Energy Trends Archives - Page 5 of 6

Webinar: Diversity and Inclusion Strategies for Energy Utilities

Concerns about racial justice, diversity and inclusion have taken on renewed importance this year with a national dialogue that was long overdue. For energy utilities this issue is critical, not just as large employers, but as institutions in your communities and in the way you serve and represent your customers.

In Questline Digital’s Plugged In webinar, “Diversity & Inclusion: Strategies for Energy Utilities,” industry experts from the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative, Heidrick & Struggles and Duquesne Light Company shared their insights and tactics for creating a more inclusive energy utility workplace and community.

Improving workplace diversity and inclusion at energy utilities

Patty Durand, president and CEO of SECC, started the webinar by discussing ways that energy utilities and clean tech companies can increase diversity within their workforces. She emphasized that the energy efficiency sector is the largest employer in the clean energy economy. However, not everyone is benefiting from this economic powerhouse.

For example, Hispanic, Black and women employees represent a smaller share of the energy efficiency workforce than the national workforce. That’s why it’s vital to expand energy efficiency job opportunities to low-income or marginalized communities.

Durand shared the results of a recent ACEEE report highlighting exemplary programs operated by utilities, state agencies and community-based organizations to increase diversity and inclusion. To engage underrepresented workers, ACEEE identified the following strategies:

Engage people from underrepresented groups with training and internship programs. To increase the pipeline of workers from underrepresented groups, stakeholders can offer training programs to contracting firms.
Focus on supplier diversity and inclusive procurement. Utilities can choose to work with minority, women, disabled and veteran-owned businesses to design, administer and implement their programs.

How diversity and inclusion can transform energy utilities

The world is changing fast, resulting in fundamental differences in today’s global markets and talent pools. Grappling with these changes, every company has their own unique diversity, equity and inclusion journey. Kay Fuhrman, partner and leader with Heidrick & Struggles, shared eye-opening statistics showcasing workforce inequalities and why companies need to take steps to improve diversity, equity and inclusion.

According to Heidrick & Struggles data, people of color will soon account for 120% of total net workforce growth, representing the largest share of U.S. workforce growth. But today, they only make up 13% of U.S. and U.K. executive leadership. Similar inequalities exist for women who make up 80% of all consumer purchasing decisions, but only make up 25% of C-level executives at the top 1,000 U.S. companies.

Fuhrman shared that companies who make diversity a core part of their culture experience these benefits for inclusion:

17% increase in team performance
20% increase in decision-making quality
Two times more likely to meet or exceed organizational targets
Six times more likely to be innovative and agile as an organization

All organizations are located on a continuum of diversity and inclusion, Fuhrman explained. Over the past three to five years, the majority of companies fall between “supportive” and “engaged.”

Supportive companies are focused on recruiting and hiring from underrepresented groups. With engaged companies, the concept of DE&I is embedded in their core values. At the top of the continuum are companies that are considered change agents. These leaders in DE&I have a deep understanding of what it takes to make change happen and leverage diversity.

To help energy utilities start making positive change in their workforces and culture, Fuhrman shared the ABCs of key diversity best practices:

Accelerate DE&I impact and results by aligning and preparing leaders
Build visual representation by attracting external talent
Create an inclusive culture with leadership advocacy

A commitment to being a DE&I change agent

For energy utilities, the workplace should reflect the communities they serve. Sarah Oliver Carter, Chief Diversity Officer at Duquesne Light Company, shared how a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is the foundation of the Pittsburgh-based energy utility’s workplace and mission.

To deliver on a commitment to attract and retain highly skilled talent from underrepresented communities, this year Duquesne Light Company launched a full DE&I strategy that will span the next three to five years. The utility also created a supplier diversity program to support local minority-owned businesses.

