The company is among the cohort of We Mean Business Coalition members who first committed to aligning with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C trajectory at COP25 in Madrid last winter. According to the IPCC, global net emissions must be halved by 2030 and reach zero by 2050 if we are to have the best chance of capping the global temperature increase.
CCEP’s new commitments cover emissions from Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (power-related) and Scope 3 (indirect) sources. The company’s main emissions sources aside from operations are ingredients, packaging, transportation and refrigeration.
Given that the majority of the firm’s Scope 3 emissions are in the supply chain, the company is aiming to help all of its strategic suppliers set science-based targets and transition to 100% renewable electricity. For ingredient and packaging-related emissions, the company will accelerate plans relating to sustainable agriculture and 100% recycled plastics. Some life-cycle analyses have found that soft drinks bottles made using 100% post-consumer-recycled plastic generate 40% less CO2e than virgin plastic bottles.
CCEP has earmarked €250m, to be spent over a three-year period, to develop its immediate action plan for meeting its new climate goals. Money will be used to support suppliers, improve efficiency and accelerate R&D around packaging materials.
The company is prioritising reductions over offsetting and has had its targets approved by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). However, it will be investing in some verified carbon credits “where essential”, prioritising nature-based carbon removal.
CCEP said in a statement that it is ready to go further and faster after reducing value chain emissions by 30.5% since 2010. Its new targets are all baselined for 2019 and the company will develop new interim goals and projects in the coming years.
“We have a responsibility to the communities we serve to keep taking this action on climate,” CCEP’s chief executive Damian Gammell said.
“We know it will be a long and challenging journey – there are no quick fixes or silver bullets – but we are determined to drive this change as fast as we can and to play our part in helping and influencing others. We’ve made significant progress so far, and looking ahead, we will continue to help lead the transition to a low carbon future by putting environmental impact at the heart our decision-making.”
Net-zero movement
As of September, some 1,540 businesses globally had set net-zero targets of some kind, up from 500 in December 2019. That is according to research from Data-Driven EnviroLab and the NewClimate Institute.
But for all the welcome noise on climate leadership in the private sector, there are concerns about how many net-zero targets will be met. A recent poll of 120 sustainability professionals at different companies, conducted by South Pole, found that just one in ten firms with a net-zero vision has an approved science-based targets framework to back it up.
Customers visiting the retailer’s Two Rivers Shopping Centre Store in Staines will be able to choose from more than 50 lines of refillable products, including pasta, rice, cereal, confectionary and frozen fruit. Products will be housed in reusable dispensers and customers will be encouraged to bring their own reusable containers, or to use paper bags available in-store.
M&S first launched its ‘Fill Your Own’ offering on a trial basis in its Hedge End store in Southampton in the latter half of 2019. During the trial, 25 of the 44 lines outsold their pre-packaged counterparts. Across all 44 lines, more than 2,600kg of loose product was sold over a three-month period.
This success prompted the retailer to make the format a permanent offering in Hedge End, and to announce a broader rollout in March. Plans for additional stores were put on hold due to Covid-19 but have now been resumed, with new stores set to be added in 2021.
To make the offering Covid-19-safe, M&S has installed hand sanitisers near the refill stations. It has also chosen to post staff at the refill stations to help customers fill, weigh and pay safely. The business has revealed that four in ten refillable lines have outsold pre-packaged options in 2020 so far, in spite of the pandemic.
“As we continue testing and learning from Fill Your Own, it’s clear that demand for refillables remains strong; we know families particularly enjoy shopping the concept as a fun activity, so our new store in the popular Staines shopping centre is the ideal next location for Fill Your Own,” M&S Food’s director of food technology Paul Willgoss said.
“But most importantly, our customers care about the issue of plastic and this initiative is just one part of our plan to help them reduce, reuse and recycle – because we know our actions today will help to protect the planet tomorrow.”
