Paula Glover | The power of efficiency

The Sustainable Energy in America Factbook serves as a key reference for the state of renewables in the United States. To mark the release of the 12th edition, Gil Jenkins and Hilary Langer talked to the people behind the annual report: Lisa Jacobson, President of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy and Tom Rowlands-Rees, Head of Research for North America at BloombergNEF. Despite significant headwinds in 2023, including high interest rates and supply chain challenges, the factbook is full of record-shattering figures that reveal momentum toward a more sustainable energy future. Lisa and Tom discuss the importance of stable federal policies, the optimism they find in reduced emissions, and how America will need to accelerate sustainable energy development to meet carbon reduction targets.

Links: 

• The 2024 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook | BloombergNEF (bnef.com)
• The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (bcse.org)
• Lisa Jacobson | LinkedIn
• Tom Rowlands-Rees | LinkedIn
• BloombergNEF (bnef.com)

Episode recorded February 26, 2024

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

As the energy density of batteries continues to increase even as costs keep declining, the stationary energy storage market is booming, with investment growing by over 7x over the last few years – from $5 billion in 2020 to over $35 billion in 2023 – and with battery installations tripling just last year alone. 

While an influx of storage is certainly needed to integrate the vast amount of renewables we need to fully decarbonize the grid, the storage we are adding to the grid is not always or even usually reducing overall carbon emissions. In fact, too often new batteries are resulting in positive net new emissions – an outcome almost no one wants. 

In this episode, Chad Reed chats with Jacob Mansfield and Emma Konet of Tierra Climate and Adam Reeve of REsurety to learn more about the efforts of the Energy Storage Solutions Consortium (ESSC), which seeks to align the economic incentives of the storage market with truly accelerating grid decarbonization.

Links:

Energy Storage Solutions Consortium (ESSC)

Charging Towards Zero: Harnessing Batteries and Carbon Contracts to Accelerate Grid Decarbonization

Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero

Episode recorded February 14, 2024

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

In this week's episode, Gil Jenkins sits down with Steve Raeder, the founder and CEO of Summit Ridge Energy. As a leading player in the community solar market, Summit Ridge Energy (SRE) has made significant strides since its inception in 2017, deploying over $1.6 billion into clean energy assets. With a robust development pipeline of more than 2 GW, SRE will have more than 400 MW of solar PV online by the end of 2024, powering 50,000 homes and businesses. During the conversation, Steve opens up about his journey from SunEdison to founding Summit SRE. He breaks down the incredible value proposition for community solar, which offers guaranteed savings to both residential and small commercial customers while underscoring its pivotal role in the broader energy transition. Steve also discusses SRE’s growth strategy. Giving his outlook on the future of the community solar market, he details how the company is positioning itself to capitalize on this sector's continued growth. Additionally, Steve talks about the company’s solar panel supply partnership with Qcells, which was announced last year and is the largest domestic community solar purchase ever. He also shares insights into their innovative sustainability apprenticeship program in Chicago. Note: Summit Ridge Energy is a client of HASI. 

Links: 

• Summit Ridge Energy Website
• Summit Ridge Energy on LinkedIn
• Summit Ridge Energy on X
• Steve Raeder on LinkedIn
• Press Release: Summit Ridge Energy and Qcells Announce Largest Community Solar Partnership in the U.S (April 6, 2023)
• Article: Clean energy job training has started at Chicago’s Sustainability Hub (Solar Power World, May 2, 2023)
• Summit Ridge Energy’s “Bomber” Project - Nation's Largest Rooftop Community Solar Array
• Press Release: HASI and Summit Ridge Energy Expand Partnership with New 250 MW Community Solar Portfolio in Illinois and Maryland (August 29, 2023)
• Article: How to run your house on clean electricity, no solar panels required (Washington Post, February 8, 2023)
• Steve’s Book Recommendation: A Sense of Urgency, by Dr. John Kotter

Episode recorded January 24, 2024

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

At the end of 2022, 200 countries signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – what some have called the “Paris Agreement for Nature”. It calls on signatories to work together to enhance the resilience of natural ecosystems and to turn the tide on species extinction rates through the setting of national targets, the establishment of disclosure regimes and the creation of innovative financing mechanisms – such as biodiversity credits. While there has been some subsequent positive international progress on this front driven by the UK and others, most biodiversity credit markets remain in very nascent stages.

