Strategic solar for a stronger grid

The solar industry is at a turning point, shifting from niche investments to a cornerstone of America’s clean energy future. With renewable energy investment soaring and energy needs intensifying, solar's role has never been more crucial.

Sylvia Martinez, Principal Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, and David Banmiller sit down with Gregg Felton, CEO of Altus Power, to explore how commercial and community solar are driving the U.S. toward its decarbonisation goals. Gregg shares his journey from investment management to leading a renewable energy powerhouse, detailing how solar has evolved into a viable asset class due to falling costs and rising electricity prices.

The pair discuss Altus Power’s strategy of building solar arrays near consumption hubs to ease grid stress and meet rising energy demand. Gregg emphasises the role of state support, partnerships, and incentives in driving growth, as well as the need for stakeholder education for broader solar adoption.

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Global investment in renewables is projected to surpass US$2 trillion by 2030, with wind, solar and storage projects leading the way. Syliva Martinez, Principal Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, and David Banmiller are joined by Ray Long, President and CEO at ACORE (American Council On Renewable Energy), to look at how the energy transition is creating jobs, lowering costs and making the U.S. more competitive in the global market. American families are expected to save between US$27 and US$38 billion over the next eight years thanks to clean energy initiatives. However, there are still bottlenecks holding back progress, like transmission gridlock and permitting delays. With bipartisan efforts underway, such as the Manchin-Barrasso permitting bill, Ray explores the impact they’re having, and how the industry is moving toward overcoming the challenges.

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The Interchange Recharged is brought to you by Anza Renewables. Are you wasting valuable time tracking down solar module information that quickly goes stale? Anza’s revolutionary platform can help with up-to-date pricing, technical, risk, and domestic content data from 110 solar modules. Compare products in minutes and redirect your time to higher value work. Find out more at go.anzarenewables.com/woodmac

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Part two of our analysis of safety developments for energy storage and batteries.

Guest host Sylvia Leyva Martinez, Principal Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, joins David Banmiller to explore the challenges and solutions to lithium-ion battery safety. In part one of our two part series, thermal runaway events (which can lead to fires) were a key issue. What are the big players in manufacturing doing to address these? Andrew Tattersall is Industrial Vertical Market Lead for batteries at Siemens, and he joins the show to answer the question. With net zero goals fast approaching, how are Siemens working to improve safety? Early detection systems and regulatory frameworks are key to preventing incidents. 

Additionally, data analytics play a crucial role in predictive safety measures. Dr Kai-Phillip Kairies is Co-Founder of Accure, a battery analytics company working to study battery behaviour to prevent malfunctions before they occur. 

Key questions you’ll get answers to in this episode: what are Siemens' Net Zero plans, and how are they addressing sustainability across their operations and supply chain? Andrew discusses Siemens' 2030 net-zero goals and outlines innovations like electric paint lines, and support for suppliers to achieve net zero by 2050. How are battery safety concerns being addressed, particularly around thermal runaway events? Andrew and KP discuss early detection systems and the role of data analytics in preventing safety incidents. 

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The Interchange Recharged is brought to you by Anza Renewables. Are you wasting valuable time tracking down solar module information that quickly goes stale? Anza’s revolutionary platform can help with up-to-date pricing, technical, risk, and domestic content data from 110 solar modules. Compare products in minutes and redirect your time to higher value work. Find out more at go.anzarenewables.com/woodmac

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Exploring fire risk mitigation in the face of lithium-ion challenges.

Battery and energy storage-related fires are still relatively rare, but when they do occur, they are challenging to manage due to the high energy density of lithium-ion batteries. So how is the industry working to mitigate these risks? To find out, David is joined by Kelly Sarber, CEO of Strategic Management and Vice Chair of NY-BEST, a battery industry trade group in New York. Kelly advocates for educating communities with planned energy storage projects, especially around risk management. A recent survey revealed that 42% of these communities expressed safety concerns, primarily due to fears of fires. The conversation emphasises the importance of involving local communities and first responders early in the planning process to build trust and transparency.

Lithium-ion battery fires can be particularly difficult to suppress due to the risk of thermal runaway, which can cause the fire to reignite even after being extinguished. Anthony Natale, Director of Risk at the Fire & Risk Alliance, works on identifying and managing risks in utility and battery storage. Anthony and Kelly discuss the complexities of controlling these fires and stress the need for better containment and isolation strategies during incidents. They also explore necessary design changes in battery energy storage systems (BESS), such as direct injection of suppression agents, to improve fire response.

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The Interchange Recharged is brought to you by Anza Renewables. Are you wasting valuable time tracking down solar module information that quickly goes stale? Anza’s revolutionary platform can help with up-to-date pricing, technical, risk, and domestic content data from 110 solar modules. Compare products in minutes and redirect your time to higher value work. Find out more at go.anzarenewables.com/woodmac

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Less than 1% of clean energy investments goes to developing countries. Guarantees and partnerships could increase this.