Plastics strategy
M&S’s broader plastics packaging strategy – which is embedded in its Plan A for sustainability – is headlined by a 2022 ambition that packaging that could end up with customers will be “widely recycled”. As part of its aim, the retailer is planning to develop one recyclable plastic polymer for use across all of its plastic packaging and removing plastics from products such as clothing, cotton buds and coffee pods.
Given that only 9% of all plastic ever made has been recycled – and with 82% of UK shoppers now stating that the amount of plastic packaging produced by companies needs to be “drastically reduced” – M&S is not alone in expanding its investments in refill.
Amid initial lockdown restrictions in spring, many retailers were forced to close stores with refill or packaging-free offerings, including Lush and The Body Shop. Elsewhere on the high street, some supermarkets removed loose fruit and veg; some coffee shops stopped accepting refillable cups and some of City to Sea’s busiest Refill stations were closed or experienced a sharp drop in footfall.
The refill movement seems to be slowly but surely gaining traction once more – but efforts will need to scale dramatically if businesses are to rise to the scale of the global plastic pollution problem. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has calculated that just 2% of the products sold by the world’s biggest consumer goods firms this year came in reusable packaging.
Green hydrogen development advanced further this week after the world’s first pilot project for green hydrogen heating of homes was approved. While proponents of green hydrogen—the low-carbon emission hydrogen made from electrolysis with power from renewables—cheer this world-first trial, the structure of the project’s funding offers a glimpse into what green hydrogen desperately needs to become a feasible solution to emission reductions—solid government support.
Green hydrogen has been the hype of the past year in clean energy technologies. From governments to oil majors, everyone is talking up green hydrogen solutions to cut emissions in sectors where this is more difficult than in electricity production, such as chemicals and ammonia production.
Today, nearly all—or 99.6 percent—of global hydrogen production comes from fossil fuels—coal, oil, or natural gas.
“Although there is a tremendous amount of hype regarding green hydrogen, it barely registers across the full value chain for hydrogen’s uses,” Wood Mackenzie said in a report this year.
The first-ever trial of 100-percent green hydrogen use for home heating and cooking is expected to offer insights into how feasible it could be in replacing natural gas. The trial also shows that for green hydrogen to become mainstream in technologies, not only in media, government support, incentives, co-funding, and collaboration with industry is a must.
This week, the UK and Scottish authorities announced they would fund the world’s first trial of a 100 percent green hydrogen generation, storage, and distribution network to heat 300 homes in Scotland as part of the UK and Scottish ambitions to achieve net-zero emissions within three decades.
The UK’s energy regulator Ofgem on Monday said it was awarding US$24 million (18 million British pounds) to the H100 Fife project in Fife, Scotland, which will see 300 homes heated with and cooking with green hydrogen made from electrolysis from offshore wind power. The project also receives a further investment of US$9.2 million (6.9 million pounds) from the Scottish Government.
“I see this project as a critical step towards understanding our decarbonization options for heat and will deliver a purpose-built end-to-end hydrogen system, so I warmly welcome Ofgem’s investment in the project,” said Scotland’s energy minister Paul Wheelhouse.
Exploring the options for hydrogen production and ways to cut hydrogen costs is one of the key pillars in the UK’s The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, which the government unveiled last month.
Political momentum in support of hydrogen has grown over the past year, but governments need to strongly support hydrogen, especially low-carbon hydrogen, in the near term and include it in long-term policies for emissions reduction, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Hydrogen report this year.
“Low-carbon production capacity remained relatively constant and is still off track with the SDS [Sustainable Development Scenario],” the IEA said, noting that “More efforts are needed to: scale up to reduce costs; replace high-carbon with low-carbon hydrogen in current applications; and expand hydrogen use to new applications.”
Companies are working on developing green hydrogen projects. One of the latest announcements came from Italy’s major Eni, which, together with top utility Enel, plans to produce green hydrogen through electrolyzers powered by renewable energy and located near two of the Eni refineries where green hydrogen appears to be the best decarbonization option.
Offshore wind developer Ørsted and fertilizer producer Yara in October said they were developing a project to replace fossil hydrogen with renewable hydrogen in the production of ammonia in the Netherlands.
