Green Power Partnership Program Updates Issue 62
Issue 62, February 2019
- Application Period Now Open! Apply for a 2019 Green Power Leadership Award
- Top Partner Rankings & Green Power Communities List Updated February 5
- Anheuser-Busch Airs Ad Promoting Company’s Green Power Use During Big Game
- Upcoming GPP Webinars
- EPA’s Power Profiler Tool Updated
- SAM 2018.11.11 Release Announcement
- Green Power in the News
Application Period Now Open! Apply for a 2019 Green Power Leadership Award
The application period for the 2019 Green Power Leadership Awards opened on February 11 and will close on March 15, 2019.
The annual Green Power Leadership Awards are competitive awards that recognize outstanding commitments and achievements in the green power marketplace. EPA's Green Power Leadership Awards recognize the country's leading organizations that—through their green power procurement, innovation, and overall strategy—have helped advance the green power market. Learn more about award categories, eligibility, and criteria on GPP's website, and read about the accomplishments of the 2018 GPLA winners.
EPA co-sponsors the Green Power Leadership Awards in conjunction with the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS). The awards are administered separately.
- EPA's award applications are located at: www.epa.gov/greenpower/green-power-leadership-awards
- The CRS award applications are located at: https://resource-solutions.org/programs/gpla/apply/
EPA and CRS will hold a webinar on Wednesday, February 27 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST to provide an overview of the Green Power Leadership Awards, as well as information related to eligibility, evaluation criteria, and application content for each of the award categories. There will be a question and answer session at the end of the webinar. If you're interested in attending, please register for the webinar now.
The awards will be presented in conjunction with the Renewable Energy Markets Conference hosted by the Center for Resource Solutions. The conference will take place September 4-6, 2019 in San Diego, California. For more information on the conference, visit www.renewableenergymarkets.com/.
For more information about the awards, visit the EPA Green Power Leadership Awards web page or contact Melissa Klein at klein.melissa@epa.gov or 202-343-9207.
Top Partner Rankings & Green Power Communities List Updated February 5
On February 5, GPP released updates to its Top Partner Rankings, which feature Partner organizations leading the way with their use of green power.
On the National Top 100 list and Fortune 500 Partners list, Wells Fargo now appears at the No. 4 spot with its nearly 2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual green power use. New Partners--Switch (No. 22) and Kohler Co. (No. 31)--also now appear on the National Top 100 list. In total, the Partners featured on the Top 100 list use more than 47 billion kWh of green power.
New to the GPP and the Top 30 Retail list is Burberry Group PLC (No. 19). The University of Virginia (No. 19) and the University of Pittsburgh (No. 30) appear for the first time on the Top 30 College & University list.
The February update ushered in a number of new Green Power Communities. More than 20 California communities debuted on the Green Power Communities list in February after joining the Partnership, including South San Francisco; Redwood City; San Mateo; Menlo Park; Daly City; San Mateo County; Burlingame; Foster City; San Carlos; and San Bruno. These are towns, villages, cities, counties, or tribal governments in which the local government, businesses, and residents collectively use green power in amounts that meet or exceed EPA's Green Power Community green power use requirements. As of February 2019, 92 Green Power Communities are partnering with EPA.
See what else changed on the Top Partner Rankings this quarter.
Anheuser-Busch Airs Ad Promoting Company’s Green Power Use During the Big Game
EPA Green Power Partner and 2018 Green Power Leadership Award winner, Anheuser-Busch, unveiled Budweiser's latest advertisement during football's biggest game this February, "Wind Never Felt Better." The commercial featured a Dalmatian, ears flapping in the breeze, riding a Clydesdale-pulled wagon down a country road surrounded by wind turbines as Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" plays. The commercial emphasized the company's long-term commitment to renewable energy, specifically wind power, which provides 100 percent of the electricity used in brewing Budweiser. Wind power provided virtually all the 727 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power used by Anheuser-Busch in 2018, equivalent to nearly 68,000 average American homes. The company also donated green power to Atlanta, matching the city's electricity usage for the week leading up to the championship game with clean, renewable electricity. Learn more.
Upcoming GPP Webinars
Green Power Leadership Awards: A Review of 2019 Categories, Eligibility, Criteria, and the Application Process
Wednesday February 27, 2019
3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. EST
Register
The 2019 Green Power Leadership Awards application period is now open and will close on March 15, 2019. EPA presents the Awards in conjunction with the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS). The awards recognize leading organizations that have helped further the green power market through their green power procurement, innovation, overall green power strategy, and impact. During this webinar, EPA and CRS will provide information related to eligibility, evaluation criteria, and application content for each of the award categories, as well as answer questions.
