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Fortune 500: Climate Goals Leads To Improved Bottom Lines

Private companies have continued to make significant contributions to achieving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting global temperature increase to below 2 degrees, despite the setback made by President Trump — pulling the U.S. out of the Agreement. The commitment from Fortune 500s to emit fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) has never been so strong, with 23 companies committing to be 100% powered by renewables and 48% of Fortune 500 companies with at least one climate or clean energy target, representing a 5% increase from 2014, a recent report by the WWF, CERES, Calvert Research and CDP reveals.Fortune 500 companies broadly embrace renewables and energy efficiency 

Looking at the biggest companies reveals an even stronger commitment, with 63% of Fortune 100 companies leading the trend to address climate change. Leading companies include Apple, Bank of America, Facebook, Google, and Walmart.

 

Despite the relatively smaller absolute percentage in the bottom quintiles, Fortune 401 – 500 companies, the smallest in the cohort, have shown significant improvement. Compared with 2014, the percentage of companies with targets rising from 25% in 2014 to the current 44%, a total increase of 19%. This improvement in the smaller Fortune 500 companies reflects the shift in corporate attitudes towards renewables. Like Marty Spitzer, Senior Director of Climate and Renewable Energy at WWF said: “American businesses are leading the transition to a clean economy because it’s smart business and it’s what their customers want.” Setting renewables target expands from larger companies to companies of relatively smaller scale might represent a positive trend and it is likely that companies outside of the Fortune 500 will continue the increase in renewable targets.

Buying clean energy is becoming a trendThe rapid increase in corporate renewable energy PPAs and other direct contracts points to the overall trend that large companies are increasingly looking to more direct forms of procurement over unbundled RECs to maximize both the business and environmental benefits of these purchases.

 

53 companies have set goals to buy or invest in renewable energy, such as solar or wind. The approaches include unbundled Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) purchases, onsite installations (mostly solar), and larger-scale, off-site purchases, the latter of which has seen significant growth in recent years. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, corporates have now installed more than one gigawatt of onsite solar capacity in the U.S. Since 2014, nearly 7GW in new, direct, off-site corporate renewable energy contracts have been signed by 33 companies (most, but not all are in the Fortune 500)

 

The trend is set because direct procurement (onsite installations and offsite procurement where the company is involved in some way in the energy sales transaction in addition to taking title to the RECs) allows companies to both access fixed-priced renewable energy, which can save on energy costs over time, and to cause new generation to be built over what would have been driven by regulation, enhancing the emissions reduction impact of the company’s investment. The plummeting price of wind and solar allows companies to achieve more than just GHG emission reduction targets. The purchase also brings reduced operating costs, long-term price stability, and a diversified energy supply.

 

Save the planet while capturing business value

 

Achieving clean energy targets means saving money and growing profits. In 2016 alone to totals $3.7 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2013, were saved by nearly 80,000 emissions-reducing projects implemented in 190 countries. In the meanwhile, companies also decreased their annual emissions by 155.7 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, which is equal to taking 45 coal-fired power plants offline for a year. This number was only 26.7 million in 2013. During three years of time, companies increased their savings by $2 billion and 129 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent. The improved impact to the environment is all the more significant.

 

The environmental impact is more certain as more companies adopt science-based methodologies to inform and monitor their renewable targets. A significant number of these companies are increasing their ambition by aligning their carbon reduction goals with climate science, such as Walmart’s Gigaton commitment.

The company aims to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions from upstream and downstream sources by one billion tons (a gigaton) between 2015 and 2030.

A science-based target utilizes the best available scientific data to define a company’s appropriate share of emission reductions required to limit global temperature increases to below two degrees Celsius. Various methodologies to inform their science-based targets have been developed and are constantly evolving. For instance, the decarbonization pathways by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been adopted by several companies. Implementing science-based methodology implies more commitment and ambition.

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168 Hours on 100% Renewables

168 Hours on 100% Renewables: Qinghai’s Trail Means More Potential for Governments and Companies to Go Green.

For seven days — from June 17th to 23rd — China’s Qinghai province ran on 100% renewable energy, including solar, wind, and hydropower. During that time, the province generated 1.1 billion kilowatt hours of energy for over 5.6 million residents. That’s equal to burning 535,000 tons of coal.

