NEW YORK, NY, March 9, 2021 — Dynamo Energy Hub today announced a new Board of Advisors with expertise in venture capital and impact investing, startup growth, renewable project development, sustainable buildings, as well as M&A and project finance. The Board of Advisors will support Dynamo as it expands to new markets and builds a clean energy and sustainability community with networking hubs in key cities around the world. The members of the newly announced Board of Advisors include:

• Nancy Pfund, Founder and Managing Partner, DBL Partners
• Sara Neff, Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Kilroy Realty Corporation
• Tom Burton, Member and Chair of Energy & Sustainability Practice, Mintz
• Tim Healy, former Chairman and CEO, EnerNOC (now Enel X)
• Snorre Valdimarsson, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Scatec

“We are thrilled to work with our Advisors to grow Dynamo’s reach and accelerate the clean energy transition by bringing energy leaders together,” said Meade Harris, Dynamo Energy Hub Co-Founder and CEO. “Dynamo breaks silos and creates commercial opportunities, growing our members’ networks beyond their current reach. Being part of Dynamo Energy Hub is the best way to be on the cutting-edge of the clean energy innovation.”

Commentary from the new Advisory Board members:

“Cultural capital is becoming as important as financial capital for clean tech startups. Dynamo Energy Hub provides a platform for them to connect, share insights and form partnerships. As a leader in sustainable investing, I am delighted to join Dynamo to help grow this innovative community.” — Nancy Pfund, Founder and Managing Partner, DBL Partners

“Dynamo is uniquely positioned to help corporations and governments meet their sustainability targets through their robust cleantech community, thought leadership, and platform for collaboration. There’s no doubt we are in the midst of a historic energy transition and being able to engage with critical decision-makers to understand the emerging challenges and opportunities is invaluable.” — Thomas Burton, Member and Chair of Energy & Sustainability Practice at Mintz

“There has never been a better time to be a clean energy entrepreneur. Market growth, technological advancement, and financial motivation are pushing the energy transition and giving rise to huge entrepreneurial opportunity. We are just beginning to tap the power of cleantech entrepreneurs, and I am looking forward to working with the Dynamo team and their members to support innovation which is key to advancing the clean energy economy.” — Tim Healy, former Chairman and CEO, EnerNOC (now Enel X)

“By bringing key stakeholders together into hubs around the world, Dynamo is fostering deeper connectivity in the clean energy community on a daily basis. Dynamo offers its members a flexible workspace and enables effective networking and co-working. Its hubs create a unique environment where members are working side-by-side toward the same goals, which is so needed.” — Sara Neff, Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Kilroy Realty Corporation

“The energy industry is increasingly complex and dynamic, and to efficiently transition to a clean energy economy, it’s important to foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing between the industry leaders, investors, and innovators across the world. Dynamo provides a globally-connected platform for thought leaders and practitioners to connect, share insights and market intelligence, and form partnerships. I am thrilled to be part of Dynamo as it works to bridge the Atlantic gap and build a tightly knit but global community.” — Snorre Valdimarsson, Executive Vice President & General Counsel, Scatec

Dynamo Energy Hub is a unique collection of global networking spaces. The hubs are located in state-of-the-art, design-first office environments, which include access to flexible workspace, networking events and thought leadership seminars. Through these physical and virtual spaces, Dynamo breaks down barriers between cleantech startups, innovative energy companies, and investors. We build a cultivated community that enables collaboration and facilitates commercial opportunities. Our mission is to accelerate the energy transition by accelerating our members’ growth.

Leading Clean Energy Investment Advisors Join Dynamo was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently spoke with Dynamo’s newest member Ørsted to learn more about who they work with, the benefits of growing the offshore wind industry to the US economy, key trends the company is watching, and what frontiers they are tackling in 2021. Dynamo Community Director Natalia Sharova interviewed Pamela Venzke, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Ørsted Offshore NA.

Could you tell us a little bit about Ørsted — what does someone who has never heard of the company in the US need to know about it?

At Ørsted we like to define ourselves by our vision: we believe in building a world that runs entirely on green energy. To help the world achieve this goal Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, and bioenergy plants.

Ørsted has its origin in the Danish state-owned company Dansk Naturgas A/S. The company was founded in 1972 to manage gas and oil resources in the North Sea and grew to be the largest energy company in Denmark. With a portfolio of primarily oil, gas, and coal, the company ventured into the renewables sector in 1991 building the world’s first wind farm. Over the course of the 2000s, the company increased its share of renewables and in 2017, the company announced it would completely divest of its fossil-based assets to focus exclusively on renewable energy. With this transformation, we are the world’s leading offshore wind developer. Since 2006, we have reduced carbon emissions by 87% and are on track to become carbon-neutral in energy generation and operations by 2025.

Our strategic transformation has been driven by a strong view that we need to transform global energy production from fossil fuels to renewables. Society must limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid uncontrolled climate impacts, which threaten conditions for life on Earth for current and future generations.

Our transformation from fossil fuels to green energy has also driven the financial turnaround of our company. Red bottom line figures from a few years ago have been turned into solid earnings.

What are some of your key renewable energy projects in the US?

We have an exciting portfolio of offshore wind projects we are developing right now. We have five projects under development, which will ultimately provide over 2,900 MW of offshore wind energy to homes and businesses on the east coast. These projects include:

· South Fork Wind which will send power to New York

· Sunrise Wind which will send power to New York

· Revolution Wind which will send power to Rhode Island and Connecticut

· Ocean Wind which will send power to New Jersey

· Skipjack Wind Farm which will send power to Maryland

In addition to the projects we have under development, we own and operate the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm: the Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island. Furthermore, in 2020 we finished constructing a two turbine pilot project off the coast of Virginia for Dominion Energy.

Who do you work with? Who are your typical customers in the US?

We are different from other energy projects in that the government is really the customer and the state governments are actually the entities soliciting the bids. That is interesting for me as a Corporate Affairs Officer because the politics and the community stakeholders are really important. When we bid into wind RFPs, we’re really selling more than just clean technologies. Governors are really using this to drive investments in their states. So what you’ve seen with the most recent bids like Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey is that there is a really high focus on local content and jobs. When we put together a bid package, that’s what it includes. Every bidder is trying to attract industry investments as well as local jobs. Union jobs are really important in this as well because there are years of construction work associated with offshore wind projects, so we are having a significant positive impact on the host communities who are inviting this wind farm into their town. There are a number of things that we do to engage locally and at the state level to make sure we’re delivering benefits back to the community and the state in terms of economic development, jobs, and of course, clean air.

