Energy

This year’s LABC Sustainability Summit took place at USC on September 22nd, bringing together both local and national industry and political leaders to discuss what's being done and what should be done to bring us closer to a sustainable future. One panel, moderated by Mary Nichols, Director of the Climate Group, featured a discussion with Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles, Gene Seroka, addressing what's happening with sustainability at the Port of LA. VX News presents here a transcribed excerpt from this panel.

Following the announcement that California had been awarded 1.2 billion dollars in grant funding for hydrogen, Mayor Bass, members of the Los Angeles City Council, and POLA, hosted a conference at the Port of Los Angeles to celebrate and voice their intentions towards utilizing the grant to create a hydrogen hub, a major step forward for the region in terms of reaching zero emissions goals. The grant will help LADWP create one single platform where distributed energy resources like Electric Vehicles (EVs) and EV chargers, energy storage, solar photovoltaic systems (PV), and demand response infrastructure can be controlled, in response to grid needs. Doing so will enable LADWP to quickly rebalance the electrical system after an extreme climate event like wildfires, heatwaves or tropical storms. VX News brings you the complete transcript from the announcement, featuring comments from the Mayor, Gene Seroka, Councilmember Tim McOsker, Nancy Sutley, and Aram Benyamin.

VerdeXchange News recently interviewed Jon Rawding, the CEO of Euro Mechanical - an Emirati company that for more than four decades has supported the growth of Abu Dhabi’s energy sector - to better understand the continuing evolution of UAE’s energy goals and investments. Rawding confirms not only continued investment by UAE in oil and gas growth, but also their conscious evolution to investment in renewables. Rawding explains the aforementioned is all taking place in the UAE through ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as the result of the sovereign’s leadership commitment to generational pragmatism in a time of worldwide climate existentialism.

In April of the year, the EU adopted reforms and new targets for its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to expand the scope of the market-based program that is central to the EU’s decarbonization strategy and update targets aimed at achieving 62% reductions in carbon emissions by 2030. VX presents this timely point/counterpoint on emissions trading as a ‘tool in the toolbox’ for incentivizing carbon emissions reduction.

In this VX News interview, Jacot highlights some of the innovative rebates, pilots, and research through LADWP to increase adoption of solar resources in the City of Los Angeles.

Derek Chernow comments on impending rulemaking coming from the California Public Utilities Commission and how it will impact the rate of deployment of community solar in the state.

Last week, Bloom Energy opened a fuel cell factory near San Francisco that is expected to produce 1 GW of fuel cells powered by natural gas or biogas by the end of next year.