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.

Merchant Solar and Wind: A Ticking Time Bomb?
Greentech Media: Headlines 25-08-2019 13:17

Since the dawn of grid-connected wind and solar, long-term power purchase agreements were the financial glue that held projects together. Developers could rely on relatively simple multi-decade contracts, thanks in large part to policy that encouraged or mandated utilities to enter those agreements. Today, things are a lot more complicated. It’s much harder to secure a long-term PPA, so more wind and solar projects are getting exposed to the risks of the market. Contract terms are being cut down to 10 years or less. And that means a vast majority of the electricity produced by those wind and solar projects must...

On Thursday, Hawaiian Electric issued a long-awaited request for proposals for about 900 megawatts of renewable energy and energy storage projects. It’s the utility’s second major round of contracts in the past year seeking to marry variable solar and wind power with the capacity and flexibility of batteries. But the Variable Renewable Dispatchable Generation and Energy Storage RFPs that opened on Thursday are a bit more complicated than their headline figures — seeking “technologies equal to 594 megawatts of solar for Oahu, 135 megawatts for Maui and up to 203 megawatts for Hawaii Island” — might indicate. Unlike its first massive solar-storage procurement in January, HECO’s...

For independent system operators and regional transmission organizations (ISO/RTOs), the need to rely on distributed energy resources as a system resource is growing. Power systems governed by wholesale markets are evolving as traditional fuel-based generation retires. As a result, ISOs and RTOs are appealing to FERC to change the way demand response resources play in the market. The Midcontinent ISO illustrates incremental improvements to demand response mechanisms that are underway, as noted in a new report from Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. MISO’s generation units are aging and retiring, resulting in shrinking reserve margins. At the same time, their resource mix and that...

Is abolishing the filibuster necessary in order for Congress to pass meaningful climate legislation? A handful of Democratic presidential candidates have called for throwing out the Senate rule, claiming that it exacerbates gridlock in Washington, D.C. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also believes that abolishing the filibuster is critical to passing legislation and tackling the most important issues facing the United States, including climate change. But could killing the filibuster end up making U.S. politics even more volatile? We discuss these issues with Senator Reid himself on this week’s episode of Political Climate. Plus, we get his views on the Green New...

In nearly every corner of the country, energy storage projects are finding their way onto the grid — they’re getting bigger, cheaper, more diverse and even a little bit weirder. Most of all, they’re just becoming normal. This week, we’re talking about the new normal for power operations, which includes a lot of batteries. (And maybe some air tanks, water pumps and cranes too.) GTM Staff Writer Julian Spector joins us on The Energy Gang as a guest co-host to round up the most topical storage projects and tell us where the market is headed. Then we’ll look at a novel approach to...

California has just 25 years to achieve its economywide carbon-neutrality target. Buildings account for about a quarter of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, so concerted efforts will be needed to squeeze carbon out of the sector, especially existing buildings. State policymakers are increasingly coalescing around a solution: electrification. As a recent California Energy Commission (CEC) report put it: “There is a growing consensus that building electrification is the most viable and predictable path to zero-emission buildings.” Recent events underscore this sentiment. California regulators just overhauled a legacy policy that acted as a brake on building electrification. New incentives for electric appliances could be available by...

Faraday Grid, the much-hyped Scottish transformer technology startup, has run out of money and been put under the control of insolvency administrators in the U.K. The administrators were appointed on August 8. A press note from Grant Thornton, the appointed administrator, said 45 employees have been laid off. The U.K.'s administration process shares similarities with Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S., allowing a company a chance to reorganize and potentially reemerge as a viable business or sell off its assets. Faraday was aiming to develop flow control devices which could maintain target voltage, frequency and power factors, potentially replacing electricity transformers in the...

Electricity grids were once laid out like trees: Power stations were connected to a transmission network or “trunk” through which energy flowed to local distribution networks or “branches” and then on to homes, businesses and other end users. Power flowed in a single direction and this centralized system was very reliable — when customers flicked a switch, their lights came on. Today, the system is being transformed into a complex spider’s web of connections. Instead of power being mostly produced by giant coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power stations, it now comes more and more from large-scale renewables and smaller generators such as...

The total number of smart meters around the world is expected to almost double over 2017 levels by 2024, opening up new opportunities for customer-side control and analytics. The global smart meter total will rise from 665.1 million in 2017 to more than 1.2 billion by the end of 2024, according to a new Wood Mackenzie report. Accordingly, the cumulative global expenditure on advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) will almost double over the same period, rising from $73 billion in 2017 to $145.8 billion in 2024 (all values USD). The growth of AMI globally is an important factor in the rise of customer-side...

Back in 2015, we covered the launch of Verizon’s Grid Wide Utility Solutions platform. The 4G LTE-enabled, cloud-hosted service was aimed primarily at utilities that want to connect smart meters, grid sensors, distributed energy assets and other endpoints of the modern grid, but for one reason or another don’t want to invest in and own the information and communications technology networks to enable them. Fast-forward to 2019, and Verizon’s Grid Wide platform is continuing to expand its share of smaller municipal and cooperative utilities — a natural target market for a capital-light alternative to the multibillion-dollar advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) rollouts of the country’s big investor-owned utilities. This...

General Electric is a big and sprawling company that’s undergone some dramatic reorganizations over the past few years, particularly in its renewable energy, energy storage and grid edge business lines. But over the past four years, amid these large-scale corporate changes, a small unit of GE has built a growing business around developing distributed solar and solar-plus-storage projects. On Tuesday, GE announced it’s taking this business to a new stage, via a partnership and majority investment by asset management firm and heavyweight renewables investor BlackRock Real Assets. The new company, named Distributed Solar Development, will be 20 percent owned by GE Renewable Energy and...

U.K. startup Moixa, which has megawatts' worth of behind-the-meter batteries in the U.K. and Japan running on its distributed energy management software, has landed an £8.6 million ($11.1 million) venture capital round led by EV-as-grid-asset partner, Honda. Monday’s investment also included previous investors Japanese investment firm Itochu Corporation and First Imagine Ventures, as well as Lithuanian firm Contrarian Ventures. The London-based startup has previously raised £5.5 million ($7.1 million) in January 2018, £1.5 million ($1.9 million) and £2 million ($2.6 million) in 2017, and seed rounds and grants stretching back to its 2006 founding. Moixa has built a roster of partners using its GridShare...

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.