What are the benefits of the growing offshore wind industry for the US?

We currently have three projects moving through the federal permitting process that has been stalled for several years.

The movement in the permitting process will unlock $500 million in investments in the United States that are in port and harbor, construction, and manufacturing. These are real jobs, union jobs, and there is a supply chain that gets pulled in across 10 states.

When you think about what offshore wind means in this particular political environment, it is more than meeting the climate commitments, but it’s also helping the country in investments and job creation at the time that the country needs it the most.

In a new industry like offshore wind, it gives us a great opportunity to build in equity from the beginning. Part of that is union jobs and helping the communities that need it the most. A lot of the communities we are talking about here are also the communities that were hit the hardest during COVID-19. As we’ve been looking at our investments in the United States, we are looking beyond the coastline and how we can help with communities that frankly have been bearing an unfair share of the burden of pollution.

I saw recent rankings where Ørsted was listed as the most sustainable energy company in the world. How did the company achieve this and what lessons could you share with other companies transitioning toward 100% clean energy?

Corporate Knights is a trusted, global voice on “clean capitalism.” Every year since 2005, Corporate Knights reviews the sustainable business practices of around 8000 publicly traded corporations and ranks which companies are most sustainable. The criteria Corporate Knights reviews is wide-ranging and includes reviewing a company’s resource management (i.e. energy productivity, greenhouse gas productivity, and waste productivity), financial management (i.e. pension fund quality and supplier sustainability score), employee management (i.e. safety track record, employee turnover, and racial diversity among executives) and clean revenue (defined as a percentage of your total revenue derived from products and services that are categorized as “clean” according to the Corporate Knights open-source clean revenue taxonomy).

In 2021, Ørsted ranked as the world’s second most sustainable company and the most sustainable energy company. This was the third year in a row Ørsted was named the world’s most sustainable energy company.

Our ranking is highly influenced by the share of company revenue earned from renewable energy. At the same time, carbon and water productivity increased as the company reduced absolute carbon emissions by 47% and reduced water withdrawals by 16%. We also outperformed the energy sector on the metric of ‘clean CAPEX’ as the company invests exclusively in green energy. Additionally, we performed well on indicators such as rate of taxes paid, board gender diversity, and paid sick leave for employees.

The main lesson we want other companies to learn from Ørsted is that you do not have to choose between green energy and profits. Ørsted’s current financial health is a direct result of pivoting our business model from traditional fossil fuels to green energy sources.

What are other clean energy sources or technologies you’re developing right now or will in the near future?

In the U.S., in addition to developing a portfolio of offshore wind projects, we have also invested in onshore wind. In 2018, Ørsted acquired Lincoln Clean Energy, an onshore wind farm owner and operator. We currently operate 1.6GW of onshore wind assets in the U.S. and have 100MW under construction across the states of Texas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. By 2022, we aim to have 2.5GW of onshore wind, solar, and storage capacity across the country.

One technology outside of direct energy generation we are keen on investing in is renewable hydrogen.

This past January we launched our first H2RES renewable hydrogen demonstration project at Avedøre Holme in Copenhagen, Denmark. H2RES will be Ørsted’s first renewable hydrogen project in operation and marks a new era in Ørsted’s green journey, where the power of offshore wind will be harnessed to decarbonize society beyond direct electrification, offering a path towards zero emissions for otherwise hard to abate sectors.

Over the past 18 months, we have partnered with different consortia in seven renewable hydrogen projects in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We are in discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy about our renewable hydrogen experience in other markets and looking to understand what opportunities there might be for the technology domestically.

What are you excited about the most this year for your company? Are there any new frontiers you’re tackling this year?

2021 is absolutely the year of offshore wind. This is when the industry is really going to launch. We have a number of companies now that are active in the space and we have an administration that is very supportive of offshore wind. You may have noted that Biden’s first 100 days executive order on climate spoke specifically about offshore wind. There were no other technologies that were identified by name and I think that is just a recognition that this industry has been waiting for over the past four years as the previous administration worked through a supplemental environmental review for one of the projects. That review is now done and it happened to coincide with the end of the administration. The Biden administration has brought in some real talent that understands the industry that was framing this opportunity at the end of the Obama Administration, so it’s exciting to have the right players in place, right policymakers in place, and a real commitment overall to clean energy. This year is when we really start to see projects moving not only for Orsted, who has 6 projects in development, but also for our competitors like Vineyard Wind, Mayflower, and Shell.

Aside from your day-to-day work, what are some of the key trends in the energy and climate space that you are currently watching?

The key trend I’m watching is the overall policy movement as it is related to the politics of climate change. Whether you actually believe in and adhere to the science of climate, we’re starting to see legislators that really dig into the issue and maybe it is not due to the traditional talking points but it’s more about resiliency and safety concerns. What we are seeing in Texas right now is the result of extreme weather and the politicians that I talk to, no matter what part of the country they’re from or what letter is behind their name, are very concerned about floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the fires in California. I think that there is a real sense that regardless of how it’s happening, this extreme weather is here and we got to build a strong, resilient grid to keep families safe.

Visit Ørsted website to learn more.

The Year of Offshore Wind: Interview with Ørsted was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently spoke with Dynamo’s new cleantech member WexEnergy to learn more about their cost-effective energy efficiency solution for the built environment. Dynamo Community Director Natalia Sharova interviewed Rachel Rosen, President and CEO of WexEnergy based in Rochester, New York. You can watch the interview or read the recap below.

Hi Rachel, thank you for finding time in your busy schedule to speak with me today. Let’s dive right in. Tell me about your background and how you got involved with WexEnergy?

I often introduce myself as a recovering landlord, having been a property manager, a building owner, and a developer, for almost 30 years. I connect with my customers on a visceral level because I’ve been in their shoes. I’m also a born and bred New Yorker, I live upstate now but my kids are mostly in the city area and that’s really a home base for us and for WexEnergy.

Tell us about your energy efficiency solution, the thought process behind it, and how it can benefit your customers?

Like many good ideas, WindowSkin was born out of a real need. Ron Wexler, WexEnergy’s Founder, was working in his office and the room had seven windows which were terrible; they didn’t keep the heat inside in the winter and outside in the summer. Ron started to think about how he could solve this problem without replacing windows because that is a very expensive option.

