Electricity
Distribution-Scale Solar Goes Big in Texas
Texas has long been known as the capital of oil and gas. And over the past decade it added so much wind power that if Texas were a country, it would be the world’s fourth-largest wind producer. Looking back at the past few years, a fourth energy trend can…
Pushing the Limit: How Demand Flexibility Can Grow the Market for Renewable Energy
Download Demand Flexibility: The Key to Enabling a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Grid. This is the first of a series of three RMI reports on the role new technologies are playing in replacing traditional capital investment in fossil-fueled electricity delivery and generation infrastructure. As the share of U.S. electricity generated from…
A Bull Is Loose in the Energy Shop, and Tariffs Are a Weak Lasso
Yesterday, the U.S. government presented a new challenge for the clean energy industry. The confused logic of the solar PV import tariff challenges all reason: intended to boost the domestic manufacturing of cells and modules—which currently employs less than 38,000 people—and add some jobs while reducing imports, the tariff also…
5 Reasons Why the Clean Energy Future Can’t Be Stopped
Energy used to be a boring industry—no pun intended. For over a century, the proven formula for success was to drill, mine, generate, and consume more energy than the year before. But in 1976, a young energy analyst named Amory Lovins decided to question that paradigm in an article titled…
Report Release: Reimagining the Utility to Bring “Utility of the Future” Debates Down to Earth
A lot of attention is given to the question: what is the right role and business model for electric utilities? This has become something like the energy industry’s version of what is the meaning of life, existential in nature and prone to as many answers as there are names on…