Digital technologies play a significant role in unlocking the potential of innovative financing mechanisms across the utilities sectors in Africa and Asia. Across these sectors, access to capital is a major challenge, particularly when enterprises have outgrown grant funding but do not have the scale to tap into traditional investment channels. Technologies like digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the Internet
of Things (IoT) can bring innovative financing instruments to the energy, water, waste, sanitation, recycling, mobility and asset-financing sectors. However, the scale of innovative finance has yet to reach its potential, with only a small portion of available development assistance and sustainable private sector capital being mobilised through digitally enabled innovative financing.
There is little research that focuses specifically on the role of technology in unlocking innovative finance in the utilities service sector in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This research serves as a first attempt to categorise the complex value chain connecting upstream financiers exploring innovative financing instruments to the midstream digital technology providers and solutions and on to the downstream implementers of utility service delivery and their beneficiaries.
The study uses novel conceptual and analytical frameworks designed to create a common language in identifying and analysing instances of digitally enabled innovative finance. The framework employs three distinct lenses that correspond to the principal stages within the value chain connecting financiers to implementers. This approach acknowledges that the frontier of innovation is continually expanding and context-dependent; what may be commonplace in one area can be considered innovative when applied elsewhere.
To operationalise this framework, each lens was defined through extensive desk-based research as well as consultation with key stakeholders.Limitations to this approach are principally around the interconnected nature of the different financial instruments and technologies which make categories less discrete in real-world applications than in theory. Nonetheless, the framework enables a complex landscape to be broken down into clear components.
Over 80 in-scope use cases were identified through this analytical framework. Use cases and their application of innovative finance instruments are segmented into mature, scaling and emerging categories based on the number of implementation examples documented in the literature, number of countries and sectors, and typical volumes associated with the instrument. These use cases serve to concretise the
universe of digitally enabled innovative finance instruments into a catalogue of examples where finance instruments, digital technologies and the transaction mechanisms underpinning them come to life in the real world. The study dives into five innovative finance instruments as case studies — receivables financing, alt-lending, climate, revenue- share models, and digitally-verified RBF – as a means to fully explore the relationship between digital innovation and these evolving models.
Key trends
Maturing use cases include social enterprises’ use of financial instruments such as alternative lending, receivables financing and crowdfunding. Digital technologies driving the growth of such use cases principally include advances in satellite imagery and digital platforms that perform analytics on transaction and asset usage data enabled by IoT. Transaction mechanisms that foster the growth of these use cases include traditional mobile money and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems. The most mature use cases across the review were principally from the energy sector, with emerging innovation in the cooking space mirroring early successes of the PAYG solar lighting product and solar home systems (SHS) verticals.
Scaling use cases include those leveraging the growth of climate finance, revenue sharing models and digitally-verified results-based finance (RBF) mechanisms. The digital technologies principally driving these use cases are IoT systems paired with digital platforms capable of performing verification analytics, increasingly leveraging AI, and digital ledger technologies. Transaction mechanisms that foster these models include mass-payout electronic payment integrations into digital platforms, as
well as embedded finance mechanisms. Use cases exhibiting characteristics of scaling are largely focused on agritech and productive use asset- lending, particularly in the vehicle financing space.
Emerging use cases include social or environmental climate finance co- benefits monetisation, impact bonds and
various applications of digital tokens and cryptocurrencies. These use cases increasingly leverage innovations in digital identity verification like biometrics and chatbots, as well as digital ledger technologies including smart contracts. Ledger technologies are particularly well represented in the transaction mechanisms underpinning emerging use cases. Emerging use cases were identified across sectors, with digital technologies surfacing as particularly prominent in use cases focused on the co-benefits of climate finance.
Accelerating adoption
Across the use cases considered, the most advanced and innovative organisations have pioneered a specific technology, instrument or business model, layering on additional innovations with time. Enterprises or utility service providers aiming to leverage digital technologies to unlock innovative finance instruments
should master the technologies that produce tangible value in their sector, and consider what opportunities are offered by off-the-shelf solutions providers, particularly for IoT platforms, satellite imagery processing or blockchain solutions.
The intersection of climate and fintech finance is an emerging macro trend that will likely impact the landscape of utility service providers. Smartphone penetration and increasing maturity in satellite imagery, IoT platforms, blockchain and AI are creating opportunities for utility service implementers to advance their digitisation journeys. Trends in mobile money interoperability and cross- border connectivity are also poised to unlock additional opportunities for building on PAYG models across Africa and Asia, particularly for receivables finance and climate finance.
Utility service enterprises need to recognise the value of digitisation in leveraging innovative finance. Digitisation processes typically begin with a desire to improve operations, with innovative finance opportunities often emerging as a byproduct. Developing a sector-specific understanding of which technologies are best suited to improving operations is often the first step towards tapping into the most appropriate innovative finance mechanisms.
Financiers across the impact-return spectrum need to leverage the data-sharing opportunities unlocked by digital technologies to generate sector standards. The use of innovative finance specific to the utilities sector is poorly characterised in the available literature. Grant, equity and debt financiers can leverage the exponential increase
in data generated by utility service providers to develop and share sector-specific benchmarks that can generate, benchmark and socialise both commercial and impact indicators.
Global corporations need to support transparent, and accessible financial intermediaries and instruments that can effectively allocate impact- oriented capital flows. Increased attention on corporate climate and ESG impact metrics means that corporations need to drive digitally enabled mechanisms that can enable standardised, timely, and reliable impact data.
Mobile network operators (MNOs) have a key role to play across the landscape of use cases. Increased attention to utility verticals represents a significant opportunity for operators to develop additional revenue streams and move towards a positioning as a technology partner for organisations in the ecosystem. Laser-focused attention on facilitating third-party access to mobile money integrations across markets can additionally support utility service providers’ ability to digitise operations in their financing journeys.
Partnership opportunities highlighted through the landscape emphasise the need for blended finance. Development financiers and impact- oriented investors can unlock new private capital by de-risking investments into technology- enabled sectors through guarantee mechanisms and concessional forms of investment. Such partnerships represent the opportunity to include novel players like local banks and public agencies in pioneering otherwise poorly understood financial instruments across new geographies.