The week was part of a trial conducted by the State Grid Corporation of China, which aims to test the viability of relying on renewables long-term. This successful experiment in part proves China’s dedication to fulfill its commitment to the Paris Agreement, peaking its coal consumption and reducing its carbon intensity by 60%-65% by 2030, as well as its hope to produce 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. It also demonstrates that running largely on renewable power — at least in certain places — is technically feasible. We hope this will embolden governments and companies to envision a future with more renewables in their energy mix.

Big Hydro and Weak Demand Critical

The geographic location of Qinghai is rich in solar and hydro resources. Out of Qinghai’s 23.4 GW of total power generation capacity, around 82% is from renewable sources (including hydro). Solar alone accounts of 29.1% of all capacity installed, registering as the second largest power source of the province. By 2020, the province plans to expand its clean energy capacity to 35 GW, which could supply 110 TWh of clean energy annually. Ample summer rainfall is a significant contributor, as hydropower accounted for approximately 72% of the electricity generated during the seven days.

Apart from strong hydro output, Qinghai’s low power demand is also an important reason for this trail to success, something difficult for other places to replicate. The average daily power demand is 150 million kWh, only 15% of that of the much more developed Zhejiang province (1 billion kWh daily demand) for example.

Running on solar, wind and hydro, Qinghai has shown the technical viability of going 100% renewable and it proved that the grid is stable when supported by a variety of renewable sources. This test helped China’s grid operators to accumulate technical experience in deciding how much power should be supplied by which sources.

More renewable energy also makes economic sense for Qinghai. “On-grid price of hydro power is 0.201 yuan/kWh, while coal power is 0.325 yuan/kWh. Coal is 0.124 yuan more expensive than hydro per kWh. It´s also cheaper for grid companies obviously. In another word, it is economically viable.” Xiaoping Xie, president of Huanghe Hydropower Development Company said in an interview.

Calling Higher Ambitions

Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces rich in renewable resources, that have installed many renewables are also in the condition of accomplishing something similar, although they have not announced such intentions as of yet. Such government-led pilot schemes have shown that the Chinese government is willing to fulfill its commitment to clean energy.

In addition to the government’s role, companies around the world have stepped up  their effort by setting renewable targets. 23 Leading Fortune 500 companies have gone a step further by integrating a 100% renewable energy commitment into their business strategy. For example, Google has promised that by 2018, every click on Google will be powered by renewable energy.

Qinghai’s 100% renewable energy trail provides an important signal to governments and companies alike, that high percentage of renewable energy power mix is no longer just a vision but a reality, and that adoption will only grow higher going forward. For companies that care about their energy footprint, this trial — and the broader direction it signals — not only mean that their own effort to procure clean energy will create synergies with government initiatives, but also that electricity generated from their renewable projects will be better absorbed by their grids and communities, allowing them to reduce curtailment risks and contribute more to local communities.

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Future Energy: China leads world in solar power production

Article originally published in the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40341833

Ten years ago, Geof Moser had just graduated with a master’s degree in solar energy from Arizona State University – but he didn’t feel much opportunity lay at his feet in his home country.

So he headed for China.

“The solar industry was fairly small and there weren’t a lot of jobs,” he remembers. “Just a few for installation.” But the Chinese government had big ambitions to expand solar and Moser saw his chance.

He spent some years accumulating knowledge about the Chinese solar industry, before co-founding Symtech Solar, which designs solar panel systems using Chinese parts.

Market access

The idea is to make it easy for organisations outside China to access components without the hassle of having to source and assemble lots of different parts.

“You don’t want to buy a car door or a car engine, you want to buy a car,” he explains.

Symtech now has a portfolio of small projects dotted around the world and it is hoping to increase installations in the Middle East, thanks to a new office in Oman.

Moser isn’t the only US entrepreneur who turned to China. Alex Shoer, of Seeder, helped to launch a business that brings solar panels to the roofs of buildings within the country.

He deals with foreign businesses who, say, want to make their Beijing office a little greener. The firm says it has so far erected three megawatts’ worth of solar installations, with another 28 megawatts on the way for various clients.

“We will source the capital to finance, pay for the whole project and then sell the power at a discount,” Shoer says. Again, the model relies on sourcing the right parts at a favourable cost.

These kind of installations are known as “distributed generation” projects, in which electricity is produced on a small scale, at or very near to a specific point of consumption.

Within China, distributed generation is growing at an extraordinary rate, driven in large part by farmers who use the panels to power agricultural equipment that might not be connected to the grid.

Shoer comments that he was attracted by Beijing’s commitment to the solar industry. For years it has encouraged local authorities to do what they can to boostproduction, research and development.