According to Carter, a commitment to DE&I started with leadership and cascaded down to other parts of the organization. The first step was aligning diversity, equity and inclusion with company strategy, then inviting employees to get involved and determine what equity means to them. The utility’s DE&I guiding principles were broken down to five main pillars:

Workforce Talent: Identify as an employer of choice. Attract, develop, retain and mentor a workforce that is reflective of the communities we serve. Enhance our employer brand to ensure that DLC is recognized as a trusted and inclusive organization.
Workforce Culture: Lead in driving and sustaining “Culture Growth.”Cultivate an environment of workplace inclusion where voices are heard, respected, valued and engaged, resulting in a workforce that sparks new and bright ideas for business success.
Customer: Support procurement in efforts to mainstream supplier diversity.
Community: Strive for excellence in customer service. Support and suggest innovative customer and business solutions through alignment with company strategy and framework.
Supplier Diversity: Lead in community impact by focusing on sustainable workforce initiatives and investing locally in the success of diverse small businesses.

As these insights illustrate, a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion needs to be an ongoing effort. Equipped with this knowledge, your energy utility can take steps to create opportunities for underrepresented populations — and create positive change in your workplace and community.

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What are Microgrids? A Major Trend in Energy Distribution

Microgrids are a much smaller version of an energy utility’s megagrid: a network that connects a few buildings, a campus or a neighborhood. They comprise distributed energy resources, energy storage systems and loads under one control system.

Microgrids connect to the main grid at a point of “common coupling,” which maintains voltage at the same level. A switch can automatically or manually separate the microgrid from the main grid, and it then functions as an island. By controlling distributed energy resources as a single entity, they can also act as a bidirectional energy network supplying power to the megagrid if necessary.

With the power of microgrids, it’s no wonder they’ve become a growing trend in the industry. This what energy utilities need to know as they advise customers about the pros and cons of microgrid technology.

Distributed energy resources spur microgrid growth

A record number of microgrids (546) were installed in the United States in 2019, although annual capacity was down 7% from 2018, according to Wood McKenzie. This is in line with a trend toward smaller (below 5 MW) replicable modular systems that started in 2017.

The pandemic has slowed growth so far in 2020. However, FERC Order 2222 will be a major post-pandemic accelerant for microgrids, paving the way for aggregated distributed energy resources (DER) to compete with traditional power plants in wholesale markets. Also, a trend toward third-party ownership of microgrids is driving the development of microgrids. The federal government has also shifted its focus from energy efficiency to resiliency through microgrids over the last few years.

Powering microgrids with renewable energy sources

Microgrids can be powered by distributed generators, batteries or renewable sources, such as solar energy. It’s not uncommon to have a mix of different power sources. Renewable energy sources in microgrids are also enabling beneficial electrification and decarbonization.

Microgrids are still primarily fossil fuel-driven, though, with 86% of new microgrid new capacity in 2019 powered by diesel fuel and natural gas. However, forecasters expect renewable power sources (solar, wind and hydropower) to drive 35% of new microgrid capacity by 2025.

Cutting costs and reducing emissions

Microgrids offer many benefits, including providing resilience in extreme weather conditions. Wildfires, hurricanes and floods often threaten the grid. Apart from emergencies, microgrids can be used for energy independence or sustainability, such as distributing solar power within a neighborhood. They can relieve pressure on the main grid during peak demand.

Microgrids benefit utility customers by providing a more reliable power supply, reducing emissions, cutting costs and connecting to local resources too small for the traditional grid.

Microgrid case studies: Resiliency at work

Microgrids are everywhere and there are a variety of sizes for any number of situations. Take, for instance, New York University’s island microgrid, which was put to the test during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. This microgrid continued to provide power to much of the NYU campus, supplying electricity to 22 buildings and heat to 37 others.

The Fort Collins, Colorado, microgrid is part of a larger project known as the Fort Collins Zero Energy District. The district includes New Belgium Brewery, Colorado State University’s main campus, and other facilities. The goal of the microgrid is to produce as much energy as it consumes. The district’s distributed generation and load-shedding capabilities total 5 megawatts, or enough electricity to power about 3,750 homes.

Arizona Public Service (APS) built, owns, operates and maintains a 25 MW microgrid at the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma. This installation makes MCAS Yuma 100% resilient to external grid failures and offers APS civilian customers peaking capacity and frequency response reserves.

