Happy Monday and welcome back to the Green New Spiel, the newsletter bringing you the latest stories and developments in the world of clean-tech, green energy and other climate related news.
Please enjoy the stories we have for you today and as ever do let us know if there are topics you would like us to cover more of.
This week on the Green New Spiel:
💨 🇬🇧 Wind in its sails: the UK’s main energy source in Q1 2023
🐢 The grid is moving too slowly
☀️ Printing power
🏦 SVB making better headlines
🗑 Food waste powering America
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💨 🇬🇧 Wind in its sails: the UK’s main energy source in Q1 2023
It was confirmed last week that the UK’s main energy source in the first three months of year came from our wind turbines. Hopefully the first quarter of many! The majority of the wind power has come from offshore wind farms as installation of onshore wind farms has been effectively banned since 2015.
As you will read below, if we want these positive headlines to continue, we will need to do a lot more work to our grid…
🐢 The grid is moving too slowly
The UK is consistently developing new renewable energy projects, however, many projects are being forced to wait to connect to the UK’s grid, some for up to 15 years. The UK currently has the longest backlog in Europe.
Each new project requires a connection point which when aggregated means the grid needs to improve its existing infrastructure to accommodate all this new generation capacity. According to BNEF, there are 200 gigawatts worth of electricity projects waiting for a connection; that would be enough to power the equivalent of c. 150m British homes.
☀️ Printing power
Silicon solar cells are the established solar panels however they do face challenges: they are rigid, fragile and consume large amounts of energy to produce. There is also the risk that we may actually run out of the necessary materials to build them as we move towards net zero.
Researchers in Wales have made a leap forward with an alternative solution: ‘Perovskite’ solar cells. They have produced solar film that is rollable and fully printable: this means a solar film could be wrapped around uneven surfaces, providing better land use and increasing the surfaces from which solar power can be generated.
They are not yet in production as researchers continue to push for higher efficiency levels, which as of today, lag traditional silicon solar cells.
🏦 SVB making better headlines
Community solar developer Pivot Energy announced a financing package worth $203m, led by Silicon Valley Bank. This is not SVBs first community solar project: the bank claims to have participated in financing more than three-fifths of all U.S. community solar projects as of the first quarter of 2022.
Community solar projects require growing sources of financing to enable the scale required to match policymakers’ and industry targets. Over the last decade community solar has expanded to 22 states and a capacity of 5.6 gigawatts. The industry is looking to accelerate this growth and hit 30 gigawatts by 2030.
🗑 Food waste powering America
American grocery stores are throwing away billions of pounds of food waste annually, most of which finds its way to landfills and releases methane into the atmosphere. There is a growing industry which is using food waste and converting it into energy.
Divert is helping drive this: it gathers left over food and puts it through anaerobic digesters, where the organic matter is transformed into fuel. The end result is renewable natural gas (RNG), which can be delivered straight to where it is required after mixing with fossil gasses.
Investments in RNG, also known as ‘biomethane’ is reaching new heights with an increasing number of energy companies looking for cleaner production methods. This has however been met with some friction as the sector debates the absolute impact of these solutions, carbon accounting challenges and potentially incentivising more pollution. Click the link to read more.
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Ciao,
Carlo and Rob