Achieving an inflection point in innovative finance using technology will require dedicated efforts in breaking down silos across the investment landscape. The returns on investing in digital innovation can take years to be realised, and typically require time and effort to understand for those not already immersed. This report serves to capture some of the most significant intersections of technology and finance trends that will guide the needed deployment of climate-resilient, pro- poor capital in the utility service sectors in the coming decade.
US, China cooperate on green energy in rural areas
By MINGMEI LI in New York | Xinhua |
Innovation in rural area-green energy development and boosting collaboration between the United States and China in science and technology are being emphasized at a “smart village” forum.
More than 50 experts, professors, local entrepreneurs, environmental and social organizations from many countries are participating in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Smart Village Forum (ISV) in Shanxi province on Sunday and Monday.
Participants in the forum, titled “Green Low-Carbon and Smart Village”, discussed environmental governance topics such as achieving energy transition, using advanced technology to assist poverty-stricken regions globally in accessing affordable and clean energy, improving energy efficiency, and promoting green and sustainable development.
A new demonstration project in Changzhi, a city in southeast Shanxi province, was featured at the forum, showcasing the current progress and practical results achieved by ISV. The project has effectively incorporated solar photovoltaic power and clean-heating technologies and products for residents.
The ISV working group has partnered with leading Chinese and international higher-education institutions to create energy models and projects suited to specific local conditions in other cities such as Chongqing, Gansu and Heilongjiang.
Daniel Kammen, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his laboratory, have worked closely with scholars and students from Tsinghua University, Chongqing University and North China Electric Power University to research renewable energy conservation and intelligent models from an academic perspective.
“We develop mathematical models of the grid. There’s lots of interesting physics. There’s lots of interesting science. My partnerships in China have been very productive,” Kammen told China Daily. “Low-cost solar, better batteries and smart sensors. We build models that become real. My laboratory is very much based around not just basic science, but also the mission of decarbonizing the power grid and making our economy green.
“Just like the tensions that existed between the Soviet Union and the US over politics and geopolitics in the ’70s and ’80s, one lesson that I think scientists learned on both sides, both in the Soviet Union and in the US, is that we need to keep the scientific channels open,” he said.
Kammen said that science cooperation and exchange are important at this moment. “The US and China are the G2. I like to say we are the G2 of energy, the two biggest consumers of energy and the two biggest polluters in terms of greenhouse gases,” he said. “There is no climate solution unless the US and China find ways to work through their differences.”
“This is a technology exchange and a global need. We are working on clean energy under climate change and fulfilling the need for decarbonization,” said Xiaofeng Zhang, the vice-president of ISV and president of Global Green Development Alliance.
The ISV has extended its efforts not only within China but also across diverse regions, including Africa, Latin America, South Asia and North America, with the primary focus on delivering eco-friendly and cost-effective energy solutions to underprivileged communities who have limited access to environmental resources.
“We are doing more than only energy transferring, but also internet, electrical machinery, telecommunications and telemedicine. We introduce all of these based on the community’s needs,” said Rajan Kapur, the president of ISV. “We ask the community what they want to do, and based on that, we tell them what technology might be appropriate, what technology can be locally sourced.”
ISV is also collaborating with Chinese local companies and organizations.
“It is also a business-development cooperation, because when you take technology and introduce it into society, you cannot just drop it over there,” he said. “The capacity does not exist to use the technology; the infrastructure does not exist. So we also help with the business modeling, the governance of the enterprises that get set up,” he said.
Kapur said that what they are trying to do is to have a long-term impact, and ISV has not only created scientific and business models in those regions but also has deployed supportive equipment for more than 20 or 30 years.
He emphasized that ISV’s ultimate objective is to ensure affordable and clean energy access for 1 billion people worldwide through technology and cooperation between the US and China.
Additionally, ISV expects to leverage its resources to assist local communities and businesses in achieving sustainable economic growth and regionwide improvements.
“What we should remember is that it is advancing technology for all of humanity,” Kapur said.
That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun.
But signing up for solar soon might be as easy as subscribing to Netflix. Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed “community solar,” is designed to bring solar power to people who don’t own their own homes or can’t install panels — often at prices below retail electricity rates.
Clean electricity for less money seems a bit too good to be true. But it reflects a new reality: Solar energy prices are falling as private and public money, and new laws, are fueling a massive expansion of small-scale community solar projects.
Finding a subscription to one, however, can feel like trying to score Taylor Swift tickets: They’re on sale, but only a lucky few can buy them. At least 22 states have passed legislation encouraging independent community solar projects, but developers are just beginning to expand.Most existing projects are booked.
At the moment, community solar projects in the United States generate enough electricity to power about 918,000 homes — less than 1 percent of total households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group.
But as more states join, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Solar for All” program pours billions into federal solar power grants, more Americans will get the chance.
Should you take it? I took a look.
Solar panels on Barb and Gerald Bauer’s Minnesota farm in 2021. (Jim Mone/AP)
Developers tend to finance their projects through investors or banks, and sign up customers during construction. If there are projects in your utility’s service area, you can subscribe to electricity generated by a certain share of the project’s solar panels.
The electrons that ultimately flow into your home aren’t necessarily from your panel. They are fed into the local grid, which powers households throughout your service area. Most allow subscribers to start or cancel their solar subscription at any time, orsometimes with a few months’ notice. The renewable energy marketplace EnergySage and the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors connect customers to community solar projects in their region.
People generally receive monthly creditsfor electricity produced by their share of solar panels. These are subtracted fromtheir total electricity bill or credited on future bills. If customers produce more than they consume, those credits roll over. If they produce less, customers pay the difference. Subscribers on average save about 10 percent on their utility bill (the range is 5 percent to 15 percent).
These economics are propelling the industry to record heights. Between 2016 and 2019, community solar capacity more than quadrupled to 1.4 gigawatts. By the end of this year, energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates, there will be 6 GW of community solar. And the Energy Department wants to see community solar reach 5 million households by 2025.
“The economics are strongly on the side of doing this,” says Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s now cheaper to build new solar than to operate old fossil [fuel plants]. … We’re at the takeoff point.”
Photovoltaic panels at a solar field in Whitewater, Calif., in 2021. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
Who should get it?