“If the required public co-funding is secured and the right regulatory framework is in place, the project could be operational in 2024/2025,” Ørsted said.
Green hydrogen requires a lot of policy support, collaboration, funding, research and development (R&D), and private capital to become an industry.
Green hydrogen costs are set to fall by up to 64 percent by 2040, according to WoodMac research from August.
“Even with a multitude of challenges that await the nascent green hydrogen market, we firmly believe there will be some form of low-carbon hydrogen economy soon,” said Ben Gallagher, Wood Mackenzie Senior Research Analyst.
“Given the degree of explicit policy, corporate and social support that has blossomed in 2020, green hydrogen will successfully scale and realise huge production cost declines,” Gallagher noted.
A giant new community solar park initiative is going to make more than 400,000 Danes co-owners in solar parks located in Denmark (around ¾ of them) and Poland (the other ¼ or so).
This massive initiative will be the largest solar investment in Denmark’s history, totaling around DKK 4 billion ($651.5 million). It is a partnership between Danish pension fund Industriens Pension and Better Energy.
Furthermore, the initiative involves absolutely no support from the government of Denmark.
The announcement does not indicate how many solar parks will be deployed across Denmark and Poland as part of this initiative, but the total capacity is expected to be around 1 gigawatt (GW), which will actually make it one of the largest — if not the largest — such projects across the world.
As of now, 5 of the solar power parks are in operation (power capacity is not indicated), but “the majority of the parks are expected to be in operation in the course of 2021 and 2022.”
It’s a 50–50 partnership between Industriens Pension and Better Energy, and Better Energy is the one developing, building, and operating the solar parks.
“We’re extremely pleased with the investment, which we expect will secure solid, long-term returns for our members, while at the same time contributing significantly to accelerating the scale and pace of the green transition. This is the first time that solar energy has been rolled out at this scale in Denmark, and the investment marks a real breakthrough for solar energy in Denmark,” said Laila Mortensen, CEO of Industriens Pension.
“For the first time, Danish pension savings will help accelerate a massive scaling up of subsidy-free green energy production in Denmark. In that sense, our partnership with Industriens Pension marks the beginning of a new era. The next chapter in the green transition will entail accelerating the deployment of renewable energy capacity without state support, together with ensuring critical widespread community ownership and backing. And this is precisely what we are doing with this agreement,” said Rasmus Lildholdt Kjær, CEO of Better Energy.
“This agreement establishes a robust partnership model for how to rapidly scale up the green transition. And this is imperative if Denmark is to have a reasonable chance of achieving its climate targets,” said Mark Augustenborg Ødum, EVP Partnerships in Better Energy.
This is one of the most exciting and empowering solar projects I’ve seen in my 10+ years covering the solar industry. The combination of the fundamental co-ownership of the projects, the massive scale, the fact that it’s all subsidy-free, and the promise for more like this elsewhere make for just one of the most inspiring solar power stories I’ve seen. Furthermore, all of this is happening very far north. This is seriously grey-weather territory. But solar power is competitive nonetheless.
As indicated recently, the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has a history of close ties to the fossil fuel industry, has determined that solar power now offers the “cheapest electricity in history.” That was more recently echoed by Lazard as well.
The record-low solar power prices come after a constant drop in solar panel prices across the globe that follow the now totally common reality that as you ramp up production of a technology, costs drop. As I wrote in September, solar PV panels were 12× more expensive in 2010, and 459× more expensive in 1977. The results of this technological learning curve mean that the future of electricity will increasingly be solarized, while the Denmark and Poland projects above show that we can expect a growing flood of large and unexpected solar PV growth in even the greyest of places.
This also comes not long after Google’s announcement that it, too, is going to be getting a large amount of subsidy-free solar power in Denmark. The 100-megawatt solar power plans seemed like a large announcement, but that just ends up being one-tenth of the Industriens Pension plans. That said, Google has the same partner as Industriens Pension — Better Energy. The solar power developer will build three new solar power parks in Denmark for Google.
