{"id":62971,"date":"2021-12-17T12:27:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T16:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carilec.org\/?p=62971"},"modified":"2021-12-17T12:27:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T16:27:18","slug":"the-5-biggest-clean-energy-stories-from-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/the-5-biggest-clean-energy-stories-from-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"The 5 biggest clean energy stories from 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Golden<\/a><\/p>\n

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Image via Shutterstock\/Alberto Masnovo<\/p><\/div>\n

This article was adapted from Energy Weekly,\u00a0a free newsletter about the clean energy transition.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a big year for clean energy. From policy to action, the public and private sectors are spurring forward the great energy transition in meaningful ways. Here are the five biggest stories from the year past, and why they\u2019ll matter months and years into the future.<\/p>\n

1. Past performance is no indication of future grid stability<\/h3>\n

The weather this year was weird. No part of the U.S. was spared. The\u00a0heat dome in the Pacific Northwest<\/a>. The\u00a0polar vortex in Texas<\/a>.\u00a0Hurricanes in New York<\/a>.\u00a0Tornadoes in the Midwest<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 in December.\u00a0Blizzards in Hawaii<\/a>. Fires in the West, fueled by a\u00a0megadrought<\/a>.\u00a0Extreme flooding<\/a>\u00a0across the globe.<\/p>\n

All signs point to weather getting more extreme as the impacts of climate change take root.<\/p>\n

The weather was also a wake-up call for the nation\u2019s energy infrastructure. Power outages\u00a0jumped 73 percent<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. last year \u2014 from 770 million hours in 2019 to 1.33 billion in 2020. More extreme weather will certainly mean more outages \u2014 and with them, health, safety and economic damages.<\/p>\n

As a result, communities and organizations are beginning to think about the value of resilience in a new light. More utilities are considering\u00a0virtual power plant<\/a>\u00a0programs, giving their customers more resilience and their operations more flexibility.\u00a0Companies are looking to install backup generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As we collectively better understand the value of resilience \u2014 and the cost of losing power \u2014 more offerings at more price points are sure to emerge.<\/p>\n

2. A plan forward emerges to decarbonize steel<\/h3>\n

This year marked a breakthrough in efforts to decarbonize one of the largest climate culprits: steel, responsible for about\u00a07 percent of energy-related emissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, the United States and the European Union agreed to use embodied emissions as a metric when importing steel in what the\u00a0White House calls<\/a>\u00a0“the world\u2019s first carbon-based sectoral arrangement.” This helps incentivize a clean steel market that can\u2019t be undercut by cheaper, dirtier options.<\/p>\n

Then, during COP26,\u00a040 world leaders<\/a>\u00a0signed onto an agreement to decarbonize five high-carbon sectors: steel; transport; agriculture; hydrogen; and electricity. The countries represent more than 70 percent of the world\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, industry is showing that clean steel is possible \u2014 and is happening.\u00a0Volvo<\/a>\u00a0announced plans to make cars with fossil-free steel by 2026. A steel mill in Colorado is running (mostly) on solar.\u00a0Boston Metal\u00a0<\/a>figured out a carbon dioxide-free steel smelting process.<\/p>\n

Taken together, this is meaningful movement towards decarbonizing one of the world\u2019s most stubborn sectors. The\u00a0industrial sector\u00a0<\/a>is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for roughly\u00a0a third of global greenhouse gas emissions<\/a>, but decarbonized solutions are either non-existent, not market-ready or not cheap enough (yet). The progress made with green steel gives me hope that we can do hard things.<\/p>\n

3. Long-duration energy storage is edging towards climax<\/h3>\n

Long-duration energy storage \u2014 defined as a system that can store energy for more than 10 hours \u2014 has been the Next Big Thing for about 20 years. But 2021 may just have been the tipping point.<\/p>\n

In July, the U.S. Department of Energy threw down the gauntlet, launching an Energy Earthshot Initiative to drive down the costs of long-duration energy storage by 90 percent by 2030.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re going to bring hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy onto the grid over the next few years, and we need to be able to use that energy wherever and whenever it\u2019s needed,” Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm\u00a0said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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[Interested in learning more about the electrify-everything movement? Join leaders from the private and public sectors, utilities, solution providers, investors and startups at\u00a0VERGE Electrify<\/a>, online July 25-26.]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Whether a result of the Earthshot announcement or simply good timing, shortly thereafter a\u00a0tremendous amount of finance flowed to the sector<\/a>, with funds backing new technologies and companies that have the potential to unlock the Holy Grail of deep decarbonization.<\/p>\n

Energy Vault<\/a>\u00a0secured $100 million in Series C funding,\u00a0FlexGen<\/a>\u00a0announced a $150 million equity commitment,\u00a0EnerVenue<\/a>\u00a0announced a $100 million in Series A funding,\u00a0Malta<\/a>\u00a0announced it raised $60 million in Series B financing and\u00a0Form Energy<\/a>\u00a0closed $240 million in Series D capital.<\/p>\n

4. Clean energy procurements consider social and environmental impacts<\/h3>\n

As the clean energy procurement market matures, some corporate buyers are looking beyond the number of megawatts to more holistic criteria when considering new energy deals.<\/p>\n

This strategic lens can be used to assess upstream impacts, such as an energy company\u2019s labor practices or a solar panel manufacturer\u2019s\u00a0material sourcing<\/a>. It also can be used to ensure renewable energy deployments are supporting the local community and are\u00a0creating good-paying jobs<\/a>\u00a0that support diversity, equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n

On the environmental side, deals are increasingly taking into account land use and the full life cycle of materials used in clean energy technologies, including circular design of\u00a0solar panels<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0wind turbine blades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This trend was highlighted as one of the year\u2019s major trends by the Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA)\u2019s annual\u00a0State of the Market report<\/a>. It is also the topic of Salesforce’s excellent report “More than a Megawatt<\/a>,” which outlines best practices for renewable energy buyers.<\/p>\n

Service providers are also looking to provide more holistic information to buyers.\u00a0LevelTen<\/a>, a renewable transaction platform, launched a new scoring tool this year that factors in a renewable project\u2019s community, conservation and climate impacts.\u00a0Enel Green Power<\/a>\u00a0also highlights this as one of the top five renewable energy trends in the coming year.<\/p>\n

5. Supply chain shortages come for clean energy<\/h3>\n

Something\u00a0funny<\/a>\u00a0has been going on with energy supply across the globe.<\/p>\n

Natural gas\u00a0prices are spiking in Europe<\/a>, with people looking down the barrel of a colder-than usual winter.\u00a0Cost of coal went up<\/a>. Strained supply chains have spiked the\u00a0cost of gasoline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the renewable energy side,\u00a0supply chain disruptions have increased the cost of projects<\/a>. This is thanks to a confluence of factors, including an increased cost for raw components, higher shipping costs and a run on available deals as corporations and communities work to ink deals before clean energy target dates and the sunset of tax credits.<\/p>\n

As a result, some corporate buyers are waiting for costs to fall before engaging in new projects.<\/p>\n

The fact that a marginal increase in costs could derail important progress in the clean energy transition reflects the moral hazard of focusing on economics as the motivation to decarbonize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Golden This article was adapted from Energy Weekly,\u00a0a free newsletter about the clean energy transition. It\u2019s been a big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.svg","month_date":"Dec","day_date":"17","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}