Community solar, also called “solar for renters,”is for anyone. But if you’re a homeowner, it won’t maximize your savings.
On average, savings from community solar amount to about $100 per year for the average ratepayer. Rooftop solar arrays may save homeowners more than $1,000 annually, estimates EnergySage.
But it brings other advantages. It’s a subscription you can walk away from at any time with no upfront investment. And your fixed rate or discount off prevailing electric rates is usually locked in for at least a decade. Residential electricity rates, meanwhile, have jumped about 17 percent since 2018.
The biggest benefit may be expanding access to clean energy to the roughly half of U.S. consumers and businesses not able to install their own solar panels. “The great promise of community solar is it allows everyone to be part of the energy transition,” says Brandon Smithwood of Dimension Renewable Energy, a company that has financed more than 1,000 MW of solar projects, “and not feel they’re being left behind.”
How to buy
If you live in a state with a robust community solar market, subscribing is easy.
The EnergySage community solar marketplace. (EnergySage/TWP)
The marketplace allows you to quickly compare details such as fees, locations and billing. Once I selected a project, I could create an account, link this to my utility and start a subscription.
To get the best terms, say project developers and nonprofit groups, you should look for contracts that uphold a few key terms:
Get a discounted electricity rate: Community solar projects tend to offer 5 percent to 15 percent off prevailing electricity rates.
Ensure you can cancel any time: Sellers should allow you to cancel your subscription immediately or within a few months to finalize credits on your bill.
Avoid cancellation fees: Choose a plan that doesn’t force you to payif you want to end your subscription.
Source close to your home: Ideally, projects should be within 10 or 15 miles of where you live, says Jeff Cramer, CEO of the Coalition for Community Solar Access. This ensures that you decarbonize your local grid.
But I live in California, where the market has stagnated amid unfavorable policies and fierce opposition from utilities. While that may change — California, like many other states, is poised to enact policiesenabling more community solar — I need to buy electricity now.
I still have options — they’re just not as attractive. Green power plans, or retail electricity plans sold by third parties in about 20 states, are often pricier, and most don’t finance new renewables directly since they often just buy renewable energy credits from existing projects.
Community choice aggregation is another one. Cities or local governments buy power independently for local residents and businesses, and rely on utilities to distribute the electricity, which is often cleaner than the standard mix. CCA can be less expensive, but not always. It served about 5 million customers in 10 states in 2020, according to the EPA.
In the end, I signed up for CCA. It was cheaper than my local utility’s standard rate. I paid a small monthly premium of about $3 to source 100 percent green power.
But if community solar comes to town, I look forward to subscribing to my own solar panels — and paying less.
Location: 141 Giannini Hall, University of California, Berkeley
Time: 16:00 — 17:30 PDT
Title: The Power of Health: Accelerating the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
Summary: Clean energy is undergoing a cost and performance revolution, and health, social andgender-justice crises across Africa are exploding. With that background, how do we rapidlyand with resilience accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals? To explorethis question on basic theoretical and very practical applied grounds, HETA, (HealthElectrification and Telecommunications Alliance) has emerged as a new tool. This talk willexplore the early evolution and framing ideal of this clean energy-health-gender nexus. Wewill also cover HETA+, the integration of indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine intothis via a large-scale ‘pilot’ learning project that was advanced significantly last week at theAfrica Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
Timed for publication with the release of the movie Oppenheimer, we published an article on public service by scientists, a the I‑M-P-E-A-C‑H letter when Prof. Kammen left the Trump Administration, a piece in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is now available (open access):
The growing popularity of solar panels has brought attention to a critical issue: the challenge of recycling these devices at the end of their lifespan.
California has become a significant hub for solar panel installations, leading the way in the adoption of solar energy within the United States.
With a current installed capacity of over 11,000 MW or the amount of electricity that would power Los Angeles County, the state has embraced sustainable practices and played a pivotal role in promoting clean energy solutions.
However, the growing popularity of solar panels has brought attention to a critical issue: the challenge of recycling these devices at the end of their lifespan.
As the United States is projected to dominate solar power in North America by 2030, with an estimated capacity of 240 gigawatts, concerns are emerging about the potential accumulation of solar waste. Experts anticipate that by 2030, between 170,000 and 1 million metric tons of solar panel waste may be generated.
Ensuring proper management and recycling of solar panels is essential to mitigate the environmental impact of this growing waste stream.
California, along with other states and the solar industry, is actively working to develop ways to recover the valuable materials from decommissioned solar panels and minimize the disposal of hazardous components.
Efforts are underway to establish dedicated recycling facilities and create standardized processes for handling solar panel waste. Collaboration between manufacturers, recyclers, and regulatory bodies is crucial to address the challenges associated with recycling solar panels effectively. Developing efficient recycling methods will not only help reduce the environmental footprint of solar energy but also ensure the long-term sustainability of this renewable energy source.
By addressing the issue of solar panel recycling, California and the broader solar industry can pave the way for responsible and environmentally conscious practices, ensuring that the growth of solar energy aligns with sustainable waste management principles.
For the California Magazine article, click here.
Count on comedians to nail the zeitgeist.
I’m thinking of comics like Marc Maron, whose act riffs off existential pain points like mortality, antisemitism, the delaminating geopolitical situation, and, of course, that multigigaton carbon elephant in the room, climate change.
“The reason we’re not more upset about the world ending environmentally, I think, is that, you know, all of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could,” Maron deadpans. “We brought our own bags to the supermarket,” he says, then pauses a few beats.
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
No surprise that comedians are able to play our eco-dread for yuks. Comedy is often rooted in the fertile manure of uncomfortable truths: we laugh so we don’t sob. And that’s all fine and good; laughter’s a good antidote to the malaise that comes from doomscrolling our newsfeeds day in, day out.
But are we really ready to throw in the towel and laugh ourselves into oblivion? And is Maron correct? Have we really done nothing to confront our foremost environmental crisis? Hardly. True, we haven’t yet reversed the upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions, and the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels often seems insurmountable. Is it, though?