Clearly, Better Energy has become quite adept at developing low-cost solar power plants, and convincing major companies and pension funds to choose the firm to build and operate its power plants. We’ll have to keep our eye on BE.
“Our planet is broken,” the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, will warn on Wednesday.
Humanity is waging what he will describe as a “suicidal” war on the natural world.
“Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury,” he will tell a BBC special event on the environment.
Mr Guterres wants to put tackling climate change at the heart of the UN’s global mission.
In a speech entitled State of the Planet, he will announce that its “central objective” next year will be to build a global coalition around the need to reduce emissions to net zero.
Net zero refers to cutting greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible and balancing any further releases by removing an equivalent amount from the atmosphere.
Mr Guterres will say that every country, city, financial institution and company “should adopt plans for a transition to net zero emissions by 2050”. In his view, they will also need to take decisive action now to put themselves on the path towards achieving this vision.
The objective, says the UN secretary general, will be to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels.
Here’s what Mr Guterres will demand the nations of the world do:
Put a price on carbon
Phase out fossil fuel finance and end fossil fuel subsidies
Shift the tax burden from income to carbon, and from tax payers to polluters
Integrate the goal of carbon neutrality (a similar concept to net zero) into all economic and fiscal policies and decisions
Help those around the world who are already facing the dire impacts of climate change
Source: EPA
“Our war on the natural world will come back to haunt us.”, says Mr Guterres
Apocalyptic fires and floods
It is an ambitious agenda, as Mr Guterres will acknowledge, but he will say radical action is needed now.
“The science is clear,” Mr Guterres will tell the BBC, “unless the world cuts fossil fuel production by 6% every year between now and 2030, things will get worse. Much worse.”
Climate policies have yet to rise to the challenge, the UN chief will say, adding that “without concerted action, we may be headed for a catastrophic three to five-degree temperature rise this century”.
The impact is already being felt around the world.
“Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are the new normal,” he will warn.
“Biodiversity is collapsing. Deserts are spreading. Oceans are choking with plastic waste.”
Moment of truth
Mr Guterres will say the nations of the world must bring ambitious commitments to cut emissions to the international climate conference the UK and Italy are hosting in Glasgow in November next year.
As well as pressing for action on the climate crisis, he will urge nations to tackle the extinction crisis that is destroying biodiversity and to step up efforts to reduce pollution.
We face, he will say, a “moment of truth”.
But he does discern some glimmers of hope.
He will acknowledge that the European Union, the US, China, Japan, South Korea and more than 110 other countries have committed to become carbon neutral by the middle of this century.
He will say he wants to see this momentum turned into a movement.
Technology will help us to reach these targets, Mr Guterres will say he believes.
“The coal business is going up in smoke,” because it costs more to run most of today’s coal plants than it does to build new renewable plants from scratch, he will tell the BBC.
“We must forge a safer, more sustainable and equitable path”, the UN chief will conclude.
He will say it is time for this war against the planet to end, adding: “We must declare a permanent ceasefire and reconcile with nature.”
Do you have a solution that could help the territory on its low-carbon transformation?
In late November 2020, Hong Kong became yet another jurisdiction to state its ambition and pledge to become net zero. In her annual Policy Address, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced “that the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) will strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2050.”.
While it could NOT be hailed as the most bullish of timelines, it IS a great step forwards and follows in the path of the President of Mainland China Xi Jinping’s recent speech to the United Nations when he made it clear that China would endeavour to achieve carbon-neutrality before 2060.
While specifics will become clear over the next while, the Policy Address already provides a sense of the direction of travel and priorities for Hong Kong’s intended low-carbon transformation. Here are a few headline themes: (figures in brackets are the related paragraphs in the Policy Address):
• Reinvent construction, including through digitalisation and innovation, as part of the ongoing investment in infrastructure (57, 59)
• Various plans to develop/redevelop different districts for mixed community spaces serving conservation, nature, entertainment etc (111, 113)
• A new multi-modal environmentally friendly linkage system for Kowloon East, comprising bus/minibus routes, travellators, tracks for pedestrians and cyclists, water-taxis (116, 119)
• Smart mobility through applying technology to improve road efficiency (118).
