Tag Archive for: sustainability

TFE is making a significant investment in a series of sustainability projects, spanning across four properties and exemplifying its proactive approach to reducing its carbon footprint.

Napa Valley winemaker adds solar arrays to four properties

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Trinchero Family Estates (TFE) is making a significant investment in a series of sustainability projects, spanning across four properties and exemplifying its proactive approach to reducing its carbon footprint. These projects – scheduled for completion by the end of this year – will include solar installations at four California wineries: Westside winery in Lodi, Main Street winery in St. Helena, Trinchero Central Coast winery in Paso Robles, and Green Island Road winery in American Canyon. Together, the installations will total more than 6.4 MWDC.

Green Island Road winery’s solar installation is the first to be completed and receive permission to operate and the American Canyon winery is now running on solar. REC Solar/Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions has meticulously designed the systems at Green Island Road and TFE’s other properties to accommodate evolution and expansion. Main Street winery’s systems will come online in December, with battery storage and microgrid capabilities.

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Source: Solar Power World

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California, along with other states and the solar industry, is actively working to develop ways to recover the valuable materials from decommissioned solar panels and minimize the disposal of hazardous components.

From sun to sustainability: The journey of solar panel recycling

California has become a significant hub for solar panel installations, leading the way in the adoption of solar energy within the United States.
With a current installed capacity of over 11,000 MW or the amount of electricity that would power Los Angeles County, the state has embraced sustainable practices and played a pivotal role in promoting clean energy solutions.

However, the growing popularity of solar panels has brought attention to a critical issue: the challenge of recycling these devices at the end of their lifespan.

As the United States is projected to dominate solar power in North America by 2030, with an estimated capacity of 240 gigawatts, concerns are emerging about the potential accumulation of solar waste. Experts anticipate that by 2030, between 170,000 and 1 million metric tons of solar panel waste may be generated.

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Source: Peninsula Press

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California’s innovation and prosperity are the consequence of stakeholder-centric environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies furthering sustainability, consistent with Adam Smith’s invisible hand in the free market economy.

California teaches Florida and Texas a lesson in ESG

Back in 2015 when California had the seventh-largest economy in the world, outperforming the rest of the US, economist Irena Asmundson attributed her native state’s trajectory to a government increasingly in harmony with the diversity of its constituents. The cost of clean energy will “continue to fall” because of the convergence of “public policy and people’s preferences,” she said amid the proliferation of solar roofs and zero emission electric vehicles from Balboa Park to Yosemite Valley. “Everyone can see the writing on the wall, that climate change is happening. These clean technologies are going to be more valued in the future.”

That’s especially true for business in the Golden State, whose gross domestic product is poised to overtake Germany’s and where the 30 publicly-traded companies deriving more than half of their revenue from alternative energy are mostly California-based. Those companies delivered a total return of 1,600% the past 10 years, exponentially greater than the 46% income plus appreciation of the world’s 58 traditional fossil-fuel firms as the cost of solar declined 80%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Solar is now the cheapest source of bulk electricity generation in most sunny countries, on a per-MWh basis, according to Jenny Chase, solar analyst at BloombergNEF.

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Source: The Washington Post

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Origo Investments with industry veterans Amond World to develop a refrigerated cold storage facility in the Madera Airport Industrial Park.

Off-grid solar + storage microgrid designed for CA almond cold storage facility

Origo Investments is partnering with industry veterans Amond World to develop a refrigerated cold storage facility in the Madera Airport Industrial Park, which will include two 250,000 sq. ft buildings, each holding approximately 50 million lbs of almonds or other recently harvested crops for farmers and processors.

In order to guarantee energy access, reliability and cost economics while considering the sustainability of the facility, Origo has partnered with Scale Microgrids to design, build, own and operate an off-grid clean energy microgrid providing cheaper, cleaner and more reliable power.

The microgrid system will include 1,200 kW of rooftop solar. Storage of the solar energy will be provided by a 1,200 kW/ 2,400 kWh battery system. The microgrid will include two 1,200 kW enhanced emission-reducing controllable generators.