The global energy transition effort is all about ‘the new’. New technology, new financing models, new ways of looking at energy systems. The need for ‘the new’ is greatest in developing countries. For many of them, the challenge isn’t just transitioning to clean energy, it’s providing energy access in the first place. By 2030, we could see nearly a billion people left without access to energy, never mind clean energy. So how can we get the investment flowing to where it’s desperately needed?

Damilola Ogunbiyi is CEO of the organisation Sustainability For All. SE4All works with public and private sector to provide access to reliable, affordable, sustainable and new energy for all by 2030. David sits down with Damilola to discuss her holistic view of the energy transition, the innovative financing models needed to mobilise capital, carbon markets, and how the industry should address the challenge of improving energy access while transitioning to clean sources.

Energy access is directly linked to quality of life. This is especially true as the climate crisis worsens. Both public and private sectors need to work together to mobilise capital for the energy transition. So how can we do it?

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To keep up to date with everything we talk about on the show, sign up for our weekly Inside Track newsletter. You’ll get extra analysis from Wood Mackenzie and be notified when a new episode of the podcast is out. 

The Interchange Recharged is brought to you by Anza Renewables. Are you wasting valuable time tracking down solar module information that quickly goes stale? Anza’s revolutionary platform can help with up-to-date pricing, technical, risk, and domestic content data from 110 solar modules. Compare products in minutes and redirect your time to higher value work. Find out more

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How can we reimagine Scope 3 in order to make faster progress?

The intention of the original framing of Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions reporting was to support business understanding of their broader impact on the climate, so they would take responsibility for transformation to net zero and the impact of the complete value chain. Scope 3 emissions reporting in particular has become more of a focus of progressive companies that have developed robust plans for - and taken meaningful steps to address - scope 1 and 2 emissions. As they dig into scope 3, they are often overwhelmed by the accounting that’s required and struggle to develop strategies to meaningfully address impacts in their value chains, especially in ways they can quantify and count towards targets. 

So how can the industry streamline this process? To find out David Banmiller is joined by Jenny Ahlen, Managing Director at the We Mean Business Coalition. Jenny directs the strategy, coordination, and execution of their net zero programs and campaigns; these include a focus on improving the way scope 3 emissions are approached. We Mean Business were introduced to Ed Crooks - host of our sister podcast The Energy Gang - at COP28, where CEO Maria Mandiluce outlined their mission. That conversation, which also examined the pledge to phase out fossil fuels, you can find on The Energy Gang podcast, wherever you're listening to this.

The argument is that the reporting standards have created a huge amount of work for organisations without any real benefit to decarbonisation efforts. Companies need to draw up net zero plans, understand Scope 3, manage their supply chain emissions and so on, but to what goal? So, the key question David and Jenny discuss in this week’s episode: is it possible that in focusing so much on the influence big corporations can have on their value chains, we’ve let many companies and stakeholders in the global north off the hook for proactively reducing emissions without that prompt from customers?  

Jenny explains to David why the need for new, alternative approaches to reporting is crucial to accelerating the energy transition. Scope 3 is about global climate impacts and getting companies engaged to catalyse the system transformations needed. What would this then need to look like to incentivise that type of action at scale? And how do we create an ecosystem to reward those participating and making meaningful progress? Listen to find out.

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To keep up to date with everything we talk about on the show, sign up for our weekly Inside Track newsletter. You’ll get extra analysis from Wood Mackenzie and be notified when a new episode of the podcast is out. 

The Interchange Recharged is brought to you by Anza Renewables. Are you wasting valuable time tracking down solar module information that quickly goes stale? Anza’s revolutionary platform can help with up-to-date pricing, technical, risk, and domestic content data from 110 solar modules. Compare products in minutes and redirect your time to higher value work. Find out more

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The Environmental Defense Fund wants changes made to the way the industry analyses hydrogen emissions data.

A recent study from the Environmental Defense Fund asserts the energy industry is miscalculating the true impacts of deploying hydrogen. Hydrogen systems, with new analysis, could prove to be better – or worse – than the fossil fuels they intend to replace.

“Clean, green” hydrogen deployment can be considerably better or worse for the climate based on factors typically overlooked in standard assessments. That’s the finding of a new study from the EDF. The climate benefits of hydrogen vary depending on factors such as methane emissions, carbon capture, and hydrogen loss. Steve Hamburg is Chief Scientist at the EDF. He joins David to discuss his findings, and to examine the impact on the energy industry of these new analyses, as hydrogen continues to gain traction as a reliable source of clean energy.