• Promoting a green recovery through initiatives like installing more electric vehicle charging-enabling infrastructure and expanding the recycling network (124)
• The Government has indicated plans to examine various means to reduce carbon emissions, including zero-carbon energy and decarbonisation technology; enhancing the energy efficient of both new and existing buildings; promoting zero-carbon vehicles and green transportation, and building large scale waste-to-energy facilities (127).
• Supporting all of the above will be more stringent energy efficient standards, green finance will be developed to facilitate the investment required and there will be a push to enhance public education and publicity.
All of this, plus there is an indication that there will be lots more coming – a Green Tech Fund, new long-term strategy blueprint for waste, electric vehicles, updating the Clean Air Plan (124) – so there’s lots to do in the territory and inspiration/ideas will certainly be sought from offshore, for proven technologies, use cases, and more.
Looking beyond Hong Kong, the territory plus some of the southern provinces of Mainland China plus the other Special Administrative Region, Macau, comprise the land mass that is the Greater Bay Area. The so-called GBA comprising 90 million people is being developed as an integrated region, that already has impressive economic firepower of some USD24,000 GDP per capita. So, whether considering Hong Kong on its own or as an international entry point and intermediary to this larger region, the business opportunities for cleantech and green solutions in and through Hong Kong has arguably never been more attractive.
While the Policy Address isn’t a shopping list of what the territory needs to source, it does give a strong indication of what the Government is seeking to do, but it’s unlikely the current provision of goods and services in Hong Kong will have all the answers.
If you operate in any of these areas and have offerings that could help Hong Kong achieve these goals, you would be well advised to explore them now.
Should you wish to learn any more details about the market in Hong Kong, please do get in touch with Fiona of Red Links. Red Links is a Hong Kong-based consultancy, helping build responsible businesses, through services in strategy, engagement and sustainability.
Notes:
– the full text and summaries of the address are available: https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk/2020/eng/index.html
– these plans are subject to approval but can be taken as a strong indication of what is likely to
happen
Wildlife, nature and the climate will benefit from the biggest shake-up in farming policy in England for 50 years, according to government plans.
The £1.6bn subsidy farmers receive every year for simply owning or renting land will be phased out by 2028, with the funds used instead to pay them to restore wild habitats, create new woodlands, boost soils and cut pesticide use.
The wealthiest farmers – those receiving annual payments over £150,000 a year – will face the sharpest cuts, starting with 25% in 2021. Those receiving less than £30,000 will see a 5% cut next year.
Some of the biggest recipients of the existing scheme have been the Duke of Westminster, the inventor Sir James Dyson, racehorse owner Prince Khalid bin Abdullah al Saud and the Queen.
Farmers will also get grants to improve productivity and animal welfare, including new robotic equipment. The goal of the plan is that farmers will – within seven years – be producing healthy and profitable food in a sustainable way and without subsidies.
The environment secretary, George Eustice, acknowledged the damage done to the environment by industrial farming since the 1960s and said the new plans would deliver for nature and help fight the climate crisis. Farming occupies 70% of England, is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss and produces significant greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.
The radical changes in agricultural policy are possible due to the UK leaving the EU, whose common agricultural policy is widely regarded as a disaster for nature and even critics of Brexit see the changes as positive.
Farming and environment groups largely welcomed the plans but said more detail was urgently required. Brexit is looming at the end of December and uncertainties remain over food tariffs and trade deals. Many groups are also concerned about the potential import of food produced to lower animal welfare and environmental standards.
“[This is] the biggest change in agricultural policy in half a century,” said Eustice. “It makes no sense to subsidise land ownership and tenure where the largest subsidy payments often go to the wealthiest landowners.
“I know many farmers feel this loss keenly and are taking measures to reverse this decline. But we cannot deny that the intensification of agriculture since the 1960s has taken its toll. Our plans for future farming must [also] tackle climate change – one of the most urgent challenges facing the world.”