Several manufacturers of gas-fueled engines, including Siemens, are launching microgrid systems. Using Siemens microgrid management software, one project is testing the concept of microgrid clusters. The Bronzeville Community Microgrid in Illinois is designed to serve 10 critical facilities and over 1,000 customers, including the Chicago Police Department. It will also connect to a nearby microgrid at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Microgrids offer major benefits to utilities

As these examples demonstrate, there are a variety of ways that microgrids can help communities by distributing renewable energy and backing up the main power grid during natural disasters or outages.

The benefits to utilities are anything but micro. Microgrids can improve the operation and stability of the regional electric grid and provide increased resiliency to critical operations customers like hospitals. Plus, they can shore up aging utility infrastructure and decrease peak demand. For energy utilities, thinking small has its advantages.

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Webinar: Financial Impact of Coronavirus on Small Businesses

The coronavirus pandemic is far from over. Businesses everywhere continue to deal with the economic fallout of the crisis even as some assistance and deferment programs come to an end. Small and medium business customers will continue to look to their energy utility throughout the winter for resources and support to survive the financial impact of coronavirus.

In Questline Digital’s Plugged In webinar, “Financial Impact of the Coronavirus on Small Businesses,” guest experts from the SBA and AEP Ohio discussed strategies for energy utilities to help SMB customers through the next phase of the crisis.

SMB customers fight to overcome COVID-19 challenges

Small business customers everywhere are feeling the stress and of the pandemic financially, mentally and emotionally. As numerous SMB owners fight to keep their dreams moving forward, others have locked their doors for what they hope is a temporary closure.

Andrea Roebker, regional communications director for the U.S. Small Business Administration, has held roundtable discussions throughout the Midwest listening to the concerns of small business owners. Through these meetings, Roebker has seen the stress of SMB owners firsthand, but she also says there is optimism as they push innovation in their businesses and remain encouraged by the possibility of future stimulus and financial aid.

Roebker’s team at the SBA takes information learned at these roundtables back to Washington, D.C., to advocate on behalf of SMB owners and their needs. She says working to save small businesses and their jobs is huge. “Small businesses are the economic engine of this country. They create two out of every three jobs.”

At its core, the SBA helps to start, grow or expand small businesses through federal taxpayer funding. The SBA not only helps to educate and guide small businesses with resources, but also helps entrepreneurs who typically would not be able to get funding through a bank. By guaranteeing loans, the SBA reduces the risk for commercial lenders.

Federal support for businesses continues

In the first months of the coronavirus outbreak, Congress passed the CARES Act and created two new programs designed to assist small businesses. The SBA launched these programs in the following weeks, which is an unusually quick turnaround for federal government decisions.

Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was designed to keep employees on SMB payrolls. This program allocated money to 5.2 million small businesses and nonprofits nationwide.
Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance was patterned after the SBA’s existing Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. Typically, this emergency funding follows natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes; this is the first time in the SBA’s history that a disaster fell into the pandemic category.

Those programs ended on August 8, but the SBA still offers numerous ways to assist small businesses:

SBA Debt Relief program allows the SBA to make payments toward small business loans. The SBA has made several months of payments for those loans so small business owners can focus on other expenses, like paying their energy bills.
Traditional SBA-Backed Lending loan lowers the risk for banks and includes favorable terms for small businesses, allowing them to raise needed capital. Roebker noted that fiscal year 2020 is equal to fiscal year 2019 in level of lending. “Many would think small businesses wouldn’t be going after loans like this, but they are as a means to pivot or grow their businesses.”
No-Cost Business Advising helps small businesses get support and resources they need through resource partners across the nation, including helping entrepreneurs rewrite business plans or create a digital platform.

Connecting utility customers to SMB assistance

AEP Ohio and serves about 1.5 million customers, including several thousand small business customers. According to Katie Grayem, director of customer experience with AEP Ohio, “Our goal is really to have the trusted energy provider relationship with customers.” AEP Ohio’s pandemic response was designed to meet the needs of their customers and provide win-win opportunities for them to benefit from the utility’s services and programs. The goal was to help grow the communities they serve.