According to Berkeley experts interviewed for this story, there’s reason for hope that we’ll make it through the bottleneck yet. The technology is already here and improving all the time. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Now, let’s see how:
SOLAR
If you’re looking for a peg to hang your hopes on, start with energy economics and, in particular, the price of solar panels. Costs have dropped by nearly 90 percent since 2009, driven by both improved technology and global production (particularly from China). In 1976, solar electricity cost $106 a watt; today, it costs less than 50 cents per watt. Bottom line: Solar is now competitive with fossil fuels as a means of energy production.
While solar still only accounts for 3.4 percent of domestic energy consumption, production has been growing by more than 20 percent annually over the past five years, and likely would have been higher if not for shipping and supply chain difficulties stemming from the pandemic.
Production isn’t everything, however. For widespread adoption, an energy source must be available on demand. And it’s here that fossil fuels have a big leg up. Natural gas or coal can be burned at any time to generate electricity as required. Solar panels produce only when the sun shines. Storing adequate energy for later use—i.e., at night or on cloudy days—has long posed a major obstacle.
Solar production has been growing by more than 20 percent annually over the past five years, and likely would have been greater but for the pandemic.
Not anymore, says Daniel Kammen, the founding director of Cal’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy. A coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999, he shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
“I don’t see storage as a major problem at this point,” Kammen says. “It’s not a single breakthrough that makes me think that way, but more that we’re seeing the same trend in price and performance for storage that we saw with photovoltaics. A variety of approaches are coming to market, and they’re scaling really fast. Things that used to take several years to develop now take a year, and that’s almost certain to continue.”
The storage of the future will serve two different sectors, observes Kammen: transportation (think electric vehicles) and everything else (homes, office buildings, factories, etc.).
EVs
From a climate change point of view, an electrified vehicle fleet is desirable because it dovetails nicely with a green electric grid—i.e., one fed by sustainable energy sources. Currently, cars burning gasoline or diesel spew about 3 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere each year—about 7 percent of total human-created CO² emissions. Just electrifying roughly a third of China’s vehicle fleet could slash carbon emissions by a gigaton a year by 2040. So there’s a lot at stake with electric vehicles, and everything considered, Kammen is pretty sanguine about their progress.
“It’s really been picking up, particularly over the last year,” he says. “It’s probably not a coincidence that gasoline and diesel prices have been spiking at the same time, and I hate to think that the war in Ukraine is part of that, but it probably is.” EVs are now the best-selling cars in California, Kammen continues, “and it’s the same in Norway, and it’ll soon be the same in New York. Prices on EVs are coming down. The trend is strong and accelerating.”
EVs generally store energy in batteries that use lithium, a relatively rare element that charges and discharges rapidly and is lightweight—an essential quality for automobiles, where excess weight is anathema. Lithium battery technology is well advanced, and some EVs can now go 400 miles between charging, alleviating earlier anxieties about limited range.
A central goal of the Biden administration is the construction of 500,000 new EV charging stations. For perspective: There are currently fewer than 150,000 gas stations in the entire United States.
The next challenge to overcome is a paucity of charging stations, a reality that still gives Tesla drivers pause before embarking on a long road trip. But that’s being remedied, Kammen says, thanks in significant part to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (see sidebar), which provides generous home and business tax credits for new and used EV purchases and fast-charging EV stations. A central goal of the Biden administration is the construction of 500,000 new EV charging stations distributed across all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico by 2030. For a little perspective on how ambitious that number is, consider: There are currently fewer than 150,000 gas stations in the entire United States.
“Worries over charging station access are real, there’s no denying it,” says Kammen. “But this legislation, coupled with the fact that recharge times are now very fast, will make a huge difference. The one thing that we still have to address, though, is the social justice component,” as not all zip codes will see the same resources. Without policies to ensure otherwise, Santa Monica will likely have charging stations aplenty; South Central Los Angeles not so much.
“We really need to ensure that doesn’t happen,” says Kammen. “First, it’s wrong. Second, to make a real difference, both energy production and transport must progress across a broad scale. That’s an easier case to make when everyone benefits.”
BATTERIES
In addition to transportation, urban infrastructure must transition to sustainable, carbon-free energy as well. That will require combining clean energy with adequate storage to provide “grid reliability”—that is, systems that will keep the juice flowing in all seasons, even when the sun is absent or the wind stops blowing. In short, you need really, really big batteries.
But what kind of batteries? Lithium-ion batteries, already well established, are one option, says Kammen. But the qualities that make them ideal for vehicles—lightweight, fast charging capabilities—aren’t as critical when you’re trying to light a city at night. For stationary power needs, batteries can be industrial scale—heavy, with a large footprint.
Another problem with lithium is its scarcity. The United States currently controls less than 4 percent of global reserves. For that reason alone, researchers are looking for alternatives: batteries that employ cheaper and more readily available elements.
One of the most promising approaches, according to several sources, is iron-air batteries. And one of the leaders in the technology is Form Energy, a company headquartered in Massachusetts with satellite facilities in Berkeley.
Zac Judkins ’06 is the company’s vice president of engineering. He stresses that Form was obsessed with finding a way to address the problem of multiday storage, not enamored of a particular technology.
Judkins and colleagues evaluated a wide array of candidate chemistries before settling on iron-air batteries, which work by rusting and unrusting thousands of iron pellets with every cycle.
“When we started up in 2017, we saw that the world was rapidly moving to renewables—mainly solar and wind—and setting increasingly ambitious grid reliability and decarbonization goals.” Without effective storage, however, progress was going to hit a brick wall, Judkins says.
Analyzing the market, Form’s engineers arrived at a target. They needed to build a battery that could continuously discharge for 100 hours at a total cost of $20 per kilowatt-hour and had a round-trip efficiency (the amount of energy stored in a battery that can later be used) of 50 percent.
Those parameters, Judkins says, would allow for very high adoption of renewables with no sacrifice to grid reliability and minimal increase in cost to consumers. “That was the benchmark we had to hit.”
Judkins and colleagues evaluated a wide array of candidate chemistries before settling on iron-air batteries, which work by rusting and unrusting thousands of iron pellets with every cycle. Says Judkins, “We didn’t invent the iron-air battery. It was developed by Westinghouse and NASA in the late ’60s and ’70s. They’re not good for cars—they’re not light, and they don’t discharge rapidly. But there are advantages. For one thing, iron is abundant. It’s cheap. We don’t have to worry about supply constraints.”
