The Montgomery County Energy Team receives tons of newsletters and articles every day, and these are a few articles that we wanted to share this month. These articles range from county, state, national and international stories, we hope you find them as interesting as we did.
Clean Energy Extensions: Solar Energy Industries Association and American Wind Energy Association wrote a letter to Congress detailing the challenges the renewable energy faces in the U.S. due to the COVID-19 pandemic and offering solutions to ensure work opportunities and establish a new clean energy grid during the crisis, www.smartenergydecisions.com
Climate Change and Clean Energy: The novel coronavirus is also changing how we consume energy and address climate change. Here are ten ways that we are seeing changes, www.axios.com
Energy Democracy: Paying the electric bill has a meaningful impact in most times of economic stress, with the threat of a utility shut off. This article discusses how decentralized and democratized energy systems might help us weather things like the COVID-19 pandemic, www.ilsr.org
Fashion: From carbon-negative polyester to dissolvable thread, a lot of seriously cool and surprising startups are making waves in the apparel industry, check out these five: www.greenbiz.com
Geothermal: Tim Latimer’s San Francisco startup, Fervo Energy, hopes to use that heat to create a far cleaner energy future, www.grist.org
Interconnection: The Maryland Public Service Commission adopted updated rules for connecting distributed energy resources (such as solar and energy storage systems) to the electric grid, www.solarbuildermag.com
LEDs: LEDs in India shows that locking in low-carbon sustainable economic growth requires a long-term strategy, www.carbonbrief.org
Movie Theaters: Cinemark recently signed a nine-year VPPA for 40 MW of wind power - enough to cover the energy needs of 120 of its theaters, www.smartenergydecisions.com
Offshore Wind: According to the most recent data from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), 6.1 GW of offshore wind capacity was added to the mix in 2019, a record year for the industry, www.renewableenergyworld.com
Old Dominion Electric: Customers in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware will soon have access to increased renewable energy through the development of 15 distributed solar projects to provide services through Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, www.smartenergydecisions.com
PACE Financing: Hospitality businesses across Minnesota are finding ways to save thousands of dollars on energy costs while at the same time meeting their sustainability goals. That’s a big deal for the bottom line and a great story to tell customers, www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org
Renewable Energy: Almost three-quarters of new electricity generation capacity built in 2019 uses renewable energy, representing a record. New data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) shows solar, wind and other green technologies now provide more than one-third of the world’s power, marking another record, www.theguardian.com
Renewable Energy: The renewable-energy business is expected to keep growing, though more slowly, in contrast to fossil fuel companies, which have been hammered by low oil and gas prices, www.nytimes.com
Residential Energy Demand: While commercial building energy use has decreased, shelter in place has meant that residential energy usage is going up, www.power-grid.com
Solar for All: The solar market is rapidly expanding and, unfortunately, it is replicating the same disparities as the old fossil fuel-based one. There are three examples of how people/organizations are trying to be more equitable, www.greenbiz.com
Wastewater Energy: Wastewater energy isn’t necessarily new, but it is getting some updates and improvements, www.blueandgreentomorrow.com
Wind: Developers are set to boost capacity by 9% this year to 66,422 megawatts, the figures are the latest in a series of downward revisions for growth in renewable energy as the spread of the coronavirus disrupts supply chains and investment plans worldwide. www.bloomberg.com