Speakers:
- Melissa Klein, Communications Lead, U.S. EPA, Green Power Partnership
- Jeff Swenerton, Communications Director, Center for Resource Solutions
State of the Voluntary Green Power Market
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. EST
Register
On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, the GPP will host a webinar examining the state of the green power market within the United States. This annual webinar will focus primarily on the voluntary market, through which consumers and institutions voluntarily procure renewable energy for all or part of their electricity needs. The webinar will review:
- The various green power product options
- Where these products are available
- Resource and pricing information
- The most up-to-date statistics and trends in green power purchasing
- The continued growth of new green power procurement options, including power purchase agreements (PPAs), community solar programs, and community choice aggregations
- Spotlight on large green power customers
The presentations will draw heavily on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's recently published Status and Trends in the U.S. Voluntary Green Power Market (PDF) (60 pp, 3.2MB) as well as the Green Power Partnership's program data.
Speakers:
- Christopher Kent, Program Manager, U.S. EPA, Green Power Partnership
- Eric O'Shaughnessy, Renewable Energy Analyst, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Guide to Purchasing Green Power - Updated
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
1:00 p.m.– 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register
This past fall, a major revision to the Guide to Purchasing Green Power was released. The Guide was authored through the contributions of multiple organizations including EPA's Green Power Partnership, World Resources Institute (WRI), Center for Resource Solutions (CRS), U.S. Department of Energy, as well as select content from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It is intended for organizations that are considering the merits of green power use or that are seeking information regarding the process of or range of options available for purchasing it.
This webinar will provide a brief overview of the Guide and the most recent updates, which include new market information and terminology, updated market statistics, new content on direct project engagement procurement options, as well as new examples on capturing and communicating benefits.
Speakers:
- James Critchfield, Program Manager, U.S. EPA, Green Power Partnership
- Todd Jones, Director, Policy and Climate Change Programs, Center for Resource Solutions
EPA’s Power Profiler Tool Updated
EPA's Power Profiler is a tool that allows users to better understand the impact their electricity use has on the environment by simply entering a zip code and choosing their utility. The Power Profiler displays the emission rates and fuel mix for both the relevant region of the power grid and the United States. If users take a step further and enter energy use data, they can learn details about the results of their electricity use—including pounds of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and carbon dioxide result from electricity consumption.
Take a look at the Power Profiler to learn more.
System Advisor Model (SAM) 2018.11.11 Release Announcement
National Renewable Energy Laboratory's System Advisor Model (SAM) has been updated. This new version of SAM includes the following new features and updates:
- Support for bifacial photovoltaic modules
- Support for photovoltaic inverters with multiple inputs and maximum power point trackers
- New tools for downloading the latest weather data from the NREL National Solar Radiation Database, including multiple files for P50/P90 analysis
- Major updates to the battery storage model
- New Third Party Ownership - Host / Developer financial model to determine a power price that covers the developer's costs given a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the host; supplements the existing Third Party Ownership - Host model that compares a PPA to a lease agreement from the host's perspective
- Improvements to physical trough piping models
- Many smaller updates and bug fixes
Please see the release notes for a complete list of changes, and the SAM webinars page for recorded videos demonstrating new features.
Green Power in the News
Corporate Clean Energy Buying Surged to New Record in 2018
On January 28, Bloomberg NEF (BNEF) published its 1H 2019 Corporate Energy Market Outlook revealing that corporations signed a record amount of green power contracts globally in 2018—121 corporations in 21 different countries totaling 13.4 gigawatts (GW)—more than doubling the previous record in 2017. The United States accounted for more than 60 percent of the global activity in 2018, where companies signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) for a total of 8.5 GW of green power, nearly triple the amount signed in 2017. In 2018, ExxonMobil became the first major oil company to sign long-term PPAs for its own operations, purchasing 500 megawatts (MW) of solar and wind power in Texas. Facebook also led a group of U.S. corporate energy buyers to purchase more than 2.6 GW of green power globally in 2018, primarily through utility green tariff programs in regulated U.S. markets.
Tax Credits are Shrinking. Will it Stall Wind and Solar?
Source: Energy Wire
Corporate giants continued to lock up long-term agreements to buy renewable power last year, breaking records for new procurement, according to a series of analyses published earlier this year. It comes as wind and solar tax credits expire or hit their leanest points, in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Those approaching deadlines have helped create a bubble of new deals, say analysts.
Last year, non-utility companies signed about 22 percent of all U.S. wind and solar power agreements. Some midsize companies, especially in the data and technology sectors, are starting to follow larger, more experienced peers into multiparty deals with developers.
But procurement remains dominated by tech giants. Just a handful of corporations accounted for about half of all corporate renewable procurements in 2018, according to a Wood MacKenzie analysis released last week. Facebook, Google and Amazon alone struck over a third of those deals.
