Advanced Energy Perspectives

This post is one in a series of feature stories on trends shaping advanced energy markets in the U.S. and around the world, drawn from Advanced Energy Now 2015 Market Report, which was prepared for AEE by Navigant Research. 

The rise of distributed generation (DG) is one of the most important trends in the energy industry today. Traditional utility business models, which rely mainly on volumetric electricity sales to provide the revenue needed to cover the costs of the grid, are challenged by the dramatic growth in the deployment of technologies that generate electricity “behind the meter,” which reduce the need to purchase power from central utility-scale generation facilities. Leading distributed generation technologies, including solar photovoltaics (PV), small and medium wind, fuel cells, and natural gas generator sets, combined in 2014 for $6.3 billion in revenue from installations in the United States, and $35 billion globally. 

In many ways, California is a special case. With an economy about the same size of Canada’s ($2.3 trillion in 2014) and a population of more than 38 million (roughly one in eight Americans is a Californian), California’s energy policies affect huge numbers of people and a large portion of the American economy. And now, under new rules set by regulators, California’s investor-owned utilities are getting set to pull rooftop solar, energy efficiency, energy storage, and other distributed resources into their system planning. In California, the electric power system is not just about power plants and wires any more.

Fresh off Independence Day celebrations back home, Congress returned to Washington this week with a busy legislative agenda for the second half of the year. The main focus in energy will be the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee’s push for comprehensive legislation. The challenge: keeping it simple.

This post is one in a series of feature stories on trends shaping advanced energy markets in the U.S. and around the world, drawn from Advanced Energy Now 2015 Market Report, which was prepared for AEE by Navigant Research. 

While one of the key indicators of a society’s advance is the degree to which it can distance itself from its trash, waste is increasingly viewed as a strategic resource. Recently surpassing 7 billion people, the world’s population is not only growing in number, but its propensity to consume is also accelerating. In 2014, an estimated 1.5 billion tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) was generated globally. This total is expected to surpass 2 billion tons annually within the next 10 years. According to the World Bank’s 2012 report “What a Waste,” the amount of MSW generated worldwide is growing faster than the rate of urbanization. With waste generation rates set to more than double over the next 20 years in low- and middle-income countries, the costs of managing waste disposal are expected to see a steep rise – but so are opportunities to leverage advanced technologies across the waste value chain.

Does your state have a renewable portfolio standard or an energy efficiency resource standard? Have your electric utilities had their revenue decoupled from volume of electricity sales? How do your state’s policies stack up with the rest of the country? Do you even know what these policies mean?

AEE now has everything you need to know about key state energy policies. It’s all on PowerPortal, your one-stop shop for high-value information on key energy sector participants, utility programs and energy data in each state. See this alongside other data already in the PowerPortal, including utility structures, schedules for key renewable energy and energy efficiency proceedings, time varying rates programs, and much, much more! PowerPortal is part of AEE’s PowerSuite. Sign up for a free trial here.

In the meantime, here are 10 tidbits on Renewable Portfolio Standards, Energy Efficiency Resource Standards and revenue decoupling to get you started!