If you have a down jacket and know how it has those little pockets of air, that’s what your double-pane window is. A double-pane window is two panes of glass with air in between. Having this pocket of air helps with heat/cool loss. New windows today actually come with an inert gas in between like argon, and that gas dissipates over time. Our solution WindowSkin is a transparent insulation panel that snaps onto your window, creating a gap between your window and your fitted WindowSkin, which gives you better insulation and makes you more comfortable throughout the year (not to mention saves you money on energy and reduces energy waste, thus cutting CO2 emissions).

What sets you apart from other solutions on the market?

There are quite a few things that set us apart:

1. The low cost of our solution. We are 70% less expensive than the nearest interior retrofit, and our solution is only 10–15% the cost of new replacement windows.

2. We optimize the insulation gap. It’s about ½”, and because we mount right onto the glass of the window, we can control that gap.

3. Our installation is very simple. It takes about 5 minutes to install two WindowSkins. For people who live in older and maybe historic buildings, there’ll be a lot of lead paint in the windows, and there could be asbestos caulking. Because of the way WindowSkin is attached, we don’t disturb underlying site conditions that could be really expensive to remediate and could create some environmental issues for people who are living and working in that space.

Who do you work with and who are your clients?

We’re a B2B company; we work with business owners, property managers, and we’re developing channel partners, like window distributors or energy advisory firms. We’re not yet ready to work directly with home-owners and renters, but you can go to our website and register for our newsletter. We’ll get in touch with you when we’re ready to enter your market or have a partner serving your neighborhood.

How can WindowSkins help cities like New York decarbonize?

When it comes to CO2 emissions from the built environment, the number worldwide is about 39–40% of the total emissions, but in NYC it’s over 70%. If you think about how big and tall the buildings are in New York…there’s a lot of windows! Plus, there’s plenty of old buildings with outdated and inefficient insulation. The New York City Council passed a law called Local Law 97, or The Climate Mobilization Act, to curb emissions from the built environment. If your building is over 25,000 sq. ft and meets some other criteria, your building is required to reduce carbon emissions. The requirements will kick in soon, in 2024, which is not a lot of time for the building owners to make significant emissions cuts and energy efficiency improvements. There’s a small number of buildings that are impacted now, and the majority will be impacted in 2030. Reducing emissions in NYC will be a big goal that most buildings will have to deal with.

The good news is when you reduce your carbon emissions you are also reducing energy costs.

It’s hard to see your carbon emissions. Whether the building is paying for the heat, or the tenants are, or some combination thereof, the building is going to notice when they start to make energy efficiency improvements. They will reduce building carbon emissions, they will be reducing energy usage, and by that, they will be reducing costs. Plus, cutting emissions through better energy efficiency will allow building owners/property managers to avoid penalties associated with LL97.

What are you most excited for in 2021?

We are vey excited about the new product that we’re bringing to market, which is really important in the B2B world: it’s a tamper-resistant WindowSkin, and it addresses windows that needed clearance of up to 3/8”. Landlords want to know if they put this on the windows that it’s going to be there and it’s actually going to make a difference: making tenants more comfortable and reducing costs. We’re also very excited in the work we are doing in the B2C market that’s going to get us closer to the individual homeowner as we develop an app that’s going to make it very easy to measure and order WindowSkins. We were just approved for a ConEdison pilot, with a Small-to-Medium business group, so if you are on LinkedIn on our website, we are going to be putting out announcements and information.

To learn more, please visit WexEnergy website and sign up for the newsletter.

One Ingenious Solution for Reducing Emissions, Energy Costs: Interview with WexEnergy was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What’s the role of digitalization in advancing the clean energy transition? For the latest Dynamo event, co-hosted with the Norwegian Consulate General in New York, we brought together global energy industry leaders to unpack this timely topic and to explore bottlenecks, opportunities, and latest advancements and trends in this space. The participating companies included BloombergNEF, Cognite, Con Edison, Equinor, Google, National Offshore Wind and R&D Consortium, NRG Energy, Scatec Solar, as well as innovative cleantechs BrainBox AI, Enerex, EnergyHawk, The Megawatt Hour, Opus One Solutions, and Volue.

Claire Curry, Head of Digital Industry and Climate-tech Innovation at BloombergNEF, opened up the conversation with an overview of the status of digitalization as it pertains to the energy sector, with a focus on electric utilities and renewables. Claire kicked off with the reasons why companies are rushing towards digital transformation:

- Reduces uncertainty and minimize losses in operations

- Helps to comply with environmental and safety regulations

- Generates new value and outpaces competitors

- Shifts the business model

Digitalization in the power sector in particular has been gaining momentum in recent years as the number of intermittent, and decentralized, energy resources on the grid continues to grow. More U.S. states are implementing energy efficiency and decarbonization mandates, requirements that are challenging to navigate with outdated power sector resource management, infrastructure, and other processes. Therefore, for the power sector, the benefits of digitalization are numerous. As Claire noted it can:

- Reduce operating costs

- Enhance resiliency

- Enable flexibility

- Engage the customer

- Support employee retention

What’s the role of software in decentralizing power generation?

IoT and analytics software is being adopted across all forms of power generation technology. BNEF’s research shows that wind and natural gas power plants buy the most software for analytics, and this trend will hold in 2025. While BNEF expects most utility-scale solar farms buy software for remote monitoring and analytics, the technology is relatively straightforward and less expensive than for wind or gas plants (due to their rotating parts). While battery storage energy management software is a small market today BNEF expects it to grow fast as the storage industry expands and batteries become an essential part of grid balancing.

Where is smart grid development today?

When it comes to the current state of digitalization in the power sector, some applications are much further along than others. According to BNEF’s analysis, the largest software application for managing the power grid sector today is Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS). ADMS control voltage to minimize power losses on wires and use grid sensors and circuit breakers to isolate faults on the grid and restore service to unaffected areas. BNEF believes 46% of the global grid is covered by a version of such system. The smallest market size today and in 2025 for smart grid software is Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) that help grid operators control distributed energy resources like wind, solar, energy storage, demand-side resources, EVs, etc. Wide and rapid deployment of DERMS platforms is one way of enabling higher levels of renewable penetration while ensuring the reliability of the grid (if left unmanaged, DERs can disrupt distribution systems and undermine grid reliability).

Discussion Insights

What is the “on the ground” experience of large power purchasers, utilities, cleantechs, and renewable energy developers? Our conversation demonstrated that all these stakeholders face a mix of challenges, none of which they can overcome on their own. However, chief among them is lack of data liberalization — access to data is key for enabling more players to enter the market, improve project operation efficiencies, integrate more energy storage, balance the grid load, and the list goes on. Lack of data liberalization in the US is impeding the clean energy transition and must be addressed now to allow us to meet decarbonization goals while saving consumers’ money and ensuring grid reliability.