The total of £2.4bn a year currently paid to farmers will remain the same until 2025, as promised in the Conservative manifesto. Currently, two-thirds of this is paid solely for owning land, but the proportion will fall to one-third by 2025 and zero by 2028. Funds for environmental action will rise from a quarter of the total to more than half by 2025, with the remaining funds used to increase productivity.
The new green payments will be trialled with 5,000 farmers before a full launch in 2024. But the level of payments for work such as natural flood defences and restoring peatlands and saltmarshes has not yet been set. Nor has the likely cut in carbon emissions been quantified.
The president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters, said: “Farming is changing and we look forward to working with ministers and officials to co-create the new schemes.”
But she added: “Expecting farmers to run viable, high-cost farm businesses, continue to produce food and increase their environmental delivery, while phasing out existing support and without a complete replacement scheme for almost three years is high risk and a very big ask.”
The cuts are expected to reduce the income of livestock farmers, for example, by 60% to 80% by 2024, Batters said.
Kate Norgrove, of the WWF, said: “Our farmers have the potential to be frontline heroes in the climate and nature emergency, and this roadmap starts us on the right path. It must see increased investment in nature as a way to tackle climate change.”
Tom Lancaster, principal policy officer for agriculture at the RSPB, said: “This is a make or break moment for the government’s farming reforms, which are so important to both the future of farming and recovery of nature in England. [This plan] provides some welcome clarity, but faster progress is now needed over the coming months.”
But Craig Bennett, CEO of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “We are deeply worried that the pilot [environment] schemes simply cannot deliver the promise that nature will be in a better state. Four years on from the EU referendum, we still lack the detail and clarity on how farm funding will benefit the public.”
Other measures in the government plan include funding improvements in how farmers manage animal manure – slurry is a major polluter of both water and air – and a scheme where farmers seeking to leave the sector can cash out all the subsidies payments they are due up to 2028 in 2022, part of efforts to help new farmers enter the sector.
The government said it would be cutting “red tape” for farmers, with warning letters replacing automatic fines for minor issues and more targeted – though not fewer – inspections.
In July, the government said rules about growing diverse crops, fallow land and hedges would be abolished in 2021, claiming they had little environmental benefit. Farming policy is a devolved matter and other UK nations have yet to bring forward firm new plans.
Allume Energy’s Australian-developed SolShare product, which allows multiple energy consumers in, say, an apartment block, to share the benefits of a single rooftop solar array, has achieved certification which will allow it to enter the potential AU$102 billion (US$75.2 billion) United States market.
As the world’s first behind-the-meter solar sharing technology, SolShare is used to knocking it out of the ballpark, but becoming the first Power Division Control System (PDCS) to be UL certified is a game-changer.
UL is a leading global safety science organization with one of the highest trust ratings in the world and getting its stamp of approval “is a huge milestone,” said Kristy Battista, Allume Energy’s chief technology officer in an announcement on Friday.
“To confirm that the SolShare continues to operate, or shuts down in a controlled manner when exposed to operating extremes that are rarely experienced in the real world, provides further validation of Allume’s thorough design and internal testing approach,” said Battista of the abnormal overloads, induced failures in components, extreme temperatures and other stresses that the product was exposed to in the course of UL testing.
SolShare has already achieved many milestones at home in Australia, including winning this year’s Clean Energy Council Innovation Award. The CEC said that in the first six months of the technology’s deployment on a community housing building in Melbourne it met 39% of all resident’s electricity demand from a single PV system and battery, “and reduced each apartment’s electricity bill by over [AU]$155 [US$114].”
Technology that enables a fair transition
To manage this fair distribution of available solar energy, the SolShare sits behind the meter, constantly monitoring the energy demands of all energy consumers connected to its system, and proportionally allocates generated energy at any given time.
Allume Energy’s co-founder and CEO, Cameron Knox, explained to pv magazineearlier this year, that everyone hooked up to a SolShare device “receives an equal allocation and they receive this allocation at the time when they will save the most money.”