What you also get with iron, says Judkins, is low cost and high energy density—i.e., the amount of juice you can put into the battery. The tradeoff is lower power density—how fast you can pull the energy out relative to volume.
“It’s roughly 10 times lower on power density than lithium-ion, but for our needs it’s fine,” says Judkins. “This is storage for large-scale, grid-tied projects.” Take the example of a large photovoltaic array like those on California’s Carrizo Plain. One array there has a 250-megawatt capacity, enough for about 100,000 homes, but only when the sun is shining. At night, during storms, there’s no electricity. But, says Judkins, with the addition of a Form plant with a footprint of 100 acres or so, you could store enough energy to keep the electricity flowing for a four-day period.
The company is now transitioning from proof of concept to full production. Ironically, the first commercial rust/unrust battery systems will likely come out of the Rust Belt. “We’re building a factory in West Virginia on a 55-acre site—a former steel plant—that will have approximately 800,000 square feet of production space and employ 750 people at full operation.” Green jobs. Once the plant is fully on its feet, Judkins says, it will produce 50 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity every year.
MICROGRID
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 600 million people live without electricity. Providing them carbon-free power will require microgrids.
Large, centralized utility grids are naturally the focus for decarbonizing developed countries—but they don’t really apply to parts of the world where access to electricity is still rare. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 600 million people live without electricity, which doesn’t mean they don’t want it. Providing carbon-free power to these communities will require microgrids: small systems that serve neighborhoods, hamlets, or even multiple villages. But while the microgrid concept has been kicking around for years, its full realization has been elusive—until recently.
“What we’re seeing is a meshing of enabling technologies,” says Duncan Callaway, an associate professor of Energy and Resources at Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
For starters, he points to cheap solar. “With the profound price drop in panels, it’s a truly affordable resource that’s ideally suited for mid-latitude countries,” which experience less seasonality. “In general, you can serve electric demand with solar better in those latitudes than in countries [closer to either pole], where there’s just less sunlight.”
Another driver is cheaper, better storage options, Callaway says. For microgrid-scale, lithium-ion batteries work well. And these, too, have grown more affordable. “The explosive growth in electric vehicles really pushed things along,” Callaway says. “Ten years ago, it cost $1,000 for one kilowatt-hour of storage. Now it costs less than $100.”
Finally, says Callaway, “smart grid” technologies have been developed that make microgrids, once notoriously balky, highly efficient.
“We now have ‘big bucket’ control systems that allow for the smooth coordination of energy production, storage, and demand,” Callaway says. “That makes these small grids both low-cost and really reliable. The goal is to make systems that are truly modular, so you can plug various components into larger systems. That will allow easy customization and scaling.”
More than 150 microgrids already are deployed in the United States, powering everything from individual buildings in large cities to small, remote villages in Alaska.
As far as widespread adoption goes, Callaway doesn’t foresee many technical difficulties. It’s social and political roadblocks that need to be overcome. “The great thing about microgrids is that they work well in remote, underserved areas and they can be managed locally. But in less developed countries, there are often corrupt governments that want their cut from any project. And if that’s the case, you’d have an inherent bias toward centralized grids with baseline power plants.”
It’s a challenge that must be met, says Callaway. “Somehow, some way, small grid technology must be put on a level playing field with the old system, the large, centralized grid—or it’s unlikely to make it, even where it’s clearly the superior choice.”
FUSION
Microgrid or macrogrid, we’ll need a lot of clean, sustainable energy flowing through the wires if we’re going to simultaneously sustain an advanced civilization and cool the planet. Kammen is convinced it will largely come from fusion. But by that he means fusion in all its forms, including, as noted, the sun: that massive reactor in the sky that continually fuses hydrogen into heavier elements, releasing 3.8 x 10²6 joules of energy every second.
But there’s also that will‑o’-the-wisp that’s been tantalizing futurists and physicists for decades: terrestrial fusion reactors. These would use hydrogen—the most common element in the universe—as feedstock to generate gigawatt-hours of cheap energy, producing harmless, inert helium as the primary by-product. (Radioactive tritium would also be generated, but it has a short half-life and it’s consumed by the reactor in a closed-loop process.) Fusion technology remains the Holy Grail of clean, Earth-friendly energy production, but it’s also the butt of waggish comments. The most common is that it looks promising, but it’s 20 years away. And it’s been 20 years away for 60 years.
But after a breakthrough on December 5, 2022, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), it now seems highly possible that a commercial fusion reactor actually could be available in, uh, well, 20 years. Maybe sooner.
Most fusion efforts to date have involved tokamak reactors—toroidal vacuum chambers that corral hydrogen atoms via magnetic coils, subjecting them to heat and pressure until they become plasma, a superheated (as in 150 million degrees Celsius) gas that allows the hydrogen to fuse. This releases energy that transfers as heat to the chamber walls, where it is harvested to produce steam to drive turbines for electricity production.
For the first time on this planet—other than during a thermonuclear explosion—a fusion reaction was created that produced more energy than was required to initiate the process.
Tokamaks have been able to coax hydrogen to fuse for brief periods—indeed, progress has been steady, if plodding, since the first machine was built 60 years ago. But to date, they haven’t been able to achieve “ignition”—that point at which sustained fusion occurs, and more energy is produced by the device than it consumes.
NIF took a different approach. Researchers there fabricated a minute pellet from frozen deuterium and tritium (both hydrogen isotopes). They then placed the pellet in a small gold capsule known as a hohlraum, which in turn was situated on an arm in a chamber bristling with 192 lasers. The scientists then fired the lasers simultaneously at the hohlraum, causing the inner capsule to compress. The result: temperatures and pressures exerted on the deuterium/tritium admixture were extreme enough to produce ignition. For the first time on this planet—other than during a thermonuclear explosion—a fusion reaction was created that produced more energy than was required to initiate the process.
True, the sustained yield was modest. The reaction lasted less than a billionth of a second and released 3.15 megajoules of energy, or slightly less than one kilowatt-hour. Not very much, in other words; the average American household uses about 900 times that every month. Still, it was 50 percent more energy than was expended by the laser bursts. Progress! But here’s another catch: While the actual laser beams represented only around two megajoules of energy, it took about 300 megajoules to power up and operate the mechanisms that fired the beams.