“Look at offshore wind projects which are enormous engineering undertakings. If you are not thinking of information-sharing and data openness you’re going to incur huge expenses that could be avoided.” — Francois Laborie, President for North America, Cognite.

What are the Key Challenges?

1. Complex US power market structure. Digitalizing the renewable energy industry and integrating it with the US electric utilities presents numerous challenges. One of the reasons is deregulated power markets where power providers, energy sources, and utility commissions vary greatly from state to state and across regions.

2. Outdated operations. Even in progressive companies in the US, internal operations and data management processes can be grossly outdated and data often is not shared even across teams in large organizations, all of which complicates the digital transition.

3. Lack of data liberalization. As mentioned earlier, data liberalization has not been embraced in the US but it is a key component for digitalization, crucial to increasing the number of renewables on the grid. New sectors rapidly coming online — like offshore wind industry — creates a lot of uncertainty for the grid. Lack of data access creates lack of predictability in operating assets and managing production outputs.

4. No standardized way to share data: Even if data liberalization were to take place, there is no standard way to store, share, or read it.

“The clean energy economy relies on markets, connectivity, and trust, and we need to have a common language and data standards. The utility sector must embrace APIs to meet the demand for customer data or risk hampering customers’ ability to self direct into sustainable energy options. Granular data exchange is still missing, and utilities are slow to move into these paradigms.” — Nate Richards, Co-Founder and CFO, Enerex.

5. Slow to change regulatory landscape. One of the reasons for the lack of data access is the disparate regulatory landscape that makes it challenging to drive change in the power sector. Additionally, data-sharing is often perceived as a threat by utilities and companies, and opening up data is not prioritized at the regulatory level.

“The data value increases as you trade and share it, as opposed to storing it somewhere hidden away from other parties, often including your own.” — Francois Laborie, Cognite.

What about the Customer’s Access to Data?

With the rapid transformation of the energy market, customers can play a key role in driving the energy transition, but haphazard data access and lack of transparency into energy usage and associated costs prevents them from actively participating in the energy market and delays the clean energy transition and emissions reduction.

“To enable the clean energy transition, we need to give customers an ability to access their usage and cost data. Smart meters are a big step in the right direction, but we have to go further. If there was one standard way to access utility meter data with permission from customers across the country, instead of going utility by utility, one customer and account at a time, we could unlock so much efficiency very quickly.” — Deirdre Lord, Co-Founder and COO, The Megawatt Hour

To drive the needle on this issue, the change has to happen at the PUC and state regulatory level, but digitalization and customer data access is not prioritized among regulators. Engaging with regulators, briefing them on customers’ needs and technological advances in this space is a good starting point. Notably, customers increasingly appreciate that sharing their data is beneficial to them, and having a trusted service provider working with customers, utilities, and regulators could be the winning solution.

Can Large C&I Customers Drive Change?

The answer is yes when you’re Google, but there are still challenges. Under its new 24x7 clean energy framework, the company is moving from global annual accounting to regional hourly energy matching. This approach significantly increases the complexity of renewable procurement, and to address this goal, Google focuses on three areas of digitalization to get there: measuring and tracking, planning and forecasting, managing and optimizing.

For all three, data is everything but accessing it at the needed levels is still challenging due to the number of involved partners and the scale of operations. Savannah Goodman, Technical Program Manager for Carbon-Free Energy at Google, mentioned solutions such as centralized data hubs (there are currently several initiatives including in Norway, Spain, Estonia) where customers or third parties who have permissions can access their load and production data through secured API. Savannah added that translating this model to other markets could be a huge win for the growth of renewables.

Why is Digitalization Important for Offshore Wind?

It’s no secret that New York State is rapidly building out the offshore wind sector, and how it is built efficiently and integrated with the grid are some of the key questions that utilities, project developers, and government are looking to digitalization to help them solve.

Carrie Hitt, Executive Director at National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium noted that they are laser-focused on R&D that would help developers effectively and reliably build and connect offshore wind in the US: “We are looking at research proposals that seek to address how data and AI can help with lowering the cost of operations and maintenance, like using drones rather than humans to access offshore sights.”

Other project development areas, such as environmentally responsible construction, safety requirements, minimization of impact on marine life — are all challenges that innovative data-based solutions help address. However, in nearly all areas the gathered data is viewed as proprietary to the developer or supplier, creating obstacles even from the research side.

“This will probably change over time but now even for research purposes projects are concerned about sharing their information.” — Carrie Hitt, Executive Director, National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium

However, several industry leaders with years of experience in energy project development know that data access is key to the energy transition and needs to be liberalized. Equinor, for example, owns enormous quantities of data from their decades of operating offshore, and makes their subsurface data from offshore oil and gas projects, as well as from the Hywind Scotland wind project, available to third parties.

“Digitalization itself is not an add-on to any project, it’s not an afterthought, it’s a core part of each development site. To realize the cost improvements, operational efficiencies, environmental deliveries we require digitalization.” — Jonathan Forde, Commercial Manager, Equinor Wind US

Ultimately, digitalization is a win-win for project developers as it allows them to create more with less, lower cost for consumers, and increase returns.

Utilities are Here to Stay if they Embrace Change…

While some argue that with growth of distributed energy sources the need for utilities is disappearing, ConEdison says that, in fact, it is the opposite. As the grid needs to take in more distributed energy resources, and as widespread electrification takes place across the state, Con Edison will be building more transmission distribution. But building transmission lines is not everything, and utilities, in fact, can be better positioned to manage the increasingly complex and dynamic grid for similar reasons to Equinor — decades of experience and large quantities of data. But leveraging this data is still the challenge.

“We have this onslaught of information and the question is how do we boil it down for the operator so that they only get what they need to know.” — Damian Sciano, Director of Distributed Resource Integration, Con Edison

… but the Pressure is On

The energy transition is not currently progressing quickly enough to deliver on climate targets, but digitalization can accelerate it. Furthermore, without digitalization, balancing the grid with high levels of renewables is going to be impossible. Now with relatively low numbers of renewables on the grid, the balancing for intermittent supply is largely done manually. However, when you have 60–70 percent renewables on the grid, you need digital tools and technology to manage the volatile energy supply seamlessly in real-time.

“It’s not the matter of “if” but “when” the renewables will dominate the energy sector.” — Pål Strøm, Senior Vice President, Scatec Solar.