Through an educational and informative role, Grayem says the energy provider also helps customers understand available programs outside of AEP Ohio. “We were trying to stay really active to help customers reach their financial obligations to ‘keep the lights on,’ as they say,” Grayem said.

A multichannel messaging strategy was an effective way to reach AEP Ohio’s customers and empathize with them. The energy utility wanted to be proactive in telling customers with past due balances what the implications would be following the disconnect moratorium in Ohio.

AEP Ohio also shifted their calling center responses from a “pay us now” mentality to offering assistance in enrolling in payment programs. For the first time, the utility offered payment plan options for non-residential customers.

AEP Ohio leveraged various communications channels, including their Questline Digital eNewsletter, social media and a specific business assistance page on their website to offer payment plan options and energy savings tips. Their business call center also had a dedicated unit with specialized training on the PPP and CARES Act programs to offer further resources to customers.

Like Roebker, Grayem sees positive signs in the business owners who are benefiting from financial assistance programs. “Unlike our residential population, who seem to be most inclined to take longer payback periods,” she said, “our commercial customers really seemed to just want to try it out and I think that’s a sign of optimism.”

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Solar Chimneys: Clean and Cost-Effective Heating and Cooling

As we prepare for the big man in red to make his yearly appearance, his normal entryway for businesses is getting an upgrade. Solar chimneys are becoming a more common building design element to create comfortable environments inside.

What are solar chimneys?

Solar chimneys, also known as a thermosiphon or thermal chimneys, are “passive” conduits that harness environmental conditions to generate cool air within buildings and expel hot air, or vice versa. Comparably, many buildings use “active” energy consuming measures, which use complex building systems to create comfortable indoor conditions, such as boilers and chillers.

Solar chimneys are tall structures designed to face the sun with a dark, matte surface to absorb solar radiation. They use the same principle as a fireplace, where the heat naturally rises to the top of the chimney and cool air enters the bottom. In the case of solar chimneys, the sun is what causes the air to heat up and rise. This allows cooler air from below to be pulled into the chimney, warmed and vented. The process of rising hot air and entering cool air provides ventilation in the chimney and helps cool the building below.

However, solar chimneys can also be used to heat buildings when the weather turns cool. For this, the ventilation outlet at the top of the chimney, where the hot air normally exhausts, is closed and interior vents are opened, allowing the hot air back into the building.

The keys to solar chimney design

Solar chimneys are particularly effective when they are placed in an area where they can be directly hit by sunlight. Size matters too — they need to be tall and wide, but not too deep so that the surface areas that both absorb the sun and come in contact with the air inside the chimney is maximized. Solar chimneys can vary in design for maximum efficiency, including adding multiple chambers to increase the surface area or using materials that absorb the most heat, such as a black frame, tinted glass and insulated glazing.

Another important aspect of the design is how cool air gets funneled into the solar chimney. Two methods are typically used for this ventilation process. One option is to open windows on the lowest level of the building to capture cool air flowing through the building and send it the base of the chimney. Another option is to bury a pipe underground; the air in the pipe cools and eventually makes its way to the base of the chimney where it can be heated and released. The design one chooses is up to the capabilities of the building and cost.

The benefits of solar chimneys

There are numerous advantages to using a solar chimney to regulate the air inside buildings.

Solar chimneys have a smaller impact on the environment compared to traditional chimneys that emit smoke. Solar chimneys simply emit air, thus no pollution and no carbon dioxide emissions.
Solar chimneys are a cost-effective choice for a cooling and heating system compared to air conditioning or heating units. Plus, no electricity or gas is needed to power the chimney.
They are more reliable and easier to maintain than conventional units since they don’t require any actual mechanics. No power outages or breakdowns affect them — only sunlight. Since they don’t require fuels to operate, they also are easier to keep clean.

