ESG & Industry Updates

The US National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization splits the Transportation sector into seven categories of focus: Light-Duty Vehicles, Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, Off-Road, Rail, Maritime, Aviation, and Pipelines. We will discuss the major items involved in each of these, from largest % of carbon share to least, starting with Light Duty Vehicles.

Light-Duty Vehicles produce 49% of current transportation emissions (of note, for the purposes of the Blueprint “current” refers to 2019 levels due to the pandemic and related shutdowns making 2020 & 2021 data unreliable/useless).

Topics: EV Charger, EPA, Carbon Emissions, Emissions, Biden Administration, ev, DOT, decarbonization

January 10^th, 2023 the Biden Administration released the US National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization.

Topics: EPA, Climate Change, Carbon Emissions, DOT, decarbonization

Another avenue being looked into for decarbonization in the US is hydrogen blending. Hydrogen blending would use existing natural gas infrastructure for transport, which obviously makes it very appealing from an infrastructure & logistics standpoint as the majority would already be in place.

Topics: renewable energy, hydrogen, decarbonization

In August of this year, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signed into law House Bill 5060 “An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind” into law

Topics: Mass DOER, Massachusetts, Climate Change, Carbon Emissions, boston

 

Topics: Carbon Emissions, Biden Administration, environmental justice, inflation, ev, Inflation Reduction Act, Carbon Capture

We're all familiar with both the rise of electric vehicles, and the lingering concerns some have regarding their adoption - namely, driving range, time to recharge, and battery lifetime limits. It's long been assumed that solid state batteries could be the key to solving all of these issues at once, while simultaneously enhancing safety but until recently it looked like it would be quite some time before the technology got to a point where it was scalable and practical. We may have reached that point sooner than expected, however. 

Topics: Climate Change, electric vehicles, battery, ev, solid state battery

Boston based Vanguard Renewables, a pioneer in the food & dairy industry waste-to-energy space has been acquired by BlackRock for $700 million dollars, with a plan to invest up to an additional billion dollars in the company’s expansion, according to the Wall Street Journal this morning. The expansion plan reportedly focuses on commissioning up to 100 anaerobic digesters for renewable natural gas production across the United States by 2026.

Topics: Massachusetts, methane, Carbon Emissions, renewable energy, renewable natural gas

 

Topics: New York, Biofuels, Carbon Emissions, renewable energy, hydrogen

In March, RENEW Northeast and the American Clean Power Association (ACPA) filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) asking the agency to find that ISO New England market rules “provide undue preference to natural gas only resources” and to direct the grid operator to fix its ruled to end that preference.

Topics: Solar, natural gas, renewable energy, ferc, offshore wind

Brayton Point in Somerset was once the largest coal-fired plant in Massachusetts, and was the last to be decommissioned in 2017.

Topics: Massachusetts, Climate Change, Clean Energy, offshore wind