What’s Next?

Clearly, challenges to widespread digitalization of the energy sector are numerous, but the greatest adversity is the lack of data sharing. Liberalizing data access will not only create efficiencies and lower costs for consumers, it will accelerate the integration of battery storage, increase renewables penetration on the grid, and improve grid resiliency and reliability.

As Francois of Cognite noted, digitalization is inevitable and will continue but “it’s not a revolution, it’s an evolution, and the real change will happen when there’s open data-sharing.”

In the short-term, data centralization and the swift development of standards for data-gathering and sharing seem unlikely in the deregulated US electricity markets. Simultaneously, private companies’ resistance to widely share their data is not going away any time soon. However, the rise of innovative solutions that convert various data models between key stakeholders will be the next step for automated data-sharing, and an industry where we will see a rise in innovation.

To learn more about this conversation and if you are interested in future Dynamo events like this, please contact us to subscribe to the Dynamo newsletter.

Navigating the Digital Transition to the Clean Energy Economy was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dynamo was delighted to host a conversation on what responsible leadership looks like in light of the mounting challenges, including climate change, COVID-19, and social inequality. Laura Zelenko, Senior Executive Editor for Talent, Diversity, Training and Standards at Bloomberg interviewed Halla Tómasdóttir, CEO of The B Team.

The B Team is a group of innovative business and civil society leaders working together to transform business for the future, with a focus on climate change, equality, and responsible governance. Throughout Halla’s career, as a business leader, entrepreneur, investor, and presidential candidate, she has been dedicated to purpose-driven and principled leadership.

Laura Zelenko, whose work at Bloomberg focuses on improving representation across every level of the Bloomberg newsroom and in content on every platform by accelerating initiatives to recruit, retain and develop top diverse talent, kicked off the conversation by taking us back in time to January 2020. At that time, before the world was struck by the COVID-19 pandemic, Halla spoke in Davos about the power and expected impact of the clean energy and corporate responsibility movement of 2019. At Davos, she observed that the movement was driven largely by the next generation, who were acutely concerned about their future in the world of changing climate and growing social divides. Laura stressed that this activation had an impact on leaders both in government and in the corporate world, leading to resurgences in ESG investing and emissions reduction commitments for corporations around the world.

A convergence of crises calls for a different kind of leadership.

While 2019 and 2020 saw mobilization around climate, the world was unexpectedly hit by the pandemic, followed by social unrest over systematic inequality, to which political and business leaders around the world responded in very different ways. Responsible and good leadership — from international organizations, governments, and businesses — suddenly became more important and complex than ever.

COVID hit on top of an existing climate crisis, unsustainable levels of inequality, and low trust in institutions. “COVID accelerated those issues. Those who we already left behind are further behind, and our trust in businesses, media, and event democracy is lower than I’ve ever seen it.” However, Halla noted, COVID has also mobilized people and unleashed humanity and movements to hold leadership accountable, leading to renewed social activism in many parts of the world.

Halla stressed that while she still sees a lot of failure of leadership in boardrooms, there’s also a wave of positive action among business leaders who act independently from politics and who recognize that they need to win trust, respect, and business of their customers that increasingly care about the environment, fairness, equality, and more.

“There is no business beyond planetary boundaries nor with a broken social contract. The 50 yearlong Friedman era of shareholder primacy is coming to an end.”

Laura, who herself is a driving force of diversity in the world of big media, then asked about positive examples of accountable leadership from a governmental standpoint. The importance of diversity and examples of good leadership from women leaders, from the Nordics to Taiwan to New Zealand, immediately came up. Halla clarified that this is not about women versus men, but about the mindset that emerges when we have diversity — a leadership style that is more shared, more collective, encouraging of conversation aimed at understanding the other’s point of view. A leadership style that is trusting in science and that is humble.

“Changing a world that is dysfunctional is going to take all of us. There is no one person, company or country that has all the answers to these great global challenges. Instead, it will take collectively the public sector, the private sector, the civil society, and its citizens to reimagine a world where we don’t face constant weather events or constant pandemics.”

Everyone wants to prosper on a healthy planet.

For businesses, announcing ambitious targets should not be an achievement in itself. Instead, transparency and frequent reporting on their progress is key for any meaningful change. Halla stressed that while everyone wants to live in a prosperous society and on a healthy planet, division in society will make it a challenge to get there. Leadership is all about maintaining the focus on where you need to go and then doing the hard, courageous, and often uncomfortable work to get there. She outlined key steps that business leaders need to take to become true agents of positive change:

- First, shifting from quarterly reporting mindset to thinking long term when working to tackle massive challenges like climate change, inequality, diversity.

- Second, reimagining the definition of success. The definition that was created over 50 years ago prioritized financial profit in the short term, which has failed us. The expansion of that definition to include ESG or the SDGs or a triple bottom line will allow for a more holistic mindset.

- Third, moving away from shareholder primacy and from the idea that the only responsibility of a business is to maximize its shareholders' wealth.

Will COVID make us go backwards on ESG, diversity, equality?

The impact of COVID on these trends, and particularly about whether this crisis will affect ESG as a leading investment strategy is on everyone’s minds. Halla reiterated that many businesses still operate from the standpoint of maximizing wealth at all costs, but that this trend is unsustainable and is under rapidly growing pressure from the public.

The mobilization of young people demanding action and change from governments and businesses on climate change is meaningful because, Halla noted, businesses care about attracting the best talent, hence they should care about what the talent wants. There’s growing pressure on businesses to act, and COVID is unlikely to ease this pressure as it only accelerated the issues that existed before, from inequality to inaction on global crises like the changing climate.

“Real leadership now is about transforming your sector, transforming your country, coming together even pre-competitively to solve issues.”

Businesses should talk to each other and work to tackle the issues that threaten to deteriorate of our natural environment as it will mean an impact on their supply chains, their customers, and could make their businesses no longer viable. Taking steps to tackle climate change makes business sense, and thankfully more and more leaders in the corporate world are realizing it every day.

To hear more from Halla and Laura, watch the interview replay here.

Responsible Leadership in the Changing World was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We recently sat down (virtually) with Dynamo cleantech member Vrinda Inc. to learn more about their business, hear what trends they are watching in the clean energy space during this challenging year, and ask what they are excited about looking forward. I was delighted to speak with Navneet Trivedi, Vrinda’s Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, who has nearly three decades of diverse international experience in the energy space, with a specific focus on electric utilities.

