Technology

Technology for a Sustainable Future

New innovative products and technologies are emerging daily to help mitigate pollution, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and limit their continuing and overall impact on the environment. These technologies are creating new markets and growth potential, along with significant investment opportunities. Companies and investors that seize on these opportunities will be better positioned to thrive in a resource-constrained and environmental-stressed economy.

Globetrans works with companies and investors, building a bridge to mutual investment solutions. Our solutions focus on addressing environmental, social and economic risks associated with unsustainable business practices. Our efforts advance disruptive and innovative technologies and applications that enable the reduction and eliminate carbon emissions in all segments of the economy: energy, transportation, and throughout the supply chain of manufacturing, distribution, sales, and consumption.

Can Tesla’s Cybertruck Shape the Burgeoning Electric Truck Market?
Greentech Media: Headlines 07-12-2019 05:39

Truck buyers are historically some of the most brand-loyal auto consumers But recent surveys suggest that loyalty is loosening. Into the picture steps Elon Musk, who dropped the Tesla Cybertruck last month. This space-age truck concept is truly putting the shift in consumer preferences to the test. It’s also tearing a lot of opinionated people apart. In this episode: what is the Cybertruck and where might it fit into the emerging electric truck market? And can it sway truck buyers who don't care about Tesla? Then, there’s a major tax bill in Congress right now that would be a boon to renewables — what...

A court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s decision in October to take away the tariff exemptions it granted bifacial solar modules earlier this year, offering a reprieve for U.S. solar developers — and a small but fast-growing portion of the solar industry. In a Thursday order, the U.S. Court of International Trade agreed with renewables developer Invenergy and the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group that the U.S. Trade Representative had acted unlawfully when it withdrew its exemption for bifacial modules. That’s because the USTR issued the withdrawal “with only 19 days’ notice to the public, without an opportunity for affected and/or interested...

COPENHAGEN — With an annual outlay in the energy sector of €15 billion ($16.6 billion), the European Investment Bank is one of the sector’s biggest lenders. And for every euro the EIB puts into a project or business, around seven more are invested by the private sector. That’s around €120 billion ($133 billion) of public and private investment in the energy sector that stems from the EIB’s choices. According to the International Energy Agency, global renewables investment in 2018 amounted to $300 billion. So the EIB's confirmation last month that it would effectively end support for fossil fuels garnered widespread attention —...

“No one has more to gain from electrification than low-income and moderate-income households.” With that, Scott Blunk set the agenda for a small team that had gathered at a Utah ski resort earlier this year to address a thorny challenge: How does a not-for-profit municipal utility that has committed to eliminate carbon from buildings ensure that its most disadvantaged customers aren’t left behind during the transition? Blunk, a strategic planner with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), had assembled a diverse group of stakeholders with expertise in energy policy, green building, energy efficiency retrofits and program implementation. SMUD had previously launched the nation’s...

This week, we have a special addendum to our deep decarbonization draft. We’re talking with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, the vice president of communication and engagement at Project Drawdown. Katharine is one of the minds behind the Project Drawdown solutions list that we used as the basis for our draft. We chose the list because it spans so many different areas of the global economy. Katharine is a renowned expert and self-proclaimed “climate solutionary.” She has a very popular TED Talk on gender equality and climate change, and she speaks regularly to the press about climate issues. She was the lead author on the Drawdown book, which goes...

Nevada regulators have given a green light to utility NV Energy’s plan to add nearly 1.2 gigawatts of solar and 590 megawatts of batteries, underscoring a broader push toward renewable energy and storage by other Western utilities also owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. The new projects are part of NV Energy’s integrated resource plan approved Wednesday by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. NV Energy announced the projects in June with developers 8minute Solar Energy, EDF Renewables, Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners and Arevia Power, and it expects them to be online in 2023. This massive solar procurement includes Quinbrook and Arevia’s newly approved Gemini project, at 690...

Over the past decade, a new class of digital power electronics has emerged that can shape, shift and control the flow of electricity on the power grid in ways never before seen. But the providers of such technologies have faced challenges moving past pilot projects and into real-world utility deployments. A few contenders have managed to break this barrier, as with Varentec’s deployment with Xcel. Others have been forced out of business, as with startup Gridco last year. One of the things limiting these technologies, at least in the United States, is that most utilities don't yet face high enough penetrations of wind and solar...