In this episode, HASI’s investment team lead for nature-based solutions Tim Mooradd speaks with Tim Male and Ryan Sarsfield of the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). They discuss the imperative of protecting and valuing biodiversity, the existing and potential buyers for biodiversity credits, lessons learned from other environmental markets and much more. 

Note also that the HASI Foundation recently provided a grant to EPIC for its work at the intersection of climate action and social justice. 

Links:

Environmental Policy Innovation Center

Biodiversity Credits Gain Traction but Questions Persist

Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon

Episode recorded January 10, 2024

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

America’s dramatic shift towards renewable energy generation in remote areas will require a substantial transmission build-out in the years ahead, potentially doubling or tripling the current grid. In other words, there is no transition without transmission. While it's crucial that we expedite the construction of large power lines at a much faster clip, there's another technology solution that demands equal attention. This parallel approach involves the use of Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs). GETs offer a modular, cost-effective path to enhancing our existing infrastructure while also significantly amplifying the efficacy of new transmission investments. To gain deeper insights into how GETs can help us meet the needs of the 21st-century electric grid, accelerate the clean energy transition, and lower energy costs, Gil Jenkins and Manish Chaturvedi spoke with Julia Selker, Executive Director of WATT Coalition.

Links:

WATT Coalition 

• WATT Coalition Website
• What are Grid Enhancing Technologies?
• Whitepaper: Building a Better Grid: How Grid Enhancing Technologies Complement Transmission Buildouts (WATT Coalition & Brattle Group, April 20, 2023)
• WATT Coalition LinkedIn
• WATT Coalition X

More on Julia: 

Julia Selker is Executive Director of the WATT Coalition and Director of Policy and Strategy and Chief Operating Officer for Grid Strategies. She previously worked for the Business Council on Sustainable Energy, the technology startup Faraday Grid, and interned with Congressman Peter DeFazio focused on energy and climate policy. Prior to coming to Washington, DC, Julia worked on the launch of Monterey Bay Community Power through the public relations agency Miller Maxfield, Inc., in Santa Cruz, California. Julia previously worked for the Bulleit Group, a San Francisco public relations agency. She has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Reed College. 

• Julia Selker LinkedIn
• Julia Selker X
• LinkedIn Post: The grid fairy godmothers of the energy transition (Julia Selker, August 3, 2023)

Episode recorded December 8, 2023

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

In our final episode of 2023, we sit down with Dan Shugar, founder and CEO of Nextracker, Inc. (NASDAQ: NXT), a leading provider of intelligent, integrated solar tracker and software solutions used in utility-scale and distributed generation solar projects globally. With over 30 years of experience in the field, Dan has been a driving force in advancing climate tech solutions in the U.S. and around the world.

In the conversation with Gil, Dan reflects on Nextracker's incredible success over the past ten years, including its successful IPO earlier this year; they talked at length about the company's steadfast customer-focused mindset and how that has driven so many industry-first solar tracker innovations in their mission to transition the world to affordable, renewable power. Dan also talked about Nextracker's remarkable initiatives with U.S. manufacturing expansions over the past three years and the importance of public policy engagement for our industry. He also touched on a few non-U.S. markets that are key to his optimism for the future of solar power. We even found time at the end to have fun talking about great guitar music and his new musical products venture, AmpMojo.

Links:

More on Dan 

• Dan Shugar Bio
• Shug Speaks Blog
• Press Release: Nextracker CEO Dan Shugar Named S&P Global’s ‘Chief Trailblazer of the Year’ at the 25th Annual Platts Global Energy Awards (December 12, 2023)
• Dan Shugar on LinkedIn
• Video: Dinner with Dan - Intro - 'Solar Myths Debunked"
• Website: AmpMojo - Dan’s new musical products company
• Video: Introducing AmpMojo

Nextracker, Inc. 