Hi Navneet, could you tell us a little bit about Vrinda, who you work with, and the types of services you provide?

Vrinda is a trusted partner in the energy transition journey. Over the last six years, we have helped C-level executives in the energy & utility sector in North and Latin America to solve complex energy transition and utility of the future issues. Our client partners benefit from the value we bring with deeper industry knowledge and unique insights, which is a clear differentiator. Part of this is our unfiltered, unbiased, honest advice, and hands-on approach to get things done. We are invited to solve some of the most complex problems in the industry and the fact that close to 80% of our work is sole-sourced is a testament to the trust our customers have in our abilities. We are disrupting the traditional consulting model every day!

Vrinda, a proud woman-owned and operated business, was founded in 2010–2011 as a startup by a stay-at-home mom. The initial focus was to offer IT services, but in 2015 when I joined the company, we really wanted to focus on cleantech and how we can help utilities and governments as they look at modernizing the grid and integrating clean energy resources.

Vrinda helps utilities across the world to develop “Utility of the Future” or “Utility 2.0” strategy and implementation plans.

Our focus is on creating and implementing new business and revenue models and working with key stakeholders in clean energy transition. We answer the key question for our client, “Can my business make a sustainable, clean energy transition and increase shareholder value?”. We bring a lot of experience from the utility sector as I’ve worked for almost 30 years across 8 countries in the energy space, with a large focus on North and South America. We are problem solvers; we have worked with 10–12 major utilities in the US and internationally in last 6 years.

Our services range from strategy to operations. We help utilities to think and develop “Utility of the Future” or “Utility 2.0” strategy and implementation plans. We help with economic, financial, and business model analysis for implementing solar, storage, and other distributed resources. We also help with developing transportation electrification plans and demonstration projects, as well as offer simulation and analysis services. Additionally, we work with financing partners and technology providers to bring turnkey solutions to our clients.

What are the key challenges that you see with the current utility model?

We believe utilities could turn into zombies and become targets for takeover by governments/ municipal entities if they don’t adapt.

Climate change is a growing threat and the widespread transition to clean and distributed energy needs to happen quickly. The current utility model is inflexible and slow to change, but the number of issues that utilities need to address keep piling up — from emissions reduction to an increased need for resiliency and flexibility. We believe utilities could turn into zombies and become targets for takeover by governments/ municipal entities if they do not adapt and reinvent themselves. Tackling these challenges will require more decentralized energy resources, more on-site self-generation, and a distributed architecture of utility business and operations. To optimize the distributed resources, we need someone who can aggregate, balance, and dispatch energy as needed.

There are clearly two models — a poles and wires model, which will still be required for some regions, and a distributed model, which will help optimize distributed resources and improve efficiency and reliability. Utilities are hung up on the first model but it’s not the model of the future. The transition requires working with distributed energy resources and innovative technology providers. It also means that utilities need to become digital platform-providers, enabling innovative products and solutions. Utilities need to proactively identify new revenue opportunities and should be ready to disrupt their current model.

Building off that, what are some of the key trends in the energy space that you are currently watching?

The post-pandemic world is moving toward regionalization, digitization, and social transformation, which will require changes to how we plan, operate, and profit from cleantech solutions. We are discussing these challenges with our clients every day.

Our focus is on transforming business models for all stakeholders, especially utilities. They are extremely complex, inflexible, and yet play a huge role in the clean energy transition, and need to be consistently reliable for all customers. It’s not an easy task. We are specifically looking at the impact of climate change on the utility sector and what can utilities do to adapt. Resiliency and aging infrastructure are major issues that require a lot of investment.

The post-pandemic world is moving toward regionalization, digitization, and social transformation, which will require changes to how we plan, operate, and profit from cleantech solutions.

From the broader cleantech side, we are excited about transportation electrification. We are interested in heavy-duty trucks and buses electrification because it’s a low-hanging fruit in terms of climate and environmental justice impact. It is like having new Commercial and Industrial (C&I) Customers. We are heavily involved in developing strategies to move the needle on this issue.

Hydrogen is also picking up in the U.S., as many might have noticed, and we are interested in how it can compete with electrification. Hydrogen can become part of transportation in the next 5 years, and it can be a clean fuel for customers.

What was/is the impact of COVID on these trends?

COVID has changed both how we live and operate but more than ever COVID highlighted the disparity in communities around the world when it comes to social and environmental justice. As a positive outcome, people are now thinking very hard about how they can change that. We think that electrification of medium and heavy fleets could be a game-changer for disadvantaged communities, who usually live near busy highways, near factories, and facilities with lots of heavy-duty vehicle traffic. In addition, there is a greater need in these communities to get to and from school and work via public transportation. Decarbonizing transportation near densely populated low-income communities can have an enormous positive impact on social and environmental equality. It will also help offer higher quality and more fulfilling jobs for those communities, which is so important now after the pandemic.

Further, from the point of view of running a business, COVID has challenged the centralized operating model. Be it your employees or operating grid, companies realized that they can operate from anywhere. Artificial barriers created between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) have been exposed. This will have a significant impact on how companies recruit their staff and utilize resources.

Speaking of the impact of COVID on communities, how can policymakers address it and what’s the role of clean energy?

Governments should target and invest in projects in disadvantaged communities that will simultaneously cut emissions and improve local economies, such as giving rebates for building “clean” infrastructure, which will offer higher-paying jobs and allow acquiring skills that will be useful for years to come. There are many other associated benefits of electrification, such as lower maintenance costs, for example.

We advocate for targeted subsidies for social and environmental impact, which are intertwined. There’s no need to give subsidies where people are going to invest anyway.

How do you see the role of utilities evolving in the energy transition? What do the utilities need to do to change?

A utility should be a platform provider. The product they’ve been selling and delivering for decades is less needed now because customers can now generate electricity.

But there’s a need for a platform that would enable their customers to make their choices for electricity, there should be more transparency to the customer, data should be more available, and processes need to be more digitalized. Otherwise, we will increasingly see what is happening in California with utilities going bankrupt. People are frustrated about the lack of change from utilities.

So, what are the next steps?

We believe resiliency will be the biggest challenge for the utilities and climate change the biggest risk in the next 5 years. We see a significant opportunity for the utilities to invest capital in transportation electrification, renewables, and energy efficiency. Distributed energy markets need to be formed and the role of the utilities needs to change from electricity provider to a service provider.

Utilities need to invest in understanding their customers. They have so much data, which they need to analyze and use to understand the customers’ needs better. Then they need to develop a platform where they could be a broker for the customer and could get a proactive connection.