As business customers consider more cost-effective and eco-friendly options to heat and cool their buildings, solar chimneys are becoming a viable choice. As their energy utility, it’s important to be aware of this trending technology to assist your customers in their decision-making. Plus, with the holidays around the corner, Santa will certainly appreciate the latest innovation in chimney technology.

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What is Geoengineering?

Consumers are increasingly concerned about climate change, and many state regulators have set ambitious renewable energy goals for utilities. The planet’s temperature has been rising for decades, and even the Paris Climate Agreement targets a maximum 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit temperature rise in this century. However, some believe that cutting planet-warming emissions is not enough to stave off disaster. Thus, enters geoengineering.

Geoengineering is “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change,” according to the University of Oxford. This is generally accomplished one of two ways:

Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky, aka “carbon removal” or “direct air capture,” so the atmosphere will trap less heat.
Reflecting more sunlight away from the planet so less heat is absorbed in the first place.

The question remains: Do we utilize geoengineering to offset the negative effects of climate change? Read on to learn more about the different categories of geoengineering, as well as the implications of these environmental interventions.

Direct Air Capture

The oceans absorb a lot of CO2. David Keith, a Harvard University physicist, has developed a patented “negative emissions technology” using chemistry to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. In 1995, British researchers suggested fertilizing the oceans with iron to stimulate the growth of CO2-absorbing algae. Phytoplankton algae would soak up CO2 from the water and cause more to be absorbed from the atmosphere. There have been over a dozen major iron-fertilization experiments in the open ocean since 1990.

Reflecting Sunlight

Volcano eruptions have cooled the earth slightly in the past. Concern over “nuclear winter” had scientists studying solar geoengineering back in the 1940s and 1950s. More modern ideas include setting up sun shields in space and floating billions of white objects on the oceans to reflect sunlight.

Dispersing microscopic particles (typically sulphates) into the stratosphere by airplanes to scatter sunlight (4,000 to 10,000 flights a year) was an idea first proposed in 1965. To protect the arctic ice cap, scientists have conceived the idea of deploying tall ships to pump salt particles from the ocean into polar clouds.

Recent attempts at geoengineering

Russian scientists conducted a “stratospheric injection” experiment in 2009 and Harvard University and University of Washington scientists are separately planning their own similar experiments soon. There is a direct air capture (DAC) facility in Zurich, developed by the Swiss company Climeworks, that removes CO2 from the atmosphere using a sorbent filter. Waste heat from a local waste incineration plant drives the process.

Carbon Engineering, a Bill Gates-backed company, has been testing a liquid potassium carbonate sorbent DAC technology since 2015. Coca-Cola aims to use Global Thermostat’s DAC to source CO2 for its carbonated beverages.

A Center for Negative Carbon Emissions was founded in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University in 2014. Many utilities see Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) as an opportunity to significantly lower emissions from carbon intensive generation assets. CSS is a proven technology, though not yet adopted at scale.

Issues and concerns with geoengineering

Possible downsides of geoengineering include damaging the protective ozone layer, altering global rainfall patterns, reducing crop growth and acidifying the oceans. The effects that algae blooms could have on the marine food web is unknown.

Other implementation issues to consider include:

Global (planet-scale) or local (ice sheets) operations?
Who would be in charge of such planetary endeavors?
How do you settle on a single global average temperature?
Is geoengineering playing “God”?
Scaling up experiments is risky. Can we go back if results are unacceptable?
Is the geoengineering risk greater than negative climate change effects?
Could a focus on geoengineering delay direct greenhouse gas emissions reductions?

Some say that we have been unintentionally geoengineering our climate for more than a century, so why not intentionally geoengineer it now? Others argue that blithely dumping another 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year is akin to government deficit spending. The attitude is, “Let future generations deal with it.”

Solar geoengineering is attractive because it is relatively inexpensive, works immediately and doesn’t require global cooperation for local projects. Alternatively, restoring forests, an effective “natural” climate solution, may be the path to follow. The World Resources Institute estimates that a degraded forest area twice the size of Canada is available for reforestation globally.

With the numerous options available today, it is apparent that more research needs to be done to determine if geoengineering is the right solution to combat climate change.