Improvements are needed for standard hydrogen life cycle analyses as they currently don’t account for all climate warming emissions and impacts over time. By including the warming effects of three crucial and frequently overlooked factors in determining the climate impact of hydrogen deployment pathways the results of an assessment can look surprisingly different. Just how different? Listen to find out.

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To keep up to date with everything we talk about on the show, sign up for our weekly Inside Track newsletter. You’ll get extra analysis from Wood Mackenzie and be notified when a new episode of the podcast is out. 

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Over 50 million homes in the US use propane. Within a few years, anywhere from 100-300 million gallons of renewable propane are expected to be available for homes and the transport industry. By 2050, renewable propane could meet half the world’s demand for non-chemical propane. 

So, the demand is there, but are the means of production? Where is the feedstock coming from and how scalable are production methods? To answer this, David Banmiller is joined by Mike Stivala, President and CEO of Suburban Propane Partners, a nationwide distributor of propane and renewable propane.  

The benefits of renewable propane are clear: reliability, portability and power, but with four times less carbon intensity than its regular counterpart.  

How is Suburban Propane Partners tackling the issues of supply chain? Where does Mike see the future of the sector and where is the investment coming from? Listen to find out.

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The Department of Energy’s ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy) is an agency tasked with the research and development of advanced energy technologies. Since 2009, they’ve provided nearly US$4 billion in funding for more than 1500 potentially transformative energy technology projects. 

One particular area of focus for them at the moment is advanced nuclear. There’s a lot of potential for nuclear to deliver reliable power to millions of American homes, but projects are still finding costs prohibitive. Could advancements in technology be the thing to change this? Jenifer Shafer is Associate Director for Technology at ARPA-E, and she joins David to discuss initiatives in her department, and the focus on reducing imports, reducing emissions, improving efficiency, and enhancing American competitiveness in clean energy manufacturing.  

What are the priorities for nuclear? Is it advancements in technology, getting costs down, or removing regulatory barriers to deployment? To analyse the current state of the sector, Jenifer and David are joined by David Brown, Director of Energy Transition Practice at Wood Mackenzie, for the second half of the show. Together they explore the impact of the Biden administration's US$900 million support for nuclear small modular reactors, and the government’s role in sponsoring new supply sources for uranium.

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Demand for heating at industrial sites around the world is rising. How can demand be met sustainably?

Think of energy storage, and what do you think of? Probably lithium and nickel. But what about salt, and bricks? One of the big challenges for the energy transition is storage. It’s a particular problem for industrial-scale buildings and areas that need a lot of energy. Currently about half the energy demand is heat, and electric batteries are (most of the time) the ones providing it.

Where you need heat, you need a big battery. Or do you? On the Interchange: Recharged, David Banmiller explores the other options that are emerging. Professor Robert Barthorpe is a lecturer in the Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. He joins David to discuss the new technologies that are opening up possibilities when it comes to providing heat to homes in the UK. There are plenty of options on a residential scale, but what about industrial?

In California, a company called Rondo is approaching the issue of heat delivery to commercial-scale buildings with a novel solution: they’re using bricks to store energy at half the cost of green hydrogen or chemical batteries. What’s the technology look like, and how scalable is it? David talks to CEO John O’Donnell to find out.

Finally, another innovative way of storing energy in the form of heat comes from Norwegian-based company Kyoto. What they call the Heatcube is a structure of vertical tanks filled with molten salt, that are charged by renewable electricity at periods of low cost. Installed at the site where heat is needed, the Heatcube stores it at 500c for use when required. Camilla Nilsson is CEO at Kyoto, and she joins David to explore the Heatcube and the trends in demand for heat across global industry.

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5x growth in five years: Convergent energy is overseeing $1 billion worth of energy storage development.

Managing intermittent energy supply is a crucial part of the energy transition. When the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun doesn’t shine, we need a backup. Across two days of the Solar & Energy Storage summit, industry leaders and analysts explored the newest technology providing that service. 

Peter Cavan is Senior Vice President of Market Development at Convergent. They finance and manage all aspects of on-site renewable energy development and operations to significantly and sustainably lower electricity bills for the industrial sector, electric cooperatives, and municipal utilities, and investor owned utilities. Peter joins David in the SESS podcast studio to discuss the future of energy storage and the trends in the market. 

Convergent has over 800 MW of storage and 1 GWh of solar-plus-storage capacity operating or under development. How has their approach to storage evolved over the past decade? How are utilities integrating distributed storage into their operations? And where does Peter see the next big innovation in the sector coming from? 

To wrap up our SESS 2024 coverage, David brings you everything you need to know about distributed energy storage.

For more information from our sponsor Convergent Energy and Power on their industry-leading battery storage and solar solutions, please go to convergentep.com

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