We understand that there are barriers both from evolving technologies and regulatory frameworks. We believe that successful utilities will be the ones who are proactive, prove new business and revenue models, and help shape the regulatory landscape instead of reacting to regulatory and policy mandates.

To learn more about Vrinda Inc, visit their website. To stay updated on Dynamo Energy Hub activities and access the latest content, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Utilities of the Future: An Interview with Vrinda Inc was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our latest Dynamo Virtual Hub Series event focused on the hot topic of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) and we were joined by a team of experts from Baker Botts LLP, including:

· Leslie Hodge, Associate, Global Projects, Baker Botts

· John Kaercher, Partner, Corporate, Baker Botts

· Elaine Walsh, Partner, Global Projects, Baker Botts

· Travis Wofford, Partner, Corporate, Baker Botts

The panel looked at the opportunities, constraints, and special considerations of SPACs as investment vehicles for cleantech and renewable energy targets. The speakers specifically focused on how the SPAC structure has been utilized to facilitate the growth and development of the energy transition.

Key points from the discussion included:

· A SPAC is a financing tool that allows an investor to co-invest ‘publicly’ side-by-side with a best-in-class sponsor. The SPAC investor benefits from downside protections while the sponsor, if successful, is entitled to entrepreneurial economics.

· A publicly-listed SPAC is an acquisition vehicle whereby a sponsor team raises a blind pool of cash to acquire an operating company.

2020 saw 138 SPAC IPOs looking to raise $49.3 billion. Notably, over the last three years, there’s been 139 deals worth $30.6 billion invested, demonstrating that 2020 has been a banner year for SPACs.

· When discussing the differences between IPOs and SPACs, the speakers noted that most IPOs are expensive for new companies, as well as they are slow and risky because the price is determined by the market, and pricing certainty is realized at the very end of IPO process. IPOs require financial strength and a positive Wall Street outlook, while with SPACs the price is negotiated between the company and SPAC sponsor, therefore there’s more price certainty for the company earlier in the process.

· Companies only need to secure a SPAC sponsor and convince it in the growth opportunity, while with traditional IPOs a broad positive outlook of Wall Street is required, which is challenging for niche products and solutions like the ones offered by clean energy and sustainability startups.

· Pre-revenue or pre-profit SPACs can use financial projections, whereas such projections are not permitted in traditional IPOs.

· For cleantechs, most of which lack broad market appeal, offer complex solutions, are capital intensive and pre-revenue, SPACs open up access to larger pools of capital earlier in their growth, specifically from investors focused on cleantech/ESG investing.

· Hence, SPACs tend to be cheaper, faster, safer, and more accessible to cleantech companies.

SPACs are an exciting new funding mechanism for cleantechs, which can help them grow faster as it connects cleantechs to the capital and investors they need to be successful earlier in their growth.

To learn more and watch the event replay, please visit the event page.

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) for Clean Energy Platforms was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On September 22, at Climate Week NYC, Dynamo and Credit Suisse launched a joint paper titled Cleantech, Collaboration, and Climate Action: Driving the Clean Energy Transition through COVID-19. This timely paper features insights from leading cleantechs who have been able to not only successfully navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic but even thrive.

The paper demonstrated that nearly all interviewed cleantechs were able to identify new innovative applications for their technologies and secure new investments during the pandemic, pointing to the resiliency of cleantech companies. Notably, all companies also highlighted the importance of increased collaboration between cleantechs, corporations, governments, and investors for the continued clean energy transition.

“Achieving our climate and energy goals calls for quickly and intelligently scaling clean energy technologies, and cleantech companies can be those catalysts for change,” said Kristin Barbato, Co-Founder of Dynamo. “It is truly inspiring that the majority of the cleantechs interviewed for this paper have been able to close new business or secure investments during the pandemic. The importance of collaboration cannot be underestimated, and this is why Dynamo’s growing network and platform is more essential now than ever.”

This paper also gives an overview of macro trends in clean energy investment and discusses collaborative platforms that enable cleantech innovators to scale and flourish across the energy ecosystem.

“Despite of a tumultuous period of disruption and unprecedented change, 2020 is proving a banner year for cleantech investing and sustainability finance,” said Ted Michaels, Head of Renewables North America at Credit Suisse. “It is promising to see that investors are taking an active role in accelerating capital for clean energy innovation, essential for the energy transition.”

To read the paper, visit Dynamo website.

Dynamo is a unique global network of innovative energy companies, investors, cleantechs, and governments that provides industry thought leaders with a platform to accelerate growth of the clean energy economy. Dynamo Energy Hubs break down barriers between these sectors by creating a cultivated network to build trust, enable collaboration, and facilitate commercial opportunities to accelerate the clean energy transition. Dynamo Energy Hubs are located in state-of-the-art environments, which include access to flexible workspace and networking events that accelerate its members’ growth.

Credit Suisse has been a pioneer in the area of sustainable finance and impact investing for two decades. Credit Suisse believes banks and financial institutions have a vital role to play in the future of finance and in shifting global economies toward more sustainable business and economic models. The bank recently established the Sustainability, Research & Investment Solutions Executive Board-level function to drive and execute strategy around sustainability, research and investment solutions. As part of the launch, Credit Suisse outlined a number of commitments to propel our progress in the sustainable finance space; this includes but is not limited to a goal to provide at least CHF 300 bn of sustainable financing over the next 10 years.

Climate Week 2020 - Cleantech, Collaboration, and Climate Action: Driving the Clean Energy… was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Furthering social equity and strengthening local communities are critical challenges in the United States and both have been exacerbated by COVID-19. Clean technology has the potential to be part of the solution; creating jobs, providing financial security, reducing the energy burden, and more.

In July, we sat down to discuss these challenges and opportunities at our latest Dynamo Virtual Hub Series event featuring moderator Adam Schrager and presenter John McIntyre from the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact (AmFam Institute), and speakers Steph Speirs, Co-Founder and CEO of Solstice and Donnel Baird, Founder of BlocPower.

Steph Spiers opened the discussion with an alarming statistic, that despite the numerous benefits, 4 out of 5 Americans cannot get access to rooftop solar. Most people rent and don’t own their homes, the majority cannot afford the upfront cost of installing rooftop solar, and many structures are unsuitable to solar projects, especially in the cities. Democratizing access to clean energy solutions is crucial not only to disadvantaged individuals and communities, but also to enabling a just energy transition.

