Expanding Advanced Energy
Technologies are Replacing Commodities
Advanced energy encompasses all the innovations that make powering our industrialized economies more affordable, clean, and secure. This is a broad suite of products and services, which includes artificial intelligence, energy efficiency, demand response, energy storage, solar, wind, hydro, electric vehicles, fuel cells, smart grid, carbon-neutral fuels, and automation technologies.
Leveraging RENEWABLE ELECtRICITY
The Solar Century
"Just as coal dominated the 19th century and oil dominated the 20th, the fundamentals convince me that this is the solar century. No single country’s policies can stop solar from becoming the dominant source of energy in this century. If a national market disappeared today, then it would drive down the global cost of solar, increasing demand elsewhere. The sun will rise -- we just need to make sure it is shining on the American solar industry."
- Nat Kreamer, Greentech Media, 2017
Compelling Economics
"Americans who get their power from solar today can save money immediately on their utility bills. If they buy an electric car, they can fuel it for less than $0.10 per mile using solar electricity versus more than $0.20 per mile using gasoline. Those compelling economics are attracting hundreds of thousands of Americans to go solar now at home and at work."
- Nat Kreamer, testifying before US House of Representatives 2014
Consistent Returns
"Renewable energy creates value for customers, investors, tax payers, and communities...Solar projects' contracted long-term cash flows, tax incentives, and environmental benefits create consistent returns that debt and equity investors require to fuel the industry's rapid growth."
- Nat Kreamer, Keynote Address to the Financing Renewable Energy Conference 2016, Novogradac & Company
Accelerating Electric vehicles
Lower Operating Costs
Vehicles powered with electricity--especially renewable energy--cost less to fuel than those running on oil. Fewer moving parts in electric vehicles translates into lower maintenance costs too.
Declining Capital Costs
Fast-falling battery prices mean that electric vehicles will soon cost no more than oil-powered ones. Smaller capital expenses coupled with significantly fewer operating ones give electric vehicles a low-cost advantage. Battery and solar technologies will start to replace oil as a commodity at scale this decade.
Enhanced Performance
Consumers want vehicles that are faster, handle better, are quieter, and reliably operate inexpensively. Businesses want vehicles that reliably operate inexpensively too and reduce business risks. Electric vehicles are superior at satisfying many of these customers' needs today and are on track to being superior to oil-powered vehicles on all of these criteria before 2030. Electric vehicles powered with clean energy deliver more value for all of us.
Automating A circular economy
Mining More Value
Global population growth and increasing living standards are accelerating garbage creation on our small planet, which is increasingly blighted with refuse. For example, petroleum-based plastics swarm in our seas, inhabit our fish, and get ingested in our bodies. Single-use commodities are environmentally hazardous and economically inefficient. Recycling waste is the solution, but as recycling is practiced today it is expensive, labor intensive, and produces inconsistent results. The processing and transportation costs may overwhelm the value of the material recycling recovers. Integrated artificial intelligence and robotics, powered with cheap clean energy, capture more value from the waste stream than land-filling or burning it.