That is, “if you and I are neighbors in an apartment building and I leave on holiday for the first two weeks of the month, the SolShare system would recognize that I’m not using much power and therefore I would not benefit much from my solar allocation. My solar allocation will be held back and more may be sent to other users within the system. When I return and begin to use my power, SolShare will recognize this and start to send through my solar allocation.”
Allume Energy has been testing and iterating its product in the Australian market since 2016 and installations on social housing are saving residents money on their electricity bills in the ACT, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria.
In December last year, Allume Energy was also chosen to provide its technology to publicly listed property developer Mirvac, for deployment on its multi-tenanted residential and commercial properties.
The first installation will be at Mirvac’s luxury Folia apartments, in Melbourne’s Doncaster, which are now close to completion.
Made for Australia, the SolShare has found broader application
SolShare is a solution “developed for the peculiarities of the Australian market, where we have low feed-in tariffs but a high demand for solar,” Alexander Marks, Allume Energy’s chief operating officer, told pv magazine today, “so it’s been optimized for this market but it turns out it has applicability overseas.”
Having realized its potential to fulfill the needs of the U.S. market at an early stage in the development of the SolShare, the company has simultaneously pursued a certification and test pilot path in both markets.
Says Marks: “We’ve been working since mid 2019 in Illinois and in North Carolina. And we’ve been aiming to get this certification so we can proceed with pilot installs of our technology on some low-income housing in Los Angeles.”
From January this year, California introduced a requirement that all new homes, including apartment buildings of up to three storeys high, must have solar installed as part of the build. “We’ve got the solution to help that demand,” says Marks.
The company has been supported in California by start-up accelerator Elemental Excelerator, and also has a partnership lined up with Sunrun, a leading installer of solar systems and battery systems across the U.S.
No known competitors
Allume Energy’s research indicates that the United States has some 22.2 million occupied “multi-family units” – as apartment buildings are called in U.S. property parlance – of which around 75% have roof space suitable for solar. It has calculated that, “this represents a US$75 billion market opportunity.”
As yet, the SolShare is peerless, meaning it has no hardware competitors in the market. In the U.S., Marks tells pv magazine, “what they call virtual net metering is in some ways an alternative to SolShare but it requires co-operation from the distribution network, which has to set up a special tariff, which can take years of regulatory engagement and is quite slow to come about in the various distribution networks – in Australia we have some 16 distribution network service providers, in the U.S. they have around 3,000.”
Having achieved UL1741 certification – the standard for inverters, converters, controllers and interconnection system equipment for use with distributed energy resources – the future looks promising for Allume Energy in the U.S. and other markets which similarly rely on the UL mark of approval.
Marks says it’s been a long road to achieve this commercializing recognition, and that perhaps if he, Knox and Battista had known how long it would take, they may not have persisted with the development of SolShare. Instead they pursued one milestone at a time, to achieve the company vision of providing everyone, not just property owners, with access to rooftop solar.
“Solar is definitely the best way to reduce people’s electricity bills after reaping all the low-hanging fruit of replacing incandescent globes with CFLs or LEDs,” says Marks. “The outcomes that we’ve had on social housing have been excellent, reducing people’s summer electricity bills by up to 40% and taking that bill shock pressure off them.”
A major offshore wind farm in the Netherlands is now fully operational, with its owners, Danish energy firm Orsted, claiming it provides enough green electricity to power one million households.
Situated 23 kilometers (around 14.3 miles) off the coast of Zeeland, in the southwest of the Netherlands, the 752 megawatt (MW) Borssele 1 & 2 offshore wind farm spans an area of 112 square kilometers. It uses 94 wind turbines from Siemens Gamesa.
In an announcement Friday, Orsted described the facility as the second-largest operating offshore wind farm in the world. The largest, Hornsea One, has a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW) and was also developed by Orsted.
News of Borssele 1 & 2′s commissioning is the latest example of European countries embracing offshore wind and comes after the European Union said it wanted to increase its offshore wind capacity from 12 to 300 GW by 2050.
