Tag Archives: Microsoft

Should Google and Microsoft focus on sourcing their own 100% clean power or cleaning up the dirtiest grids?

At-a-Glance:

Major companies with ambitious clean energy goals face a complicated set of options for how they ought to prioritize their efforts over the coming decade. Should they make their own electricity supply as clean as possible, or should they focus first on cleaning up the dirtiest power grids? To learn more, read, “Should Google and Microsoft focus on sourcing their own 100% clean power or cleaning up the dirtiest grids?”

Key Takeaways:

  • Google’s 24/7 clean energy pledge, made a year ago, which sets a 2030 deadline for powering its data centers and corporate campuses with 100 percent carbon-free energy every hour of the year.
  • Microsoft followed up earlier this year with a 100/100/0 pledge to match 100 percent of its corporate power consumption with zero-carbon resources 100 percent of the time by decade’s end.
  • Maximizing corporate carbon reductions has been gaining traction in recent years: investing in clean energy projects based on their ​“emissionality,” or their ability to directly reduce carbon emissions

Path to 100% Perspective: 

Clean energy goals along with clean energy investments is accelerating the decarbonization journey by putting a focus on decreasing carbon emissions. Google and Microsoft have been making headlines for their clean energy efforts for several years. Each organization has been able to promote their 100% achievements within the past five years. The path to 100% renewable energy does not look the same for every organization, community or region, but the steps to decarbonization are similar. Investing in renewable energy as well as clean-technology is consistently producing clean energy solutions as well as additional pledges and milestone accomplishments.

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

WRI lays out options for large energy users to decarbonize beyond renewables procurement

At-a-Glance:

Large energy buyers should take a leading role in accelerating the carbon-free grid transition by expanding their approaches to clean energy procurement practices, the World Resources Institute (WRI) wrote in a recently published report. Pursuing transmission buildout to increase access of clean energy, incorporating demand flexibility in procurement practices and getting more granular data on grid emissions, such as hourly matching, are some of the innovative approaches that cities and corporations with decarbonization goals have already taken to explore market products and opportunities across the grids they operate on, according to the WRI report. To learn more, read, “WRI lays out options for large energy users to decarbonize beyond renewables procurement.”

Key Takeaways:

  • WRI highlighted the efforts of Google; Microsoft; Apple; Des Moines, Iowa; Sacramento, California, and other large energy buyers to use different procurement practices with a focus on firm resources, reducing near-term emissions reductions, or enabling battery storage and carbon capture.
  • Michael Terrell, who chairs the board of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, said that 80% of the renewable energy deals in the U.S. occur in deregulated wholesale markets.
  • Des Moines, which WRI reported as the first U.S. city to commit to a 24/7 carbon-free electricity target by 2035, sought allies in other customers of MidAmerican Energy, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.
    • Des Moines’ progress and approach is upheld as an example in the recent WRI study.

Path to 100% Perspective: 

State, provincial, municipal and in some cases national governments are declaring mandatory targets for 100% clean power. These regulatory targets are often considered renewable mandates as it is commonly understood that wind, solar, hydro and other renewable energy sources are needed to replace fossil-fuel power plants in a zero-carbon emissions future. In most cases, the metrics that define “100%” compliance are often decoupled from strict renewable requirements, quantified using metrics such as carbon intensity (e.g., 0 g/kWh of CO2 emissions), thus potentially allowing for nuclear and combustion of biofuels and synthetic renewable fuels to meet the goals. The terms 100% renewable, 100% carbon-free and 100% carbon-neutral are often used interchangeably.

 

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash

Exclusive: Major companies united to push climate solutions

At-a-Glance:

A group of eight large companies, including tech and entertainment heavy hitters such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Disney and Netflix, are joining environmental groups and the U.N. to devise ways to scale funding for climate solutions. The collective will be called the Business Alliance to Scale Climate Solutions (BASCS), and will serve as a knowledge-sharing network that has the potential to accelerate companies’ emissions reduction efforts. To learn more, read “Exclusive: Major companies united to push climate solutions.”

Key Takeaways:

  • The new alliance allows firms that might otherwise compete with one another to launch clean energy projects to collaborate before engaging in such competition.
  • The alliance is explicit about preventing companies from simply trying to offset their emissions, and firms that join need to agree to core principles that emphasize the need for absolute emissions cuts.
  • Max Scher, who heads clean energy and carbon programs at Salesforce, told Axios that the alliance is unique in that it’s by businesses for businesses, and aims to break down silos in which many currently operate.

Path to 100% Perspective:

The global energy market is constantly evolving. Current market trends show the energy landscape is in transition towards more flexible energy systems with a rapidly increasing share of renewable energy, declining inflexible baseload generation and wider applications of storage technology. The declining costs of renewables have begun to reduce new investments into coal and other inflexible baseload technologies; a transition which will eventually cause renewables to become the new baseload. In 2017 itself, 14% of electricity generation worldwide was attributed to wind and solar. A focus on a renewable energy future is now unwavering for collaborators across public and private sectors alike.

Oil Majors Look to Fill Businesses’ Growing Appetite for Green Power

At-a-Glance:

Businesses are buying more renewable power, and oil majors want a piece of the action. European oil companies including BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC are building new wind and solar projects and striking deals to supply electricity to big corporate buyers like Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp., treading into the domain of traditional power companies. To learn more, read “Oil Majors Look to Fill Businesses’ Growing Appetite for Green Power.” Reading this article may require a subscription from the news outlet.

Key Takeaways:

  • Oil companies say securing long-term deals to supply electricity will provide a new source of income and underpin their expansion into wind and solar power as they seek to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and prepare for a lower-carbon economy.
  • Corporate power-purchase agreements are an area of focus for BP’s solar-power joint venture Lightsource BP, which this year signed deals to supply Amazon, Verizon Communications Inc. and a unit of insurer Allianz SE.
  • New deals continue to be struck at a rapid pace, rising 75% in the first four months of the year versus the same period a year ago, the BNEF data showed.

Path to 100% Perspective:

Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects that new wind and solar will cost less than existing coal and gas generation in China by 2027, and that new wind and solar will be cheaper than existing goal and gas generation in most of the world by 2030. As wind and solar power become increasingly cost-competitive, investments in traditional, inflexible base load plants such as large coal, nuclear, and gas combined-cycle plants are declining. This signals an end to the era of large, centralized power plants that run on fossil fuels.