So, there’s still a lot to be done before we’re microwaving our frozen burritos with fusion power. Nevertheless, Kammen, ever the optimist, is fairly sure we will be soon.
“Given the trends, I think I’m pretty safe in predicting that we’ll derive about 70 percent of our power from fusion by 2070,” Kammen says. “Half of that will be from the sun and half from fusion power plants.”
And while NIF’s laser-blasted pellet approach points to future success, don’t rule out tokamaks. Kammen says he’s “expecting some exciting announcements about tokamak reactors pretty soon.” You heard it here first.
Solar fusion, too, will follow multiple avenues toward fuller implementation.
“It’s not just rooftop panels in cities and solar farms out on the landscape,” he says. “There’ll also be marine solar—large arrays out in the ocean.”
Also: orbital solar. Live trials are now underway at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Kammen, to establish large, autonomously assembled (i.e., no live astronauts required) solar arrays in space. The energy would be beamed down as microwaves to terrestrial collectors, where it would be converted to electricity. That may raise the specter of a loose-cannon death ray immolating cities from orbit if something goes awry—but not to worry, says Kammen. “The watt-per-square-meter dose is pretty low, so there’s no danger of anyone getting fried if they’re hit by it.”
He also thinks the fusion technology now under development for terrestrial reactors will have applications for space travel. “There’s a dual angle on fusion that’s really catapulting the technology,” Kammen says. “For better or worse, it’s imperative that we colonize the solar system so our fate as a species isn’t completely tied to one planet. Fusion propulsion will be an excellent means for getting us to the moon and Mars and beyond, and fusion—solar, reactor, or both—will also serve as a base-load power source when we get there.”
FISSION
Fission generates a lot of energy from a small footprint. Diablo Canyon, California’s sole nuclear plant, produces almost 10 percent of the total electricity consumed in the state, and it does it within a confine of 600 acres.
With all the fuss over fusion, the other “nuclear” power source, fission, seems to have faded into the background. That’s illusory. Fission is still quite hot, so to speak, with increasing numbers of erstwhile foes in the environmental community now embracing it—or, at least, tacitly supporting it. The reasons are clear. First, fission can generate a great amount of energy on a small footprint. Diablo Canyon, California’s sole operating commercial fission plant, produces almost 10 percent of the electricity consumed in the state and does it within a confine of 600 acres. And from a climate change perspective, nukes are peerless: they emit zero CO².
Of course, people remain worried about other kinds of emissions, such as intense radioactivity from long-lived waste isotopes. And older generation plants—that is, most of the ones operating today—are susceptible to core damage to varying degrees, with catastrophic results à la Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Those concerns are entrenched, especially in the United States, where environmental issues, regulatory red tape, and simple cost often conspire to scotch large infrastructure projects in the proposal phase.
“We’re pretty bad at megaprojects in this country,” says Rachel Slaybaugh, formerly an associate professor in nuclear engineering at Berkeley and now a partner at venture capital firm DCVC. “For one thing, it’s incredibly easy for them to go over budget. Just look at the new Bay Bridge, which ran triple the original estimates.”
That problem is compounded for nuclear plants, given heightened safety concerns and the regulations and litigation they engender. But there has been an upside to the impediments imposed on traditional nuclear power, Slaybaugh says: Out of necessity, more efficient—and perhaps more socially acceptable—technology has been developed.
The newer reactors are smaller—some much smaller—than the behemoths of yore, and pilot projects are underway.
“A good many of these designs originated from basic concepts developed in the 1950s or 1960s, but their refinement and commercial deployment is being driven in large part by our inability to construct large projects,” Slaybaugh says.
Different reactors have been designed for different situations, Slaybaugh observes, employing various fuels, coolants, and configurations. Some “breeder” reactors could even burn their own byproducts, greatly reducing radioactive waste.
“What’s the priority?” Slaybaugh asks rhetorically. “Economics? Providing high-temperature heat, or balancing renewables on the grid? Minimizing nuclear waste? A combination of different goals? These new designs can be standardized or customized and scaled for the site and requirements, and all involve considerable engineering to ensure safety.”
Some of the reactors will be large enough to power a city, or several cities. “And others will be teeny,” Slaybaugh says. “Those will be perfect for remote military bases or research facilities, say Antarctica or the Arctic. You’d eliminate several major problems with one of these very small reactors. Think of the logistical difficulties involved in getting diesel fuel to an arctic base, not to mention the heavy pollution it produces and, of course, the CO² that’s emitted.”
Fission technology also has some profound advantages over renewables, she says. “There are real limits to how many solar farms and wind turbines we should or even can build,” she observes. “A lot of materials are required for their production, and a lot of mining is needed to get the necessary elements. And these facilities tend to have very large footprints. I’m actually worried that we’re going to see a strong solar and wind backlash as people really start to understand all the impacts.”
Every energy source has strengths and weaknesses, continues Slaybaugh, “and we need to have sophisticated conversations on what they are and where each can best apply. Ultimately, my view of fission is that it’s a necessary tool that we must use in conjunction with other available tools to get the job done as well and as quickly as possible. No single solution is going to work for all scenarios.”
CARBON REMOVAL
At this point, we know what we must do to turn things around. Even better, we have the technologies and techniques to do it. But we need to deploy them.
Reducing carbon emissions is not the complete solution to global warming, say scientists. To really get a handle on the problem, we’ll also need to remove existing CO² from the atmosphere and sequester it permanently in the ground. One option, direct air capture (DAC), is the basis for a small but growing industry: Currently, there are about 20 DAC pilot plants operating, in total capturing and sequestering around .01 megaton of atmospheric CO² annually. According to the International Energy Agency, that storage could grow to 60 megatons a year by 2030, assuming large-scale demonstration plants proceed apace, current techniques are refined, and costs drop as the technology scales.
