By Sonia Aggarwal, Forbes

To confront rising electricity demand from buildings, places as far apart as Singapore and California have set net-zero energy building targets. The goal is to build a fleet of super-efficient individual structures, topped with solar panels, generating at least as much energy as they consume, avoiding the need for more expensive power plants that could lock in decades of GHGs from coal or natural gas. Read more here.

ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READING

• Residential Energy Storage VPPs Are Gaining Traction, Transmission & Distribution World
  Aggregated residential energy storage systems are increasingly deployed by utilities to provide a variety of services including replacing fossil fuel power plants, supporting increased renewable generation, and improving grid-resilience and reliability.
• How to have an all-renewable electric grid, by David Timmons, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Boston, The Conversation. Many studies demonstrate that fully renewable electric grids are feasible in the United States, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
• Energy Storage Developer Buys Texas Windfarms With Major Battery Retrofit Planned, Forbes
  A U.S.-based energy storage developer this week bought itself a portfolio of eight North Texas wind farms. The move is a sign of the growing status and confidence of the storage sector as well.
• Form Energy Raises $40M Series B for Super-Long-Duration Grid Storage, Greentech Media
  Long-duration storage startup Form Energy thought that solving the problem of months-long grid storage would take a decade. But its last year of work advanced faster than expected. Long-duration storage startups have struggled for years, but the market has heated up in recent weeks. That’s in large part due to the growth of renewables pushing a need for more grid storage in the near term.
• Pacific Northwest Facility to Study Grid Security, Resilience, Government Technology Magazine
  The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been tapped by the U.S. Department of Energy as the new site for a national research effort around grid stability, energy storage and system security.
• The ten-year, 73 gigawatt renewable energy business plan, PV Magazine
  Renewable portfolio standards across 29 US states represent significant, legally required additions of wind and solar – including 15 states whose requirements will drive more than 11 GWac of solar power. An interesting nugget – 9 GW of RPS requirement meeting renewables have been built in non-RPS states, and wheeled into the state via power lines.
• Renewable Energy Standards, Solar Energy Industries Association
• Coming Soon to Your Home: Cleaner Air and Climate Action, Earthjustice
  The city of Berkeley, California, has opted to take one giant leap into a clean energy future – and is being closely watched by cities across the world. The city council voted unanimously in July to ban natural gas in new buildings, making it the first city in the United States to do so. The ban will apply first to all new low-rise buildings in 2020, and will then expand to other building types.  

ALSO IN THE NEWS

• Collaboration is what will set our region apart, MinnPost. Contributed Opinion by Amy Fredregill, managing director of the Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition, a business-led partnership working to address complex environmental issues and advance the next frontier of corporate sustainability.
• Solar panels could be cash crop for farmers, Crain’s Detroit Business
• Credit the PSC for pushing clean energy, Wisconsin State Journal Editorial Board
• Chicago implements energy rating system for buildings, Smart Cities Dive
  Chicago launched its Energy Rating System to rate and make public the energy efficiency of large buildings (50,000 square feet or larger), including about 3,400 buildings across the city. 
• Ex-EPA, Climate Czar Browner Shifts to Scooter Sustainability, Bloomberg Environment