotive won the title of Best New Energy Locomotive at the Berlin International Rail Transit Technology Exhibition.

Via Firstpost

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New ultrathin material for splitting water could make hydrogen production cheaper

UNSW Sydney chemists have invented a new, cheap catalyst for splitting water with an electrical current to efficiently produce clean hydrogen fuel.

The technology is based on the creation of ultrathin slices of porous metal-organic complex materials coated onto a foam electrode, which the researchers have unexpectedly shown is highly conductive of electricity and active for splitting water.

"Splitting water usually requires two different catalysts, but our catalyst can drive both of the reactions required to separate water into its two constituents, oxygen and hydrogen," says study leader Associate Professor Chuan Zhao.

"Our fabrication method is simple and universal, so we can adapt it to produce ultrathin nanosheet arrays of a variety of these materials, called metal-organic frameworks.

"Compared to other water-splitting electro-catalysts reported to date, our catalyst is also among the most efficient," he says.

The UNSW research by Zhao, Dr Sheng Chen and Dr Jingjing Duan is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Hydrogen is a very good carrier for renewable energy because it is abundant, generates zero emissions, and is much easier to store than other energy sources, like solar or wind energy.

But the cost of producing it by using electricity to split water is high, because the most efficient catalysts developed so far are often made with precious metals, like platinum, ruthenium and iridium.

The catalysts developed at UNSW are made of abundant, non-precious metals like nickel, iron and copper. They belong to a family of versatile porous materials called metal organic frameworks, which have a wide variety of other potential applications.

Until now, metal-organic frameworks were considered poor conductors and not very useful for electrochemical reactions. Conventionally, they are made in the form of bulk powders, with their catalytic sites deeply embedded inside the pores of the material, where it is difficult for the water to reach.

By creating nanometre-thick arrays of metal-organic frameworks, Zhao's team was able to expose the pores and increase the surface area for electrical contact with the water.

"With nanoengineering, we made a unique metal-organic framework structure that solves the big problems of conductivity, and access to active sites," says Zhao.

"It is ground-breaking. We were able to demonstrate that metal-organic frameworks can be highly conductive, challenging the common concept of these materials as inert electro-catalysts."

Metal-organic frameworks have potential for a large range of applications, including fuel storage, drug delivery, and carbon capture. The UNSW team's demonstration that they can also be highly conductive introduces a host of new applications for this class of material beyond electro-catalysis.

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Vivint Solar Secures New $100 Million Financing For Residential Solar Deployment

Vivint Solar, a well-known name in the US solar market for its expanding market penetration and perpetual financial struggles, has landed another round of financing, securing $100 million in new tax equity commitments from two repeat investors for the development of 70 megawatts of residential solar energy systems.

The US residential solar provider primarily makes the news for one of two reasons — either it is coming in or out of financial difficulty, or it has secured yet another round of financing. Occasionally it also announces expansion into yet another state. For Vivint Solar and its investors, life is unfortunately a constant up and down roller-coaster.

Nevertheless, last month, the company was able to report a strong quarterly profit on its first quarter, giving a boost to investors and analysts alike. This week, the company has announced another round of financing, a $100 million series of tax equity commitments from two repeat investors. The investment has been earmarked to enable Vivint Solar to install approximately 70 megawatts (MW) of residential solar energy systems, enough for around 10,000 new residential customers.

“Our capital partners play an essential role in enabling us to grow our residential solar business,” said Stewart Bewley, vice president of capital markets at Vivint Solar. “We are pleased to continue raising project capital from our investor partners and look forward to expanding access to our solar energy systems.”

For a company such as Vivint Solar, new financing investments are vital to cover the up-front costs of solar systems that are then paid off by the customer over a period of time using one of the company’s finance options — be it through a solar loan, a solar Power Purchase Agreement, or a solar lease.

“We’re pleased that our investors continue to trust us with their capital options,” added David Bywater, CEO of Vivint Solar. “This financing reinforces our commitment to achieve sustainable growth and continue to deliver results to Vivint Solar and our investors.”

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Utility CEO Says Paris Pullout Changes Nothing, Clean Energy Still The Future

A big part of alleged president Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris climate accords was a desire to continue sucking up to the disaffected coal miners in America’s Rust Belt. But the chief executive of American Electric Power, which produces more electricity from burning coal than any other utility company in the US, says Trump’s decision will have no affect on his company’s transition away from coal and toward clean energy alternatives, including solar and wind.

In an interview with NPR, Nicholas Akins, CEO of AEP said, “Our investors certainly expect us to really focus on sustainability and de-risk our business. So we continue to focus on that. Secondly, from a customer standpoint, there’s an expectation that we move to that cleaner energy economy.”

Cost is a major factor, said Akins. Building and operating coal-fired pollution facilities is getting more expensive. A new coal plant today costs about $4 billion. “That’s a lot of capital, because you’re not only building the generation facility itself, but you’re building all of the environmental equipment attached to it, which is substantial,” he said. “It actually is a chemical factory that happens to produce electricity.”

Meanwhile, the cost of renewables continues to fall. AEP plans to increase the amount of solar and wind power in its energy portfolio in coming years, backed up by the flexibility that natural gas provides. “We still believe that coal should remain a part of the portfolio, but certainly, a smaller part of the portfolio, so that we can manage risk and have multiple sets of solutions available to us,” Akins explained.

And what of all those unemployed coal miners waiting for The Donald to swoop in and save them? Akins points out that studies conducted by his company found that miners have mechanical abilities that far exceed the national average, thanks to a long history of operating machinery in mining operations.

“That really lends itself well to other forms of manufacturing like defense, aerospace engineering, that kind of thing,” Akins said. “And so we’re trying to locate facilities at these regions to not necessarily put coal miners back to work in the coal mines, but make manufacturing incentives to put people back to work.”

Trump and his acolytes should listen to what Akins has to say. Their position is like trying to save the jobs of wheelwrights and blacksmiths 100 years ago. The proper role of government is helping people with valuable skills find gainful employment in new fields of endeavor, not pander to them about turning back the clock to a bygone era.

On the one hand, we have the advice of an experienced business leader who is guiding a company through the swirling waters of technological change. On the other, we have a preening pedant who has a history of high-profile bankruptcies. Which person represents the best way forward for America?

Source: Greentech Media

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