For the first time in the U.S. a utility is piloting a community geothermal project to heat and cool 40 buildings and cut customers’ bills. Success will lead to scale up and replication, explains Adele Peters writing for the World Economic Forum. The case for community geothermal is very strong. Though geothermal’s up-front costs of installing pipes deep underground are high, running costs are low. The pilot, in Framingham (Massachusetts), will … [Read more...]
Community Batteries: when they’re the best option for overcoming grid constraints. And when they’re not
Community batteries are a shared asset in neighbourhoods with rooftop solar, avoiding the need for every household to have its own battery. Even people unable to have rooftop solar can use it. It’s taking off in Australia, supported at both the state and federal level. But Bjorn Sturmberg, Alice Wendy Russell, Hedda Ransan-Cooper, Louise Bardwell and Marnie Shaw at the Australian National University summarise their research which warns that it … [Read more...]
Europe needs a Regional Green Bank to fulfil its Green Deal and match the U.S.
Three years in, the European Green Deal remains unfulfilled as a long-term vision for decarbonising Europe by 2050, says Esmeralda Colombo at EIEE. To inject new momentum, in this week’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, EC President Ursula von der Leyen sketched out a Green Deal Industrial Plan to subsidise the cleantech industry and compete with the rest of the world, notably the US, and the EU Sovereignty Fund to equalise the … [Read more...]
Community Biomass: for energy independence, stable prices and local control
Energy independence is now at the top of the EU’s agenda. Almost all Europe’s biomass is already locally produced, contributing around 60% of the EU’s renewable energy. Marine Perrio at IEECP makes the case for promoting biomass prosumer projects. She points at regions dependent on biomass that have reported stable energy prices in the midst of the drastic increases in gas, oil and coal prices. Biomass uses organic feedstock from agriculture, … [Read more...]
A people-powered energy system: activating the community energy market for bioenergy
Among others, lack of preparedness for communities to tap the full bioenergy market potential[1], lack of bioenergy stakeholders’ awareness of the potential of communities and missing/ unsupportive (local, regional and national) framework and policy conditions. For a people-powered energy system, the Horizon 2020-funded project BECoop (2020-2023) aims at putting communities in charge of their local renewable (bio)energy generation. … [Read more...]
