Michelle Lewis

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has forecast in its January Short-Term Energy Outlook that rising electricity generation from clean energy such as solar and wind will reduce generation from fossil fuel-fired power plants over the next two years. 

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) announced that it has finalized contracts with BP and Equinor for the Empire Wind 2 and Beacon Wind 1 offshore wind farms.

Crown Estate Scotland, which held Scotland’s largest-ever auction of offshore wind permits, today announced that it has selected 17 projects out of 74 applications in its ScotWind Leasing round.

Houston-headquartered renewables company EDP Renewables North America has completed a 200-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Randolph County, Indiana, northeast of Indianapolis. It’s now the largest-capacity solar farm in Indiana.

The Department of Energy (DOE) yesterday launched the Better Grid Initiative to develop new and upgraded high-capacity electric transmission lines, which is great news for electric vehicles, charging infrastructure rollout, and clean energy in the US.

US window manufacturing giant Andersen Corporation is leading a series B $30 million funding round of solar window company Ubiquitous Energy.

Late Tuesday evening, Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in on a controversial topic in California: the state’s solar tax proposal. Musk tweeted that California’s proposal was a “bizarre anti-environment move by govt of California.”

US electricity generator operators have scheduled 14.9 gigawatts (GW) of electric generating capacity to retire during 2022, and the vast majority of those scheduled retirements – 85% – are coal-fired power plants, reports the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) today.

Offshore wind power needs energy storage and power regulation, and Ocean Grazer has invented an offshore energy storage system that will sit at the bottom of the sea and manage the flow of electricity through the power grid. The Dutch startup showcased their new product, Ocean Battery, at CES in Las Vegas last week.

Beijing-headquartered electric power company Huaneng Power International (HPI) has completed the world’s largest floating solar project in Dezhou, which is in Shandong, an eastern Chinese province on the Yellow Sea. The 320 megawatt (MW) project is the largest floating solar farm to come online to date.

The “world’s first” nailable solar shingle, the Timberline Solar Energy Shingle, was launched on January 3 by GAF Energy, the sister company of GAF, the largest roofing and waterproofing company in North America.

Fossil fuel heating is bad for the environment and super expensive right now: Three Democratic legislators wrote a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today asking them to protect consumers from unfairly high energy costs. Geothermal heating is fantastic, but it’s not yet widely available – and it’s still financially out of reach for many. Enter Swedish energy giant Vattenfall with high-temperature heat pumps that can easily replace gas boilers.

In what it claims is a “world first,” British Lithium has produced lithium at pilot scale from the mica in granite in its new government-backed pilot plant near Roche in Cornwall, England.

Clean energy made up 46% of Germany’s net public power generation in 2021. That was down from 50% in 2020, according to Fraunhofer ISE, the largest solar energy research institute in Europe. 

In 2011, Scotland set a target of reaching 100% clean electricity consumption in 2020. And last year, the country almost reached its target – 98.6% of gross electricity consumption came from renewable sources, according to the Scottish government’s December energy statement.

Stockholm-headquartered Hexicon, which develops floating offshore wind farms and designs patented dual turbine floating wind power platforms, has formed a 50-50 joint venture with Bologna-based clean energy developer Avapa Energy to develop offshore floating wind farms for Italy.

A 200 megawatt (MW) solar farm will be built on a former coal mine in eastern Kentucky. It will be the largest solar project in Kentucky and will provide employment opportunities for former coal workers.

More wind power capacity was installed in the US than any other generating technology in both 2019 and 2020, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

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Hawaii is going to get a 30 megawatt (MW) solar farm in 2022 – one of the first utility-scale solar farms on the Big Island.

Swiss solar technology company Meyer Burger announced today that it is opening a production facility for high-performance solar modules in Goodyear, Arizona – its first factory in the US, and its first outside of Europe. Solar module production is scheduled to begin by the end of 2022.

China’s largest offshore wind farm was connected to the grid at full capacity on Saturday, December 25. It transmitted power through undersea cables.

Clean energy sources generated a record 834 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, or about 21% of all electricity generated in the US in 2020, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported yesterday. That includes wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geothermal.

Australia is about to get its first offshore wind farms. The three projects will consist of two floating wind farms and one fixed-bottom wind farm, with a total installed capacity of 4.3 gigawatts.

The US Department of the Interior announced on Tuesday that it has approved two solar farms, with a third nearing final approval, on public lands.