Tuesday, 09 March 2021
Clean Energy Fuels Corp. and its largest shareholder, Total SE, have announced a 50/50 joint venture to develop carbon-negative renewable natural gas (RNG) production facilities in the United States, as well as credit support to build additional downstream RNG fueling infrastructure. Courtesy of Clean Energy
The initial firm commitment is $100 million and can increase to $400 million as development opportunities progress. Since Clean Energy and Total will be providing the equity portion of the investments, the actual amount of capital invested in RNG projects may be higher than $400 million depending on the amount of leverage that is deployed. In addition, Total will be providing credit support for Clean Energy development in the RNG value chain, including $45 million for contracted RNG fueling infrastructure.
The Mainspring Linear Generator at work in California
The growing mandate for a reliable, affordable, and low-carbon electric grid is driving demand for new power generation technologies that can enable greatly increased use of renewable energy while providing improved resilience against natural disasters, increased flexibility, and lower cost than the electric grid. Mainspring s breakthrough technology, based on research originally conducted by the company s co-founders in a thermodynamics laboratory at Stanford University, is designed to meet these demands by delivering dispatchable, fuel-flexible power that substantially reduces cost and carbon today, while accelerating the transition to the net-zero carbon grid.
The company also announced it has entered a $150 million agreement with NextEra Energy Resources to purchase Mainspring units and finance customer projects starting in the first half of 2021.
Courtesy of Sonnedix Japan.
The financing covers a 14 MW solar PV plant acquired in October 2020 from global PV developer X-Elio. The plant is located in the Yamaguchi prefecture, and has been in commercial operation since June 2020.
“This financial close is testament to our commitment to the optimisation of our assets and to the Japanese market, where we experienced tremendous growth last year” said Axel Thiemann, CEO of Sonnedix. “Despite the challenges of a global pandemic, our team added 232 MW of operational capacity to our Japanese portfolio through the completion of four projects and the acquisition of another five fully-operative solar PV plants.”
Monday, 08 March 2021 Bioenergy is frequently considered one of the options to reduce greenhouse gases for achieving the Paris climate goals, especially if combined with capturing the CO2 from biomass power plants and storing it underground. Growing large-scale bioenergy plantations worldwide, however, does not just require land, but also considerable amounts of freshwater for irrigation – which can be at odds with respecting Earth’s Planetary Boundaries. An international team of scientists has used their most detailed computer simulations to date to calculate how much additional water stress could result for people worldwide in a scenario of conventional irrigation and one of sustainable freshwater use.
Monday, 08 March 2021 The United States offshore wind industry took a monumental step forward following today s announcement from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on the final environmental impact statement for the Vineyard Wind Project. This decision puts the first U.S. commercial-scale project a small step away from beginning construction. Pixabay
“We want to thank BOEM for all of the work they’ve done since we submitted the permit application in December of 2017 on this first-in-the-nation project,” said Vineyard Wind CEO Lars T. Pedersen. “More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry. Offshore wind is a historic opportunity to build a new industry that will lead to the creation of thousands of jobs, reduce electricity rates for consumers and contribute significantly to limiting the impacts of climate change. We look f