Rapid changes are underway for local solar and storage, as innovations drive down costs and create new markets for hardware and services, says Bill Nussey in the book Freeing Energy.

The former technology CEO and venture capitalist describes dozens of local energy opportunities, projecting that each represents a market of at least a billion dollars of annual revenue.

Sage Energy Consulting announced that it is is helping the Anaheim Transportation Network (ATN) on a multi-stage plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, save on their electric costs and intelligently charge their new electric buses, including some charging locations with solar power and microgrid battery backup systems.

ATN bus routes include stops at Disneyland, meaning park attendees will be able to take a zero-emission ride to Splash Mountain. ATN has a stated goal of achieving 100% fleet electrification by 2025.

What will happen to rooftop solar in California, the 74,000 Californians working in solar, and all the other states watching its example when NEM 3.0 is revealed? Distributed solar+storage systems and microgrids will play a critical part in reaching the state’s goals, and can be much faster to build than utility-scale farms, according to Bill Nussey, author of the new book Freeing Energy: How Innovators Are Using Local-Scale Solar and Batteries to Disrupt the Global Energy Industry from the Outside.

“Climate policy has become a giant traffic jam where progress has slowed to a crawl,” Nussey says. “Local energy is the fast-moving express lane that nobody knows about.”

The U.S. solar industry reached a critical milestone this year, surpassing 100 GW of installed electric generating capacity. But despite significant growth across the solar sector, attention is now turning to supply chain constraints, which continue to be on the rise since the second half of 2020.

The number of U.S. renewable energy projects that can realistically come online by the end of 2023 is currently dwindling, according to Edison Energy’s Q2 2021 Renewables Market Update. Significant demand for renewable power from a host of buyers is leading to many projects being contracted and moved off market. Meanwhile, other projects are seeing their online dates pushed into 2024.

Sage Energy Consulting will work with the Judicial Council of California (JCC), on an investment in solar power and energy storage.

The JCC plans to install rooftop solar panels, solar carports, and batteries across 43 potential locations to enable its courthouses to generate enough solar power to cover a portion of their routine energy needs.

By the end of the year, Vermont’s Shelburne Museum will be fully powered by renewable energy.

The feat has been achieved by covering two plots of land adjacent to the Shelburne Museum with large solar power systems, known as arrays, the first of which was completed in late 2020. Financed and constructed in partnership with local company Encore Renewable Energy, the arrays have a 25-year life cycle with the museum estimating each year they’ll generate the carbon equivalent of powering 150 New England homes and removing around 200 cars off the road.

Microsoft has made another big climate pledge. The company said Wednesday that it will work to power all its offices and data centers around the world with carbon-free energy 100 percent of the time by 2030.

It’s also developed a data tool for more precise estimation of the carbon reduction each clean-energy project on a grid (be it a wind farm, solar array, or large-scale storage) achieves. Microsoft built the tool together with REsurety and said it will pilot it in Texas.

For companies looking to embrace climate action, just putting solar panels on your roof isn’t necessarily enough.

“Making changes to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions can be really complicated. Having that energy knowledge, whether in-house or outsourced to experts, is critical because it’s not something you can just figure out on your own without the expertise. So, when some businesses talk about net-zero carbon goals, they may only be thinking of their energy bill but that’s just a small piece of the pie in the context of their entire supply chain and corporate energy footprint.” – Lauren Glickman, Managing Partner at RenewComm

US$300 million in new funding from Manulife Investment Management will enable CleanCapital, a clean energy investment platform mostly focused on distributed solar, to also provide “long-term, flexible capital” to energy storage developers.

Our sister site PV Tech reported last week that CleanCapital had secured the funding to help grow its asset portfolio, coming as CleanCapital bought two renewable energy portfolios totaling 63MW in deals worth US$775 million, including operating solar, new-build solar and energy storage systems.

Renewable energy investor CleanCapital LLC said April 20 that it is using $300 million in new funding from Manulife Investment Management to buy up more mid-sized solar plants and to begin developing projects in a part of the U.S. market that historically has been difficult for big investors to access.

Money is flooding into the renewable energy sector as companies and governments set targets to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and swelling enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance investing drives financiers to allocate more capital to "green" infrastructure. According to consultancy Mercom Capital Group LLC, the solar market drew in $8.1 billion in corporate funding during the first three months of the year, a 21% increase from the prior quarter.

Manulife Investment Management committed $300 million to invest in CleanCapital, an owner and operator of U.S. solar assets.

The insurance giant took a majority stake in CleanCapital, said Thomas Byrne, CEO of the New York-based solar and energy storage company. The size of the stake will grow as CleanCapital invests the Manulife funding. Terms weren’t disclosed.

The Salvation Army has strengthened its commitment to sustainability with new plans to significantly expand their adoption of solar and energy savings efforts in Nevada and Arizona. The iconic charity has taken a regional approach to cutting its carbon footprint, adding plans for multiple facilities across the Western Territories that will save money and reduce emissions with solar panels.