Renewables growth

China’s rapid expansion of renewable energy facilities has since caught headlines around the world.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the country installed more than 34 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2016 – more than double the figure for the US and nearly half of the total added capacity worldwide that year.

Early figures for 2017 show China has added another eight gigawatts in the first quarter alone.

“It’s a huge market,” says Heymi Bahar at the IEA. Most of the world’s solar cells are made in China and Taiwan, he adds – more than 60%.

The impressive scale doesn’t stop there. The largest solar farm in the world – Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, all 30sq km of it – is a Chinese project. And the country recently opened the world’s largest floating solar farm, in Huainan, Anhui Province.

It has been constructed over an old coal mine, which over the years had filled with rainwater. Sungrow, the Chinese firm that provided solar cells for the venture, says its system automatically monitors current and voltage generated by the cells, along with humidity, which can affect their efficiency.

Because of the abundant water nearby, cleaning the panels – an endless task for solar farmers – will be easier, according to those behind the facility.

These mega projects have become possible, and indeed more common, thanks to the rapidly falling cost of solar cells.

“What we were all hoping for 20 years ago when the idea of cheap solar was just a dream, was that someone would come into this on an industrial scale and drive down the cost,” recalls Charles Donovan, at Imperial College Business School.

“That is exactly what China has done.”

But today, solar energy production accounts for just 1% of China’s total energy demand. A huge 66% of demand still comes from coal, something that the country’s National Energy Administration wants to change drastically by 2050 – not least because of China’s well-known air pollution problems.

But by that key date of 2050, a very different mix of energies could be powering China, should some projections become reality. One government report even suggested that renewables could supply 86% of the country’s energy needs, with solar providing around a third of that.

Can China do it? According to one expert observer, the answer is, “maybe”.

“What China is trying to do is rationalise a very large, fast growing system,” explains Jeffrey Ball at Stanford University’s Center for Energy Policy and Finance. Ball is the lead author of a recent report that details China’s success as an innovator in the solar panel industry.

Lofty ambitions

But as Ball points out, the revolution has not been without teething issues. For one thing, Chinese subsidies, which some argue are unsustainable, have not always been smoothly administered. The “feed-in tariff”, for example, often offered to solar companies that generate electricity, has sometimes been paid late.

“The government is often a year or more late in delivering that revenue – that wreaks havoc with the financials on a project,” says Ball.

The value of subsidies has recently been cut, too. What’s more, China’s large solar farms are largely in less densely populated areas in the west of the country, far from population centres like Beijing or Shanghai, in the east.

Building extra grid capacity to transfer it is time-consuming and expensive. This leads to a problem known as curtailment – a solar farm produces, say, 20 megawatts of electricity but can only find buyers for 15 megawatts.

More from Future Energy

“Depending on who you talk to in the provinces that have by far the largest amount of solar production, curtailment rates are 30% and in some cases significantly higher than 30% – that’s extraordinary and that’s a real problem,” explains Ball.

Whether China can achieve its lofty ambitions for renewable energy remains to be seen – but it has certainly proved its ability to foster a world-leading solar industry. For US entrepreneurs like Geof Moser, that’s enough to propel his own business towards further growth for now.

“The reality is that renewable energy is very cheap – especially solar energy,” he says. “And the reason is China.”

Article originally published in the BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40341833

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China Paves Way to Allow Clean Energy Purchase from Nearby Distributed Sources

Corporations keen to source clean energy understand the advantages of distributed generation. Apple, a leader in corporate renewable energy purchase, wrote in its Environmental Responsibility Report that “Apple’s renewable energy approach goes a step further to make sure we ‘deposit’ on the same grid as the energy we are ‘withdrawing.’” This preference is because distributed generation (DG) faces less power loss during transmission, no curtailment risks, and corporates can contribute to local economies and communities.

But China’s not-so-liberal power market has so far prevented a consumer from buying electricity from nearby distributed generators. Electricity from a rooftop solar project, for example, can either be used by the building directly beneath, or be sold back to the grid – and dispatched just like electrons from any other source.

This past month, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) finally made a big step to break that restriction, by introducing a draft policy on “distributed power trading pilots.” In the draft, distributed energy projects can sell power to nearby consumers, and the grid company will charge a “transmission fee” when delivering power. Some preliminary details below:

  • For the first batch of pilots, power retail would only be allowed in very small areas. Power sellers and buyers should be in the same 35kV power supply network – which is normally a district in cities like Shanghai – or the same 110kV network when it is the lowest voltage network, such as in industrial parks.