CHENGDU, CHINA — At least a dozen cranes are visible from the Holiday Inn at Tianfu New Area, a state-designated development zone on the outskirts of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. The Tianfu New Area is so new, in fact, that the streets and sidewalks below the towering construction equipment are virtually empty. As Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have established themselves as epicenters for high-tech investment and innovation, the Chinese government has shifted its focus to building out a competitive technology ecosystem in this cloudy inland metropolis. Chengdu is already home to several large international corporations, including Dell and IBM. The Chinese...

European utility giant Enel has committed half of its total investment over the next few years to decarbonization, part of a new strategic plan revealed on Tuesday. Between 2020 and 2022, the Italian group will invest €11.5 billion ($12.6 billion) in additional renewable capacity, which it expects to equate to another 14.1 gigawatts of assets by the end that period, building on its existing 46-gigawatt renewables fleet, a large chunk of which is hydroelectric capacity. The planned investment into renewables is broken into three groups. The replacement of fossil fuel generation in Spain, Italy and Chile will account for 5.4 gigawatts. Another...

An overnight trial in the U.K. has seen a solar power plant successfully provide optimization services to the broader grid during nighttime hours, clearing the way for solar projects to participate in a new reactive power support mechanism and benefit from the associated revenue. Lightsource BP modified the inverters on its 4-megawatt St. Francis solar farm in the southeast of England, allowing the inverters to receive power from the grid and feed it back with the voltage optimized. It's the first time a solar plant has been used for this purpose in the U.K. The test, conducted in early November, is part...

Scientists say we must reach zero emissions by 2050 to avoid locking in dangerous levels of climate change, but while overall emissions have declined from power-sector decarbonization, stubbornly hard-to-reduce transportation and buildings emissions are still growing. Even with aggressive electric vehicle and building electrification mandates, these two sectors are hard to decarbonize due to slow capital stock turnover — the process whereby old equipment, such as vehicles and appliances, is replaced with new equipment. Capital stock turnover makes net-zero emissions harder to reach with every year we wait to start electrifying our vehicles and buildings. EV adoption is accelerating, and new all-electric homes...

Moixa, the U.K.-based energy storage developer, is prepping for international expansion supported by a planned future funding round and leveraging the scale of its ongoing growth in Japan. The firm is now managing more than 10,000 residential batteries in Japan, networked and managed as a fleet, less than a year after entering that country's market. It has a head start on many of its competitors, having started work on virtual power plant trials back in 2013. Moixa is now looking to leverage the flood of data and experience gained from its rapid progress in Japan. The company is adding 10 megawatt-hours of capacity to its GridShare platform...

The US Energy Information Administration's latest Short-Term Energy Outlook was published this week, revealing electricity generation from coal in the United States will average 25% in 2019 and 23% in 2020, down from 27% in 2018 and continuing its steady decline to irrelevance.

In Wolfsburg this week, Volkswagen officials suggested that a family of urban electric cars with a range of 125 miles and starting at around $22,500 would be on sale by 2023. They will be basic transportation but still be capable of over the air updates.

British-Dutch oil major Royal Dutch Shell has made it clear this week that, at least publicly, it has no interest in doing business as usual, rebuking US President Donald Trump and his administration to tighten methane while at the same time announcing it plans to be the largest power company in the world by the early 2030s.

In which Energy Secretary Rick Perry admits that the federal government has run out of ideas for saving the nation's coal power plants from certain doom

Many crossovers are called SUVs by their manufacturers but have far more in common with their sedan cousins than anything you’d take to Moab (or Mars, in 10 years?) for serious fun. So how does the Model Y stack up? Here’s what we know so far

A large segment of Tesla fans and market pundits are obsessed with hearing about every detail of how Tesla is doing what they are doing, but instead of feeding into that and potentially making statements that are difficult to follow through on, the Model Y announcement was a simple presentation walking people through the history of the company, and explaining what the next step was.