The benefits of rooftop solar are innumerable and include slashing monthly energy bills and contributing to building the clean economy, while providing resilience in a time of climate change uncertainty. Solstice is a cutting-edge enterprise that connects people without access to rooftop solar to a community-based solar solution. Their business model is to work closely with communities that they invest in, sharing their revenue with the local stakeholders that help them get projects off the ground.

Steph Speirs noted that maintaining this community-driven model has proven to be a challenge in COVID-19 as the world’s shift to a touchless economy accelerated overnight. Steph questioned, “How do you build community and trust in the COVID-19 era?” — two key factors in clean technology expansion.

For Donnel Baird, CEO of BlocPower, a company that greens American cities through building energy efficiency, the pandemic has stalled a lot of their work, but also served as an opportunity to accelerate collaboration in the clean economy. He noted, “A lot of the innovation that’s happened in the clean energy industry in the last 11–12 years, a lot of it occurred as a result of grants and subsidies that were invested particularly in solar [since the 2008 financial collapse].” Energy efficiency upgrades embolden the communities in which they are sited, and as a result should be a focus of post-COVID recovery policy.

COVID-19 also necessitates many upgrades. “People are spending the majority of their time indoors, and the ventilation and filtration systems of most buildings can actually circulate and perpetuate infected COVID-19 droplets. So upgrading buildings also makes sense because upgrading the building is also a way of reducing the spread of COVID-19,” said Donnell.

Policymakers are enthusiastically supporting this approach as they try to conceptualize resilience to similar problems in the future.

Still, both Donnell and Steph note that action on pro-climate policies has been slow, but they agree we are at a pivotal moment politically. Steph says “I’m incredibly optimistic that the work that we do in the next 100 days, will lead to a future in America that is more driven by renewables, climate change mitigation, and social equity, but it’s going to be dependent on what we do in the next three months.”

For Donnell, one solution is to prepare for action on bipartisan climate mitigation policies. For example, the national security argument behind smart grids galvanizes bipartisan support. And there are many opportunities to make these kinds of arguments, regardless of what happens in November, like the number of jobs that have been and will continue to be created by the clean energy industry.

COVID-19 greatly exacerbated several social and economic problems within the United States, problems that clean energy companies and solutions can help solve. Adam Schrager of AmFam pointed out, “the pandemic has highlighted some of the systemic inequalities that we have in this country, as it disproportionately impacts lower income families, families of color.” He asked how we can use this moment to make a significant, lasting change in inequality.

Donnell believes BlocPower is well-positioned to engage with this challenge since its network is both public and private. “We can open up the conversation. We as entrepreneurs can talk to corporate leaders about what kind of serious plan we can work towards together.”

For Steph, these social equity considerations are both a key motivation in their internal business strategy and their external practices. She says Solstice as a company is trying to reflect the world as it should be rather than the world that it is. They are decentralizing decision-making and focusing on addressing racial justice in their projects. Externally, she says, developers get to make so many decisions, and Solstice has to comply with where developers say projects get made. So, “we have to make the business case for equity; we have to be the cultural translators to say that equity is important because it’s the morally right thing to do… and also because it increases your customer pool and lowers your customer acquisition costs.” This argument will help to transform what communities get access to community solar.

To hear more about our panelists and their solutions to these multifaceted issues, watch the recording of our panel here.

Clean Tech in the Pandemic: Leveraging Shifting Tides To Accelerate Social Equity Through Clean… was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article by Jeffrey Ryser, Senior Editor at S&P Global Platts, originally appeared in Platts Megawatt Daily newsletter.

■ Analysts say ‘not on target for decarbonization’

■ Economic slowdown not best way to cut carbon

While the coronavirus pandemic has slowed demand for coal-fired power, as well as for gasoline and jet fuel for transportation, the decline of greenhouse emissions has not significantly reduced the overall risk of “physical climate change,” according to climate economists from the Rhodium Group.

“There is still uncertainty as to the depth and length of the impact of COVID-19,” noted Rhodium’s Emily Wimberger during the June 22 webcast. “The spoiler alert,” she said, “is that while US emissions have fallen under the COVID-19 lockdown, we are still not on target for decarbonization and will continue to face physical damages associated with climate change for the foreseeable future.”

Of the two energy sectors that have long been the major contributors of CO2 emissions both in the US and globally — the transportation and power sectors — it has been the transportation sector that has been the hardest hit by the impact of COVID-19, according to the group’s economists.

At the height of the pandemic, in mid-April, demand for petroleum products was down 30%, with demand for gasoline down 46% and for jet fuel down 70%, year over year. Demand for power fell 17% in March and 20% in April, but the decline in demand hit coal-fired generation the hardest.

Costly CO2 reductions

According to data provided by Rhodium analyst Hanna Pitt, between April 15 and May 15 coal fired generation declined to 15% of the total, compared with 20.9% of the total in the same time period in 2019.

At the same time, gas-fired generation went up to 35.8% from 33% the year prior, and generation from renewables went from 10.8% to 14%. Carbon-free nuclear generation remained about even at 22.3%.

According to Pitt, CO2 emissions from the transport sector fell 31% between April 15 and May 15, while the power sector saw emissions fall 16% between March 15 and April 15, and by 11% between April 15 and May 15.

However, cutting CO2 emissions via an economic slowdown is costly and not sustainable, they noted.

When the size of the GDP drop is factored in, the estimated cost of the CO2 reductions during the height of the pandemic comes to between $2,500 and $3,000 per metric ton, “an extraordinary sum,” Pitt said during the webcast hosted by the Dynamo Energy Hub.

Vulnerable Assets

The Rhodium analysts pointed out that COVID-19 “does not get us off the hook” when it comes to climate change.

Emily Grover-Kopec, Rhodium’s director for energy and climate, said the global average temperature has risen 2 degrees Fahrenheit since pre-industrial levels and more than 1 degree over the past few decades.

She said that “economic impacts vary significantly by geography,” and was asked what asset classes she believes are the most vulnerable to climate change. She said that coastal areas are obviously vulnerable to increases in sea levels, and that the Gulf Coast is perhaps the most vulnerable to high water and hurricanes.

Asked what needs to happen with climate change after COVID, Pitt said a “lot of change will still need to happen.” She noted that some of the emission decline numbers are already feeling the impact of a rebounding economy. But, she said, after COVID-19, “people will still have the same cars, the same factories.”

— Jeffrey Ryser

Decline in Emissions During Pandemic has not Reduced Climate Risks, says Rhodium was originally published in Dynamo Energy Hub on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.