  • Distributed power generators can sell power in three ways: 1) They can trade directly with an end consumer within an 110kV network; 2) They can also delegate the grid company to sell power; 3) Or they can choose not to participate in the retail market and have the grid company purchase all of its electricity. For a buyer, this means it can purchase power from a DG source directly or from the grid for DG electricity.

  • The government will acknowledge clean energy purchased through this mechanism when measuring a company’s clean energy and energy saving efforts. For carbon credits, the buyer and seller can settle attribution among themselves directly.

  • The policy is subject to distributed power projects with installed capacity below 20MW. City- and province-level grid companies will set up trading platforms.

Testing the water cautiously, the government will announce the first batch of pilots by May 31st, and trading is to start on July 1st. At the end of 2017, it will decide whether and how to expand the pilot area.

We expect power retail pilots to be set up in limited areas at first – an easy starting point would be in industrial parks where power networks are more independent. Even with the small scale, this is an encouraging sign that Beijing is opening up power retail specifically for the distributed market. Furthermore, NEA specifically mentioned that the retail policy will not affect the current subsidy scheme for distributed renewables.

For corporations, this policy means that in the near future, more clean energy sourcing options will be available. Corporates will be able to support distributed projects that will create environmental and economic value locally.

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China Embraces Growth with Vertical Cities

The Cloud Citizen in Shenzen

The Cloud Citizen in Shenzen

The United States has 9 cities with a population of 1,000,000 or more. China has 140- and that number is growing. China’s cities will not be like Los Angeles or Phoenix, however. Instead of sprawling expanses of suburbs and single family homes that stretch from horizon to horizon, China wants its cities to grow UPWARD rather than outward.

Thirty years ago, most people in China were farmers. By 2011, half lived in cities. By 2030 it is estimated one billion people, or 70% of the population, will be urbanites. After the great global economic meltdown of 2008 caused a dramatic decrease in Chinese exports, the government decided to focus more on domestic spending.  Premier Li Keqiang has called urabanization a “huge engine” for growth. What the Chinese government wants now is more and bigger cities to fuel that engine.

 

The 2000' Shanghai Tower Photo: Imaginechina/Rex

 

Construction in China, then, is booming. The world’s second-tallest building, the Shanghai Tower, is due to be completed next year- and that’s just one of many examples of mega-architecture going up. In fact, within 5 years, experts expect that 6 of the 10 tallest buildings in the world will be located within its borders.

Architects and city planners are focusing on creating enormous interconnected vertical cities- structures like the Cloud Citizen in the city of Shenzen, which will be a mini-city within a city and which are similar, in concept, to the “self contained” city in a mine concept we shared a few weeks ago. It will have offices, parks, cultural facilities and homes with an ability to harvest rainwater, produce food and create power from the sun, wind and algae. Some think the denizens of these enormous structures may be born, live their entire lives and die without ever leaving their designated building.

Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a non-profit organisation that keeps the world’s largest database on skyscrapers, tells The Guardian, “It’s no accident that every science-fiction film, from Metropolis to Blade Runner through to Star Wars, envisages the dense, multi-level city of the future. The reason is because it completely makes sense.”

 

Zhongnan Centre will be the world's 3rd tallest building.

Zhongnan Centre will be the world’s 3rd tallest building.

 

Vertical Cities are the Future

The United Nations Population Division projects that by 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban environments, up from 54% today. Factoring in population growth, that translates into 2.5 billion more people living in cities than there are today.

Yosuke Hayano, principal partner of MAD Architects in Beijing says “We have to find the solution of how to move towards more density but to keep the human scale. People are very sensitive to space.” MAD uses the concept of shan shui (“mountain water”) in its designs – a reference to the way cities were strategically positioned in ancient China near rivers and mountains.

The mammoth 5 million square foot Zendai Himalayas Center under construction in the city of Nanjing features a ring of undulating hill-shaped “towers” around a cluster of low buildings with vertical louvers creating the impression of waterfalls. This mimicry of nature, MAD believes, imbues urban environments with humanity.

Ole Scheeren, a German architect based in China and Hong Kong, thinks architects need to “move away from the isolation that is embedded in the typology of the tower”. He adds, “Where towers used to be relatively monotonous and simple repetitive structures, they’re becoming more integrated and connected and also vertically diverse. In that sense they will, I believe, attain more aspects of the words everybody likes to use: ‘vertical cities’.”

 

This article was originally published here

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