• Website
• Nextracker American Manufacturing Microsite
• Nextracker on LinkedIn
• Nextracker on X
• Press Release: Nextracker Opens New U.S. Factory with Dedicated Capacity in Las Vegas with Unimacts (September 11, 2023)
• Video: NX Horizon Hail Pro - The Gold Standard for Hail Risk Mitigation

Episode recorded December 8, 2023.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

The private sector has been a critical driver of increasing clean energy on the grid. Since 2008, corporate renewable purchases have helped bring online nearly 150 GW of new renewable energy capacity globally — more than the total power-generating capacity of France. Despite these purchase commitments, overall global emissions from the power sector have remained flat at a time when we need to see a sharp decline. At the same time, extreme weather events have exposed vulnerabilities in the reliability of the current fossil-fuel powered grid that aren’t yet being addressed at sufficient scale.

Earlier this year, a group of leading companies focused on accelerating decarbonization while also bolstering grid reliability partnered with RMI, a leading climate NGO, to launch the Zero-Emissions | Reliability Optimized Grid Initiative, or ZEROgrid, with the objective of developing a comprehensive roadmap to accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions grid.

In this episode, Chad Reed chats with Mark Dyson, Managing Director at RMI, about the challenges ZEROgrid aims to address, the objectives it seeks to achieve as well as the concept of applied hope.

Links:

ZEROgrid

Corporate Action Playbook

Amory Lovins (RMI): Applied Hope (May 2019)

Episode recorded November 28, 2023
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

In this week's episode, Gil speaks with Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of Mill, a startup revolutionizing how we tackle food waste. They delve into the inspiration behind Mill, discussing how the idea came about and the parallels to Matt's previous work as the co-founder of Nest, the company behind the iconic learning thermostat and other smart home products. Matt discusses the functionality of Mill's kitchen bin, which transforms food scraps into nutrient-rich animal feed, and how the company is bringing this groundbreaking product to the market. He explains the emissions profile of Mill's appliance and the positive impact it can have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Also, Matt shares his insights on the crucial role of technology and innovation in driving sustainable solutions.

Links: 

• Mill Website
• Mill Impact Stats
• Matt Rogers Twitter
• Matt Rogers LinkedIn
• Mill LinkedIn
• Mill Twitter
• Mill Instagram
• Mill TikTok

The episode originally aired on June 15, 2023.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

According to the International Energy Agency, the world is expected to build more renewable projects in the next five years as we have in the past 20. But this rapid and massive growth in the renewable energy space has proven increasingly challenging for insurers of these assets, who are struggling to deal with mounting losses from natural disasters (which themselves are often driven by climate change) as well as growing demand for new products that insure against other emerging risks such as production and revenue variability. 

In this episode, Chad Reed sits down Jason Kaminsky, CEO and co-founder of kWh Analytics, perhaps the leader in delivering data-enabled Climate Insurance for zero-carbon assets. In the discussion, Chad and Jason get into the weeds on the recent evolution of the Climate Insurance industry, kWh’s Fifth Annual Solar Risk Assessment as well as data-enabled solutions to address the most pressing risks facing the U.S. solar industry today. 

Links:

2023 Solar Risk Assessment

Solar Revenue Put

From Niche to Necessity: Insuring Renewable Energy

Episode recorded October 31, 2023
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod. 

With the recent proliferation of sometimes conflicting standards around sustainability and impact reporting, companies across the globe are seeking trusted partners to help them determine and measure sustainability metrics that are truly material to the business and its stakeholders and also generate real value. To this end, Workiva – a global software-as-a-service company – has developed a suite of products to help companies make real progress on their sustainability journeys. 

In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Mandi McReynolds, VP of Global Environment, Social and Governance at Workiva and the host of the ESG Talk podcast. Chad and Mandi discuss the at times differing perceptions of company executives and sustainability practitioners, the emerging role of AI in sustainability reporting and the evolving nomenclature surrounding efforts to generate and report sustainable impact.

Links:

Workiva ESG

Workiva 2023 Global ESG Practitioner Survey

Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI)

Episode recorded October 4, 2023

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.

Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.