The “Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy” from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, also aims for 40 GW of ocean energy such as tidal and wave power within the same time frame.
A number of major offshore wind projects located in European waters are now in the pipeline. These include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm in Britain, which left the EU in January 2020.
A 50:50 joint venture between SSE Renewables and Equinor, the Dogger Bank facility will have a total capacity of 3.6 GW once completed, making it the largest in the world.
At the end of last week, it was announced that a deal to fund the first two phases of the project had been completed. According to SSE, investment for Dogger Bank A and B will amount to approximately £6 billion (around $8 billion).
While Europe is now home to a mature offshore wind sector, the one in the U.S. is still relatively new.
The next few years could see the sector develop, however, with companies starting to invest large amounts of money in schemes located off the East Coast.
Back in September, for instance, oil and gas giant BP took 50% stakes in Equinor’s Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects, which are located off the coasts of New York State and Massachusetts respectively.
The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden.
These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century.
Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts.
But the experts are worried the long-term optimism is not matched by short-term plans to cut CO2.
For more than a decade, researchers from the Climate Action Tracker have kept a close eye on what countries’ collective carbon-cutting pledges mean for our warming world.
After the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009, the group estimated that global temperatures would rise by 3.5C by the end of this century.
Source: Climate Action Tracker Source: BBC
But the creation in 2015 of the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid dangerous warming of the Earth, made a considerable impact. As a result of the international deal, countries slowly started to switch away from fossil fuels.
In September this year, the group concluded that the world was heading for warming of around 2.7C by 2100.
Japan and South Korea have both followed suit, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. South Africa and Canada have also announced their own net zero targets.
The other significant change is the election of Joe Biden in the US.
Source: Climate Action Tracker / Source: BBC
Tackling climate change is a major part of his agenda. He has promised to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050. That move would reduce global temperatures by 0.1C by 2100.
“We now have north of 50% of global emissions covered by big countries with a zero emissions by mid-century goal,” said Bill Hare from Climate Analytics, who helped lead the Climate Action Tracker analysis.
“When you add all that up, along with what a whole bunch of other countries are doing, then you move the temperature dial from around 2.7C to really quite close to two degrees.”
“It’s still a fair way off from the Paris Agreement target, but it is a really major development,” he told BBC News.
President-elect Joe Biden has selected former US Secretary of State John Kerry to be his climate envoy. Source: REUTERS
Potential difficulties
The CAT researchers say they have taken a fairly conservative approach but they readily acknowledge that their optimistic analysis comes with some major caveats.
The biggest problem as they see it, is that the near-term plans to cut carbon by 2030 are just not up to the job.
“Countries have not yet adjusted their short-term actions to be on a pathway towards the long-term target,” said Niklas Höhne, from the NewClimate Institute, who also works on the Climate Action Tracker.
“Long-term targets are easier, they are far away. But short-term actions are happening right now and they affect citizens, they affect voters. And that’s why this is much more difficult,” he told BBC News.
Politicians have been under pressure to act on climate change from protestors, including Greta Thunberg. Source: REUTERS
The countries that have signed up to the Paris agreement are expected to lodge new carbon-cutting plans for 2030 by the end of this year.
It’s expected that a number will do so, including the UK and the EU.
But there are several countries who are still reluctant to set goals, and many poorer nations are still looking to invest in coal.
“There are countries that still remain bad actors, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and a few others,” said Bill Hare.
“And we also have a pipeline of coal plants in the region where I’m working now in Asia. It has not collapsed, it has not gone away, so yes, there’s much to be concerned about. And there’s much that can go wrong.”
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What about the response to Covid-19?
According to observers, the response of countries to the Covid crisis is a huge opportunity to focus their short-term spending on renewable energy and increased decarbonisation.
“The pandemic opened a window to not only get countries to outline their long-term goal, but to actually move onto the right path so that they can actually achieve the long term goal,” said Dr Maisa Rojas, who is the director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research at the University of Chile in Santiago.
“Are we going to harness that opportunity? My impression is that many, including the EU, are harnessing it.”
