ESG & Industry Updates

The UN’s Climate Change Conference, or “COP28” Summit was held from November 30 through December 13^th in Dubai, UAE. The Conference consisted of 150 heads of State and Government and 85,000 participants representing countries, organizations, etc. This year’s summit focused on where the world is in relation to the goals initially outlined in the Paris Agreement (forget what that is? Refresher here: LINK). Spoiler alert – the world is nowhere near achieving the goals outlined, and the focus became how the countries involved can speed up their action on climate change mitigation through multiple avenues.

Topics: methane, Climate Change, Carbon Emissions, renewable energy, paris accord

Independent research organization Climate Central published a report recently that showed how the national capacity for solar and wind generated power shot up in 2022. The report comes just as the Biden Administration begins rolling out billions of dollars to renewable energy projects as part of its commitment to decarbonizing the grid completely by 2030 and getting the US to net zero emission by 2050.

Topics: Solar, Carbon Emissions, renewable energy, Biden Administration, offshore wind, decarbonization

 

Topics: EPA, Carbon Emissions, railcar regulations, renewable energy, Biden Administration, 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

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

We're going to go millennial this month and talk about the ongoing controversy regarding bitcoin  - not the part you're thinking about, (to the moon!) -  but the controversy regarding the Carbon Footprint of digital currency, and what is seen as its "excessive" energy consumption. 

Topics: china, renewable energy, tesla, bitcoin

The Biden Administation has the ambitious goal of bringing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind online by 2030, and 1.4 of those gigawatts are slated to come from the New England coast. 

Topics: Massachusetts, Carbon Emissions, renewable energy, Clean Energy, offshore wind

Maine lawmakers have been pushing for the state to create the first statewide, publicly owned utility in the US. The legislation proposed in June would have created the entity (Pine Tree Power) as a nonprofit utility that would use issued bonds to purchase the asset holdings of the current suppliers (Central Maine Power & Versant). The bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate, ultimately being defeated by one vote on questions raised about how the utility would cover the shortfall in property tax revenue that would arise from the exit of the current utilities. The shortfall was estimated at $90 million dollars, which is normally paid out to cities and towns.

Topics: Utility Rates, renewable energy, maine