But those are a lot of assumptions for minimal benefit. Granted, a 60-megaton mass of anything is impressive. But from a climate-change perspective, 60 Mt is negligible, given energy-related carbon emissions hit an all-time high of over 36.8 billion tons in 2022. Many researchers think there are better options, and we don’t have to do anything to develop them because they already exist. They point to natural carbon sinks: forests, wetlands, grasslands, and, most significantly, the oceans. These natural systems are part of the Earth’s carbon cycle, which absorbs and releases about 100 gigatons of carbon a year. A planetary mechanism of that scale might seem more than adequate to handle carbon emissions, and it would, if atmospheric CO² only originated from natural emission points such as volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. As noted recently by MIT professor of geophysics Daniel Rothman, natural sources contribute ten times more carbon to the atmosphere than human activities, but it’s the anthropogenic carbon that is pushing the cycle over the edge. The planet can’t process the extra atmospheric carbon back into a stable earthbound state fast enough.
This deficit is exacerbated by the fact that we’re degrading our carbon sinks even as we’re pumping more CO2 into the sky.
“The ecological services carbon sinks provide are really priceless,” says John Harte, a professor of the Graduate School in Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Harte, who conducted pioneering work on the “feedback” effect a warming climate exerts on natural carbon cycles in high-altitude meadows, observes that carbon sinks were poorly understood 35 years ago.
“But we now know they absorb 18 billion tons of CO2 a year. Realistically, we should be putting more of the money we’re devoting to the development of carbon sequestration technology into enhancing natural carbon sinks. At the very least, we need to stop their degradation.”
Harte’s work in the Colorado Rockies entailed artificially heating plots of land and tracking changes in vegetation types and carbon sequestration rates. In plots that weren’t heated and experienced climate change in real time, he found that wildflowers dominated, cycling large volumes of carbon into the soil during the short alpine growing season; when the plants died back each fall, the rate of carbon storage dropped off dramatically. But as Harte warmed specific plots over a period of years, woody shrubs replaced the flowering annual plants earlier than on nonheated land. These slower-growing plants sequestered carbon at a much slower rate than the wildflowers.
“The ‘money,’ the carbon, in the bank account shrinks,” says Harte. But after about 100 years, you begin to see dividends. “The carbon coming into the soil from woody plants is stored longer, so you eventually still have carbon in the soil.”
The goods news: This suggests natural sinks could be managed for optimal storage. But if emissions remain high, they’ll strain and ultimately overwhelm the sequestration capacity of the sinks, negating their value.
“If climate change continues, if we don’t cut back on emissions,” says Harte, “there’ll be no way to buffer the effects.”
And really, that’s the crux of the whole issue. At this point in the climate change crisis, we know what we must do to turn things around. Even better, we have the technologies and techniques to do it. But we need to deploy them. That means everything: solar in all its forms, from rooftop panels to orbital microwave arrays; wind turbine farms, both on land and at sea; fusion reactors; fission reactors; microgrids; massively distributed storage systems. And we must enhance, not debase, the natural systems that sequester carbon. We need to plant many more trees and manage working forests more sustainably, calculating carbon storage as a product equal to or exceeding board feet of lumber. And we need to protect the greatest carbon sink of them all: the ocean.
“I’m terribly worried about the trend toward seabed mining,” says Kammen. “It’s the least regulated of all the new frontiers, some very large companies are pushing it, and it’d be absolutely devastating. If we don’t stop activities like that and if we don’t use all the sustainable energy options that are available, we are risking extinction.”
That may not be a very optimistic note to end on, but then, optimism only gets us so far, doesn’t it? What we need now is grit and determination.
Two dozen homes in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood are banding together to give their block a first-of-its-kind sustainability makeover. The EcoBlock, a UC Berkeley research project collaborating with the community, aims to affordably retrofit urban neighborhoods to have smaller carbon footprints and more reliable energy.
During its seven years in the making, the EcoBlock project has pushed through skyrocketing costs, permitting red tape, and compromises with Pacific Gas and Electric. Although researchers anticipated bringing upgrades to residents’ homes this spring, the lingering effects of the pandemic on supply chains and costs are still holding the project back. “Between COVID and inflation, our budget was just walloped,” says Therese Peffer, the principal investigator on the EcoBlock research team.
If the project is eventually implemented, the 25 Fruitvale homes participating in the EcoBlock can look forward to improved air quality, lowered water usage, and greener energy with new efficient electric appliances, air ventilation, water-recycling laundry, and a shared electric vehicle. The EcoBlock centers around a key piece of infrastructure: a small, localized energy system known as a microgrid.
By connecting to solar energy, a microgrid could provide the neighbors with electricity during blackouts or PG&E’s public safety power shut-offs during extreme weather events. And it’s been proven to work: In 2022, a microgrid community in Florida kept the lights on even as millions of homes lost power during Hurricane Ian.
The Fruitvale location was chosen out of a pool of self-nominated blocks by the UC Berkeley Research team, PG&E, and the City of Oakland based on vulnerability, levels of pollution, and the block’s position on the city’s electrical grid.
Daniel Hamilton, the Sustainability and Resilience Director for the city of Oakland, says that choosing a less wealthy area of Oakland was a priority. “There’s huge potential to help the frontline communities that are already suffering the effects of climate change and have fewer resources to do the work,” he says.
Also critical to the success of the project, say Hamilton and researchers, are the interest and collaboration of residents. In 2019, with the support of People Power Solar Cooperative, neighborhoods in Oakland were invited to apply to be the EcoBlock. “The Fruitvale site was the one where the community was most organized and already most supportive” but still vulnerable to climate impacts, says Hamilton.
Community liaison Cathy Leonard, a long-time Oakland native, says that the Oakland EcoBlock serves as a microcosm for the rest of the city. Residents range in age from 1 to 80 years old, speak four different languages, and are of “all different races and ethnicities for a truly diverse block.” For the project, Leonard has organized block parties and information sessions for the Fruitvale neighbors.
“In order for society to really address climate change,” says Leonard, “we have to worry about the homes that are already here.”
Since the project’s launch in 2015, the UC Berkeley research team has had to overcome a series of hurdles. The first site chosen failed due to neighborly disagreements. Then, while working on the Oakland neighborhood, the national cost of construction skyrocketed. In 2020, the pandemic came, bringing with it inflation and supply chain issues. Some parts of the EcoBlock, such as a residential charging station for the neighborhood’s shared electric vehicle, are a first for the city of Oakland and a streamlined permitting process has not yet been established. Other regulations, such as state-wide building codes, turn over regularly before the project can begin construction.
