Renewable Energy

The City of Lancaster aims to become the first net-zero city in the world, and took strides toward that goal by mandating solar energy for every new single-family home constructed in the municipality at the start of this year. R. Rex Parris, the Mayor of Lancaster, described his vision to VerdeXchange News: that the city will serve as an example others follow, so that the nation can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help prevent the worst potential outcomes of climate change. With a clear goal, Mayor Parris has united his constituents around the frank reality of climate change.

As renewable energy becomes the base upon which society operates, how will utilities manage unbalanced production and overproduction? Advances in communications technology, or the Industrial Internet, promise to channel energy to where it is most demanded via sensors and automatic communication between machines. Efficiently connecting supply and demand will grow with the increased ubiquity of our M2M devices and their potential for sensing energy needs across a myriad of platforms. VerdeXchange News reprints the following with the permission of ThomasNet News.

In this VerdeXchange News interview, James Kelly, formerly of Southern California Edison and now a strategic advisor to GRIDiant Corporation, among other startups, discusses the role of Embedded Network Sensing (ENS) in generating data, how improved data analytics will affect the management of the electrical grid, and what the evolution of data portends for the physical worlds of industry and utility. As alternative energies and power sources gain support in state and local government, stronger tools for monitoring the electric grid will be necessary for balancing supply and demand.

VerdeXchange News presents the following remarks by Amy Myers Jaffe, Executive Director for Energy and Sustainability at UC Davis, delivered this summer at the biannual Asilomar Conference on Transportation and Energy. Her thesis: Many incorrectly imagined that the globe and the Industrial West were running dry of oil and thus alternative energy and fuels could depend on high oil prices shifting us to lower carbon emissions. Jaffe suggests that environmental policy advocates shift away from arguing scarcity and instead prepare for possible fossil fuel surpluses, and what that might mean for the economy and for climate change initiatives.

Southern California Edison recently decided to shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant after trouble with faulty generators. VerdeXchange News consulted Long Beach Mayor, ISO Chair, and former SCE president Bob Foster on the impact the closure will have on energy supply in the Southland, and how the state plans to counter the impending power loss. Foster also talks demand response, California’s energy future (he thinks: renewables), and the revolutionary role storage technology will play in fostering a green energy grid. While San Onofre presents a challenge, Foster notes California’s energy agencies are more capable than ever of meeting such challenges together.

Sanjay Ranchod is the Assistant General Counsel and Director of Policy and Electricity Markets at SolarCity, the nation’s largest full-service photovoltaic solar power provider for residential, commercial, and government customers. In this VerdeXchange interview, Ranchod discusses California Assembly Bill 327, recently passed by the state’s legislature and written to modernize electricity rates and remove restrictions on the state’s net metering program. Expected to be signed into law by Gov. Brown, the solar industry, most especially rooftop solar companies, have cheered the law’s passage while also preparing for the coming changes to state policy that will follow from the adoption of new regulations interpreting and applying AB 327.

Newly reelected President Barack Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown both began 2013 - the former in his Inaugural Address and the latter in his State of the State speech - by emphasizing the need for lawmakers to address the issue of climate change. And both also cite the need for critical infrastructure investment and mitigation efforts to act as part of a solution to control the symptoms of climate change. Project funding, ranging from high-speed rail to flood control, they assert, are key to reducing the amount of energy consumed from non-renewable sources of energy, limiting carbon footprints, and protecting posterity from future disasters; thereby creating newer, innovative green jobs and protecting jobs that already exist from being threatened by climate change.

One Year Ago: at the fifth VerdeXchange Conference in January, 2012, Ron Nichols, General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, delivered remarks in the opening plenary, ‘Given an Uncertain Landscape, Is Renewable Energy and Sustainability Beyond the Tipping Point?’ Joining Nichols was Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western State Petroleum Association, Robert Hertzberg, Speaker Emeritus of the California Assembly. With Mr. Nichols on the agenda once again at VerdeXchange’s 6th Annual Conference, his comments last year provide a benchmark re the challenges the LADWP faces in meeting renewable energy mandates while struggling to keep rates even for customers.

VX2010 Panel: Accelerating the Integration and Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies: Wind and Solar from VerdeXchange on Vimeo.

Questions and answers from the "Accelerating the Integration & Deployment of Renewable Energy Technologies: Wind, Solar Power, GeoThermal" panel at the 2009 VERDEXCHANGE Green Marketmakers Conference