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Source: Solar Power World

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The UAE envisions cleaning three-quarters of its energy before 2050 and has been investing in clean energy for quite some time.

How solar is powering UAE towards sustainability

What will you do if you have huge football grounds at your disposal? Probably play and remain fit. If you are business-oriented, you would form a league and call the best talents and spectators for the game.

But in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), massive football ground-sized plots are being utilised for installing solar panels.

This blog will elaborate on technologies employed by the UAE in harnessing solar energy and how the oil and gas giant is preparing itself to remain an energy superpower.

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Source: Down To Earth

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From solar power to sorting waste, UC Merced is taking action in every way possible to go green.

UC Merced wins highest honor for its efforts to go green

From solar power to sorting waste, UC Merced is taking action in every way possible to go green.

One example – the college’s own campus recycling center, where students spend several hours a day sorting every bag that comes their way.

“We have on average a day 200 bags of trash and we finish it all,” says Allajah Blugh, UC Merced’s zero waste coordinator.

“We wouldn’t be able to do it without them. It gives you this pride because you feel like youre doing the work when it comes to sustainability because you’re sorting through that trash.”

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Source: abc30

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US Army solar project begins on Los Alamitos joint base

A 100-acre solar project that will bolster the power grid in Southern California and provide two weeks of emergency power for Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos, broke ground May 19.

The 26-megawatt solar project will be constructed, owned and operated by Bright Canyon Energy on a 30-year land lease in a public-private partnership between the energy company, the Department of the Army’s Office of Energy Initiatives, and the California National Guard.

“Energy resilience is something that we as a state have been actively pursuing, just like the Department of the Army,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Michael Leeney, commander of the California Army National Guard’s 40th Infantry Division. “This project only reinforces the commitment that we have to move forward.”

The project is being built with the installation’s emergency response mission in mind and includes a 20 MW / 40 megawatt-hour battery, 3 MW backup generators and a microgrid control system that allows the project to disconnect from the traditional power grid and operate autonomously.

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Source: U.S. Army

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Google's Mountain View, CA offices feature curved roofs and textured solar panels that optimize the hours they can generate electricity.

At Google’s new campus, ‘dragonscale’ solar panels capture sunlight from all different angles

At Google’s newly opened campus in Mountain View, California, it isn’t immediately obvious that the roofs are covered in solar panels. But the sprawling canopies on each building—looking a little like futuristic circus tents—are covered in 50,000 small, silver-colored “dragonscale” photovoltaic panels, shaped to optimize the times they can generate solar power throughout the day.

It’s part of an approach that the company, along with architects from Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studio, took to making the new campus, which covers more than a million square feet, as sustainable as possible. In an area currently undergoing a severe drought, it’s designed to save water. A massive geothermal system, the largest in North America, makes it possible to heat and cool the buildings without fossil fuels. The landscaping helps support biodiversity. The buildings’ solar skins, along with local wind power, will help the campus work toward Google’s goal of running on 100% renewable power, 24-7, by the end of the decade. (Right now, it runs on 90% renewable power.)

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Source: Fast Company

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Tesco trials solar-powered refrigerated trailers

Retailer Tesco is trialing solar-powered refrigerated trailers in a collaboration with Marshall Fleet Solutions.

The solar-powered trailers fitted with Marshall’s Titan system are now on the road and servicing Tesco distribution centers across the country. Titan uses power produced from lightweight, high powered solar panels and stores the electrical energy in long life lightweight lithium batteries to provide power to the refrigeration unit.

“We’ve got 4,200 trailers in our distribution fleet transporting fresh goods such as fruit, vegetables, ready meals and sandwiches,” said Tesco’s fleet engineering manager Cliff Smith. “Around 3,000 of those are refrigerated and with a goal to bring carbon emissions to net zero by 2035 and the imminent removal of red diesel entitlements, we’ve had to look at the way our food gets to stores and customers.

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Source: Cooling Post

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