Although permits have been applied for, the project is in limbo while they are being processed. “I think the community members rightfully expected this to move much faster,” says Hamilton, noting the complexity behind EcoBlock, which has over a dozen partners and intersects with different regulatory bodies.
Among the red tape, the EcoBlock has had to contend with permitting and regulations by PG&E, which has a monopoly on utility management in the Bay Area. “I would say every step forward has been a battle against the inertia of slow-moving utilities,” says Dr. Daniel Kammen, the co-principal investigator for the EcoBlock.
Energy researchers say that while microgrids are a promising solution to an unreliable United States energy system, they are still uncommon. “Utilities are in no rush to promote clean energy that’s distributed, and not in their control,” says Kammen. ”Which certainly might be an outcome of a world full of microgrids.”
Originally, the researchers envisioned giving the residents a master meter, allowing them to “island” the block’s microgrid from the city’s grid, for truly self-managed solar energy. “PG&E did not like that,” says Peffer. Instead, each home is now planned to be equipped with its own solar meter, that feeds into the city’s energy supply as well as the EcoBlock microgrid.
PG&E has two programs for defraying the costs of microgrids. The Community Microgrid Enablement Program provides up to $3 million towards PG&E‑related costs of installing a microgrid. A forthcoming Microgrid Incentive Program has $200 million of funding from the California Public Utilities Commission and is anticipated to be launched jointly by PG&E and other regional utilities across the state in early 2023.
Paul Doherty, a spokesperson for PG&E, says that the EcoBlock is not eligible for this second program as it is not, “‘vulnerable to outages’ by our definition, not in a high fire-threat area, and not in our worst performing circuits list.” According to PG&E, out of the three dozen communities currently applying for microgrids, only one — The Redwood Coast Airport — has received funding through their incentive programs.
With the help of the Tuttle Law Group hired by the UC Berkeley researchers, the EcoBlock residents have formed a democratic community association through which they will co-own their microgrid, which includes a solar-power battery storage system.
This agreement gives the UC Berkeley researchers a 5‑year runway to study the success of the project and provides clear guidance on what happens if a property changes hands during that time. The EcoBlock research team will track the resiliency of the microgrid to blackouts — which can be triggered by extreme heat, rain, or cold — to inform energy policy in California.
In terms of adaptation, “two extremes exist today,” says Kammen. “We do good green things one home at a time, or we attempt too much at once.” With just one block, the EcoBlock team strives for an achievable example of upgrading our cities to be greener, kinder places to live.
As 30 energy environment and trade ministers plus 50 CEOs assemble in Paris for the 8th international conference on energy efficiency, the International Energy Agency is urgently calling for greater investment in energy efficiency for factories, cars and appliances to meet international climate goals.
The agency touted recent global progress: A The new IEA report released Wednesday says that demand for energy is growing, yet emissions are not growing as fast. Efficiency is increasing every year as technology improves, and last year that increase was twice the average of the previous five years.
“We’re at a real juncture where more efficient, more clean, more affordable technology is starting to dominate,” said Brian Motherway, chief of energy efficiency at the IEA, during a press conference Tuesday.
Eliminating wasted energy is the most affordable way to bring goods and services to the people who need them — while slowing greenhouse gas emissions — the main driver of global warming, energy experts say.
Government policies that encourage energy efficiency are driving the trend. Japan has strengthened laws that favor energy efficient buildings. The European Union agreed this year to reduce its total energy consumption by some 12% compared to its 2020 forecast, by improving buildings, heavy industry and private transportation. The United States allocated a record 95 billion dollars over ten years through the Inflation Reduction Act to increase energy efficiency in power generation, buildings and cars. And India passed important legislation to decrease the amount of energy used by homes.
“Government initiatives are critical because they get big buildings, they get big housing projects, they get industry (and) they have to take it seriously,” said Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the IEA report.
According to the report, total public and private investment in energy efficiency increased by 15% in 2022 to $600 billion from the previous year. This year, investment is expected to grow by only 4%, which Motherway called concerning.
To limit global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and avoid severe climate disruption, the world needs to double energy efficiency for the rest of the decade. Annual investment of $1.8 trillion is needed to make that happen, the report says.
The technology exists, we just need to prioritizing spending, Philippe Delorme, executive vice president of Europe operations for Schneider Electric said in a press conference.
Experts not involved in the report agreed. “Governments should be doing more, whether that relates to appliance efficiency, cars or buildings,” said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
As far as growth in demand, electricity saw the most growth, with oil and coal just behind. Demand for natural gas saw an overall decline.
Electric vehicles and heat pumps grew in popularity last year, adding to the demand for electricity. Heat pumps efficiently wring energy out of the air, or more occasionally, the ground, and they pump heat either into or out of a building depending whether they are heating or air conditioning. Their sales increased ten percent globally and nearly 40 percent in Europe last year. Electric vehicles sales also grew, now making up 14 percent of all new car sales, and are on track for 18 percent of the new car market this year.
In many places, electricity to heat homes and power vehicles still relies on fossil fuel energy that burns carbon. But as utilities build out more renewable energy, emissions decline. That same progress is not built into gasoline-burning cars or homes that burn natural gas for cooking and heating. They will continue to combust hydrocarbons and release carbon dioxide.
Some of the recent interest in energy efficiency worldwide has been influenced by fears of a global energy shortage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Philippe Benoit, a researcher at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said that in order to meet climate goals, money needs to go into better energy efficiency even when there is no fear of energy scarcity.
“The greatest interest in energy efficiency is often triggered by an energy supply concern,” he said. “We need to get to the point where without even a potential energy supply crisis, that governments, households and businesses are increasing their investment in energy efficiency. That’s what our climate goal requires.”
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Peterson reported from Denver. Costley reported from Washington, DC.
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The Associated Press receives support from multiple foundation for coverage of climate and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
Link to the paper used for the first figure in the IEA analysis:
Amory B. Lovins, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Luis Mundaca, Daniel M Kammen, and Joacob W Glassman (2019) “Recalibrating climate prospects”, Environmental Research Letters, 14 (12). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748–9326/ab55ab
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