Green Energy

San Rafael, California-based Ojjo, whose solar foundations will hold the photovoltaic panels on one of the largest solar farms in the United States, just closed a $40 million Series C funding round.

LONGi Green Energy, the world’s largest solar company, is going to launch solar panels into space to test whether they can successfully work in orbit and transmit power back to Earth.

Equally important as adopting renewables is ensuring the buildings they power are also sustainable. Electrek spoke with Breana Wheeler, US director of operations at BREEAM, the world’s first green building certification program, about what the ideal decarbonized building looks like and how US real estate investors should see climate change as an opportunity.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) yesterday released a study stating that 80% of US coal power plant sites could be converted to nuclear power plant sites in order to help the US achieve net zero by 2050.

Installation of all 80 offshore wind turbines off the west coast of France has been completed, with France’s first offshore wind farm scheduled to be up and running by the end of the year. The Saint Nazaire site will produce enough power to cover 20% of total electricity consumption of the Loire-Atlantic, or around 700,000 people.

London-based SolarBotanic Trees officially launched its “solar tree” prototype today, and the company wants to use it to power EV charging stations first.

Five of Asia’s biggest economies are expected to see exponential growth of solar, positioning the region to become a global hub of solar power, according to independent energy think tank Ember.

UK-based solar tech developer Naked Energy’s rooftop solar vacuum tubes, which produce both electricity and heat, will soon be sold in the United States.

US shipments of solar panels – including imports, exports, and domestically produced and shipped panels – rose to a record electricity-generating capacity of 28.8 million peak kilowatts (kW) in 2021, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). That was up from 21.8 million peak kW in 2020.

The UK’s Hornsea 2, the world’s largest single offshore wind farm, is now fully operational.

American homeowners are expected to install a record 5.6 gigawatts of residential solar in 2022, according to a new analysis from Bloomberg NEF (BNEF).

In March 2021, Electrek reported that scientists published a feasibility study about the benefits of erecting solar panels over canals. That study is about to become a reality when a pilot project breaks ground in California.

Renewables provided more than 25% of electrical generation in the United States during the first half of 2022, according to new data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Seagreen offshore wind farm, 16.7 miles (27 km) off the coast of Angus in eastern Scotland, has generated its first power. The £3 billion ($3.54 billion) project will be Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm. It will also be the world’s deepest fixed-bottom offshore wind farm, as it’s being sited in water depths of up to 194 feet (59 meters).

Denver-based Guzman Energy almost didn’t get approval for a solar farm it’s going to build in western Colorado, but when the wholesale power provider agreed to add irrigation to support 1,000 sheep and possibly host beehives, it then gained unanimous approval from Delta County, Colorado’s commissioners.

US President Joe Biden signed the big climate bill – the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – earlier this week. Electrek spoke with Dan Gayer, JD, CPA, a senior manager in the tax practice at Baker Newman Noyes, about how homeowners can claim tax credits and rebates as they work to achieve energy efficiency and lower their energy bills.

Electric utility FirstEnergy Corp., which serves most of northern West Virginia, is going to repurpose a former coal ash landfill for a utility-scale solar farm.

US President Joe Biden today signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, and that’s going to give the transition of the United States to clean energy a big boost. According to the American Clean Power Association, the new law could add up to an additional 550 gigawatts (GW) of electricity from wind, solar, and other clean energy sources. Electrek spoke with Enrico Viale, head of renewable energy company Enel North America, about the challenges that states face as they move away from fossil fuels and how Enel is working with states to help them deploy clean energy, distributed energy resources, and energy storage.

Clean energy accounted for more than two-thirds of the new US electrical generating capacity added during the first six months of 2022, according to data recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Scientists have come up with a way to make wind farms more energy efficient, and it doesn’t require new investment.

Despite pushback from residents, the Supreme Court of Ohio yesterday approved a permit for the construction of North America’s first freshwater offshore wind farm, which will be sited in Lake Erie, around eight miles north of Cleveland.